VendBuddy isn’t a big site, and there’s no sense pretending otherwise. Around 2,500 real people read it in a month once bot traffic is stripped out, and about 100 of them open an operator account. They arrive already pricing machines, card readers, software and financing, which is the only thing here worth your budget.
Three ways in: a free product review, a named sponsor slot across a topic cluster, or a referral deal. Pick one in the form and you get a real answer by email.
- ~2,500 bot-filtered visitors a month. The bot gate went in last month, so this reads lower than our old numbers and it’s the one we actually trust.
- ~100 new operator signups a month, people starting or running a route.
- 1,200+ published pages. The top guides each draw 4,000+ Google impressions a month.
- 180+ confirmed operator emails, double opt-in, no bought lists.
Tell us what you have in mind
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.
Cluster 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, not buried on a legal page. 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. One page of facts beats a deck.
Tell us what you have in mind →
Questions people actually type
Can I pay for a good review?
No, and that’s the whole point of the page. 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.
How big is the VendBuddy audience?
About 2,500 bot-filtered visitors a month and roughly 100 new operator signups a month, against 1,200+ published pages. The best-performing guides each pull 4,000+ Google impressions a month. The confirmed operator email list is 180+ double opt-in addresses. Those are small numbers by media standards, and they’re the real ones.
What does a cluster sponsorship cost?
From $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 currently on offer are payments, software, machines and financing. 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. One page of facts about your product does more for us than a deck and a calendar invite, and it means you get an answer while you still remember sending the note.
Related
The gear and partners page shows how we treat a paid link today. The Operator Brief is the weekly email the sponsor slots sit in. About VendBuddy covers who is behind this.