Walmart.com any good for selling books?

Worth switching from Amazon to Walmart @ Linkshare?

[litmania]

Walmart pay 7% on book sales, compared to Amazon's 5% on new books and 2.5% on older ones.

The only hesitation with have with affiliating with Walmart is their relative lack of experience with online retailing and the fact that their program operates with Linkshare. Like many others, we have had bad experiences with Linkshare in the past.

Is it worth switching our links to Walmart's book section for the extra 2% commission?

We generate about $500 in book sales every quarter.

Thanks for the advice :)

[Brad]

I did not know Wal-Mart even sold books. Have you looked into Powells?

[Mike_Mackin]

>Have you looked into Powells?

"The point is Powell's probably is the world's greatest bookstore." The Seattle Times

[buckworks]

I have never promoted Wal-Mart myself, but people I respect have reported an above-average level of frustrations with Wal-Mart at an affiliate message board that I visit often. Problems range from lousy conversion rates to significant delays in payment.

If you decide to try them, I'd recommend doing some small-scale testing to see how they perform for you before changing over your whole site.

[Scarab]

Stick with Amazon. Amazon has very good support, always pays on time, and the familiarity with your users is there. Quite a few people have purchased through Amazon.com and already have account there. This is a big deal, as someone is less than likely to go through with a sale if they need to sign up with another service.

Also, try and do Amazon's direct item sale for their 15% referal fee. It may take a little more work on your behalf to keep up to date on best sellers and whatnot, but it's well worth it.

[Jane_Doe]

You also have Amazons relentless personalized marketing working for you when users click on the Amazon site. People not only buy books from Amazon, while the are there they often may pick up a novel they've been wanting to read, a couple of cook books and a few CDs. A third of the money I make from Amazon is from products I don't even advertise on my site.

I know a lot of my friend shop at Amazon and have accounts there, but I've never heard any of them telling me about a cool book they found at Walmart.com.

[mivox]

Support independent booksellers... hook up with Powell's. (One of the things I miss about living in Oregon most.)

[1Lit]

"Also, try and do Amazon's direct item sale for their 15% referal fee."

The 15% referral fee is a complete red herring, as people on Amazon's own affiliate forums will testify. We ONLY link directly to individual books. Only 2 in 100 sales ends up gaining us 15% commission. There are far too many exceptions and loopholes for the 15% to be considered anything other than a bonus.

The commission for Amazon is either 5% or 2.5%. Forget the 15%.

[Key_Master]

1Lit, every site is going to have their own unique experiences with affilate programs. For example, 9% of my Amazon book sales qualify for the 15% referral fee.

litmania, I would stick with Amazon. Most people know who they are and trust them. And who knows, you might lose sales using Wal-Mart. The visitors might browse your site for the goods and drive to Wal-Mart to make the purchase.

[Brad]

Look them all over and judge for yourself. I am very happy ordering from Powell's, service is their specialty, so no worries from that quarter.

I just can't see the Wal-mart deal.

Good luck!

[Jane_Doe]

1lit - I usually earn 15% on the products on my site that have direct Amazon links. I just checked the stats for my best selling book for the last week and two thirds of the sales were at 15% and one third was at 5%.

litmania - I switched to Barnes and Noble for awhile and my book sales dropped way down, even though everything else on my site stayed the same. I was quite happy put the Amazon links back.

[redzone]

I'd recommend staying away from "any" merchant that is admin'd through LinkShare.. Linkshare takes care of their merchants, not the publishers/affiliates.

The majority of the merchants we delivered traffic/sales to, either were constantly delinquent in payment, or delayed payment for several months, then pulled a Chapter 11 on us... LinkShare is owned by Attorney's, and the only winner is LinkShare..

CJ takes care of their publishers/affiliates, publishes EPC stats on the merchants.. :)

BeFree even called us asking what they could do to get us to start delivering traffic to some of their merchants.

We dumped LinkShare in 2000, after 2 long years of headaches with them, and their merchants.

[pleeker]

The 15% referral fee is a complete red herring, as people on Amazon's own affiliate forums will testify.

About 40% of my affiliate sales through Amazon come in at the 40% rate.

I'd recommend staying away from "any" merchant that is admin'd through LinkShare.. Linkshare takes care of their merchants, not the publishers/affiliates.

We've been with Linkshare for about 3-4 years now and have never had any problems whatsoever. They make it very easy to build links (without the annoying 1x1 tracking GIF), they have a very good roster of merchants, and payments have never been delayed or lost.

CJ takes care of their publishers/affiliates, publishes EPC stats on the merchants..

And we signed up for CJ about 2 weeks ago and it's been nothing but problems. I posted about that here: [webmasterworld.com ]

Everyone's experience is different.

As for the original question, familiarity would lead me to vote for Amazon. I didn't even know Wal-Mart.com sold books. Everyone knows who Amazon is and most people have shopped there. Hard to beat affiliating with the biggest (and best).