Sponsorship policy
What SupplierSpy will and will not accept in exchange for money. The rubric is the product; anything that compromises the rubric is off the table. Everything else has to be labeled, linked, and logged.
What we will accept (clearly labeled as sponsored)
Deep-dive articles ABOUT a supplier
Long-form editorial about how a specific supplier operates — catalog size, fulfillment model, pricing structure. Always disclosed as sponsored, always carries a rel="sponsored nofollow" on every link, and is explicitly excluded from the rubric.
Conference-talk sponsorship
A supplier can underwrite a talk, panel, or workshop appearance — travel, venue, or recording costs. The slot does not move on the leaderboard because of it.
Job-board postings ($X/30d)
Companies can post dropshipping- or procurement-adjacent roles on a flat-rate 30-day slot. Postings appear in a clearly-labeled jobs area and never inside the ranking itself.
API enterprise tier ($X/mo)
Higher-volume API access with guaranteed uptime, webhooks, and a support SLA. The free tier (/api/leaderboard, /api/supplier/:slug) is forever free and never gets degraded to upsell the paid tier.
What we will never accept
Paid ranking manipulation — moving a supplier up or down the leaderboard for money.
Paid removal — accepting a fee to take a supplier off the list.
Score-movement fees — accepting money to raise or lower a specific dimension score.
Affiliate commissions tied to rank position — "$X per signup if you're in the top 3" kind of deals.
Exclusive featured-supplier slots inside the ranking — "Ranked #1, brought to you by…".
Hidden disclosure — sponsored content that is not labeled as sponsored above the fold.
Reciprocal review trades — we do not trade coverage for coverage.
Labeling policy
Any sponsored content carries four protections, all simultaneously, no exceptions:
- Sponsored chip positioned near the URL bar (first visible element in the URL-bar-adjacent area — so it is visible before any content loads below the fold).
- Every outbound link in sponsored content uses
rel="sponsored nofollow". This is the FTC-aligned convention and it also keeps the link out of ranking signals for search engines. - A disclosure callout lives above the fold, named the sponsor, and named the cash relationship in plain English — no "in partnership with" euphemisms.
- The content is excluded from the rubric. Sponsored coverage cannot move a leaderboard position, cannot feed a dimension score, and cannot influence spike detection.
FTC §255 alignment
The labeling policy is designed to exceed the US Federal Trade Commission's Endorsement Guides (16 C.F.R. §255). In plain English: anyone reading a sponsored SupplierSpy page should be able to tell, in the first second, that money changed hands — from the chip, the callout, or both. If a reader has to scroll to find the disclosure, we did it wrong and we want to hear about it at /corrections.
Current status
Zero sponsored relationships. SupplierSpy has not accepted money from any supplier, platform, or adjacent vendor at any point in its operating history. The leaderboard today is 100% editorially determined from public signals. If that ever changes, this page flips first and every affected page gets the chip above the fold.
How to inquire
Commercial inquiries go to hello@supplierspy.com with the word sponsorship in the subject. Please read the two lists above first — if you are asking for anything in the "will never" column, the answer is already no and a polite one-line reply is all you will get.