VendBuddy is where new and growing vending operators go to find locations, pick machines and card readers, line up suppliers and work out financing. If you sell any of those things, these are the people deciding right now.
We do sponsored newsletters, dedicated emails, sponsored blog posts and feature pieces, tool sponsorships, social posts, link swaps and other ideas you bring us. Pick what interests you below and we reply by email with a quote.
- Who they are. Owner-operators starting out or adding machines, plus route builders growing from a handful of machines into a real business.
- What they are looking for. Locations, machines and card readers worth the money, product suppliers, financing, and coaching on how to run it all.
- Where you show up. Next to the guides, tools and newsletter they use to make those calls, labeled as sponsored when it is.
Sponsorship options
Pick one or several in the form below. The prices are typical starting ranges; we review every request by hand and send the final quote by email.
Everything paid is labeled “Sponsored” on our side, and the links in it carry rel="sponsored". Google requires that for paid links, and readers trust a site that says plainly what is paid. Placement is something you can buy; a verdict in one of our independent reviews is not.
Tell us what you are looking for
Thanks, we have it.
We read every request and reply by email inside two business days with the placements that fit what you picked and a quote for each.
Nothing else happens in the meantime, and you are not added to any list.
The VendBuddy Team
Earn from sending operators our way
Run a locator service, sell machines or coach operators? Your clients ask what to use next. The VendBuddy referral program pays a share of every payment they make (30% of every payment for 12 months, 35% after 5 paying referrals, 40% after 10. Earn 10% on the paying customers of people you bring in as affiliates.), and the calculator below shows what that adds up to. Links, banners and embeds with your code are in the partner kit.
Work out what referrals could pay you
Move the sliders. The rate, the payout window and the plan prices come straight from the live referral terms.
Terms: 30% to start, 35% after 5 paying referrals, 40% after 10 paying referrals, of what each referred customer pays for their first 12 monthly payments, on Starter ($49/mo) or Pro ($79/mo). Paid monthly by PayPal once you pass $25. The math assumes every referral stays on a paid plan the whole time and leaves out the 10% override, so these are estimates, not a guarantee.
Product reviews
Reviews are free, and the verdict isn’t for sale. Send us the product, tell us what it does, and we write it up: what it is, what it costs, and the kind of operator it suits. Every review carries a Who it’s best for section and a Not for section, because a review with no “not for” is an ad wearing a lab coat. You can’t buy placement, and you can’t buy a ranking over a competitor. Facts about your product get sourced to your own public pages, so any reader can check them without taking our word for it.
Topic and tool sponsorships
Our guides group into topic clusters: payments, software, machines, financing. A sponsorship puts your name on every page in one cluster, in a short block that says what you do and links where you want it to link. Pricing starts at $250 a month and the first run is a 60-day pilot, so you see real click numbers before anyone says the word renewal. Sponsored blocks are labeled as sponsored and they sit beside the editorial, never woven into it.
Referral and revenue-share partnerships
Four categories work for this: payments, machine distributors, financing and insurance. The rule we don’t bend: we only recommend what we’d put in our own routes, which rules out most of what gets pitched to us. Every partner link carries an FTC disclosure in plain sight on the same screen as the link. Hardware gets tested on a real machine before it is recommended, so if you sell a card reader or a cooler, expect to ship us one.
How we work
Written first. You don’t need a discovery call to get an answer out of us, and we won’t ask you for one. Send the details, we reply by email inside two business days, and if it’s a no you’ll hear why.
Tell us what you are looking for →
Questions people actually type
Who will see my product?
New and growing vending operators in the U.S. Most are working on their first few machines or adding more, and they come to VendBuddy to find locations, compare machines and card readers, line up suppliers and figure out financing. They are reading because they are about to make one of those decisions.
Can I pay for a good review?
No. Money moves the sponsorship and referral conversations and it never moves a verdict. If we test your product and it turns out to be wrong for most operators, the review says exactly that, and you’ll have paid us nothing for it.
What does a sponsorship cost?
Cluster sponsorships start at $250 a month for a named slot across one topic cluster, sold as a 60-day pilot so you can look at real click data before anyone brings up a renewal. Clusters on offer are payments, software, machines and financing. Newsletter slots, dedicated emails, sponsored posts and social posts each have a typical starting range in the Sponsorship options above; the final quote comes by email after we review the request. Sponsored blocks are labeled sponsored and sit beside the editorial rather than inside it.
Do you take affiliate commissions?
Yes, on payments, machine distributors, financing and insurance, and every one of those links carries an FTC disclosure on the same screen as the link. We only put a link up for something we’d run in our own routes, and hardware gets tested on a machine before it’s recommended.
Do I need to get on a call?
No. Send the form and we’ll reply by email inside two business days with the options that fit what you ticked. One page of facts about your product does more for us than a deck and a calendar invite.
Related
The gear and partners page shows how we treat a paid link today. The Operator Brief is the email the newsletter placements sit in. Refer and earn has the full referral terms.