Frequently Asked Questions

MakerManifest is currently in beta and free to use during this period. We're building out a subscription system that will launch soon — there will be a free tier with core features, and paid tiers for creators who want analytics, advanced affiliate tools, and more. If you join during beta, you're getting everything for free while we finalize pricing. If you're using the service and don't have your own affiliate program set up for a given store, our affiliate tag gets used in its place — that's one of the ways we keep the lights on.

MakerManifest is invite-only during early access. Ask an existing member for an invite link, or join the waitlist on the home page.

CAPTCHA verification (powered by Cloudflare Turnstile) helps protect the site from automated bots and abuse. It typically takes just one click and no puzzles.

No. Your email is never shown publicly. Only your username, display name, bio, and the social links you choose to add are visible on your public profile.

Yes — you can add products from any website. MakerManifest will scrape the title and image automatically. Affiliate tag auto-application works for Amazon out of the box; for other stores you can set up a custom affiliate rule in Settings or paste your affiliate URL directly.

Some sites block automated scraping. When that happens, you can upload your own product image directly from your computer using the Upload button in the item editor. You can also paste a custom image URL if you have one.

Some sites (like Lowe's, Home Depot, and others with bot protection) block our server from fetching product data. The link will still be saved and work correctly for your visitors — MakerManifest just can't auto-fill the title or image. In that case, type the product name manually and use the Upload button to add your own photo.

After fetching a product you can edit the title and description before adding it to your list. You can also choose which scraped image to use, paste a custom image URL, or upload your own photo.

Yes — Free accounts support up to 25 gear lists, Basic up to 50, and Premium is unlimited. Each list gets its own page, short link, and view counter.

Drag and drop items using the grip handle on the left side of each row in the editor. You can also sort your gear lists on the dashboard by title (A–Z or Z–A), date created (newest or oldest first), or set a manual order by dragging the lists themselves.

Yes — open the gear list editor and click Fetch All Images near the top. MakerManifest will re-scrape every item's product page and update images automatically. A status message shows progress and confirms when it's done.

Open the gear list in your dashboard and click the pencil icon on the item to edit it inline. To change the product URL entirely, delete the item and re-add the new URL.

Yes — Basic and Premium users can set a custom URL slug for any gear list directly in the gear list editor. The slug must be unique across your lists and can only contain lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens (e.g. my-woodworking-tools). Free users get an auto-generated slug based on the list title.

Yes — your Following list and Liked Lists are visible on your public profile by default, each with their own tab in the profile navigation. Premium users can hide these from their profile in Settings if they prefer to keep them private.

Yes — paste a YouTube video URL into the YouTube Video URL field when editing your gear list. The video will appear embedded at the top of your public list page.

In the gear list editor, scroll down to the YouTube Description Export panel. You can set a prefix (e.g. '🛠️ Full gear list:'), choose an item format using {title}, {url}, and {shorturl} placeholders, and add a suffix. The panel generates ready-to-paste text for your video description. Hit 'Save as Default' to reuse your format across all lists.

Go to Dashboard → Affiliate Programs and add your store tag (e.g. your Amazon Associates ID). MakerManifest automatically appends your tag to every matching product URL in every gear list — you set it once and it applies everywhere.

Yes. The tag is applied at click time when a visitor follows a link, so updating your programs in the Affiliate Programs page will take effect on all existing lists immediately. You can also use the Re-apply Rules button to update stored affiliate URLs across all your items at once.

Yes — Dashboard → Affiliate Programs has built-in presets for common networks: Howl (Anker, Target, Best Buy, and 17 more stores via bulk setup), eBay EPN, Etsy via AWIN, VigLink/Sovrn, and SkimLinks. VigLink and SkimLinks work as a catch-all — they apply to any store that doesn't have its own specific rule. You can also add any custom affiliate rule manually using query-param or URL wrapper format.

In Dashboard → Affiliate Programs, go to the Howl, AWIN & Link Wrappers section, click the 'Etsy (AWIN)' preset, and enter your AWIN Affiliate ID. You can paste either a plain Etsy listing URL or a full AWIN deep link — MakerManifest will automatically extract the Etsy URL from AWIN wrappers and re-apply your own affiliate ID when visitors click. Your Etsy (AWIN) rule covers etsy.com links; for other AWIN merchants you can add additional rules using 'AWIN (generic)' with the correct merchant ID (awinmid).

Not automatically. Lowe's runs its own creator program separately from the major affiliate networks. You'll need to sign up at the Lowe's Creator Program and generate your affiliate links there, then paste those links directly into your gear list items. MakerManifest will save and redirect them correctly — it just can't apply a Lowe's tag on its own.

A catch-all rule (VigLink, SkimLinks) applies to any product URL that doesn't already have a specific store rule. It's useful when you monetize through an aggregator network — set it up once and it covers stores you haven't explicitly configured.

MakerManifest operates several short link domains — including mkr.ms, m4ke.us, and m4ke.uk. Every gear list and item gets a short link like mkr.ms/aB3xYz that redirects to the full page. All platform domains resolve the same links, so mkr.ms/aB3xYz and m4ke.us/aB3xYz go to the same place.

Yes — Basic users can pick one preferred platform domain that applies across all their links. Premium users can have multiple platform domains active at once, with a preferred domain used as the default display. The setting is in Dashboard → Settings → Short Link Domain and only appears when multiple platform domains are available. The link code itself works on any of our platform domains regardless of which you display.

Custom domain support is coming for Premium users. You'll be able to register your own domain (e.g. yourbrand.com) in Settings, point it to MakerManifest via a CNAME record, and your short links will display as yourbrand.com/abc instead of mkr.ms/abc.

Custom vanity codes are available on Basic and Premium plans. When creating a short link via Dashboard → Shorten URL, paid users can enter a custom code (letters, numbers, and hyphens, 2–50 characters) instead of an auto-generated one. Free users get a randomly generated code.

Yes — Dashboard → Shorten URL lets you create a short link for any http or https URL. Each shortened link tracks its own click count.

If the destination URL matches one of your affiliate rules (e.g. an Amazon link and you have your Associates tag set up), your tag is applied automatically when a visitor clicks through. For links not covered by your rules, MakerManifest's own affiliate tag is applied as a fallback — that's one of the ways the service stays free. Basic and Premium users can disable this fallback in Settings → Preferences if they prefer their untagged links to stay clean.

Analytics are tiered by plan. Basic plan users get period clicks, lifetime clicks, a clicks-over-time chart (7-day and 30-day), and top 5 links. Premium users get everything in Basic plus a Countries tab (world map and table), Referrers, Devices, geo-based affiliate alerts, store filtering, top 20 links, and 90-day and all-time date ranges.

Clicks and views are recorded immediately, but the dashboard may reflect a small delay due to caching.

Yes — the Top Links tab shows the item or gear list title above each short URL so you can identify what's performing best without having to look up each code manually.

Yes — all published gear lists and public profiles are included in MakerManifest's sitemap.xml, which is submitted to search engines automatically. A robots.txt file guides crawlers to index public pages while excluding private dashboard routes.

Premium users get JSON-LD structured data (ItemList + Person schema) automatically added to their kit pages. This tells Google exactly what each gear list contains — items, names, links, and authorship — which can unlock rich search results and improve how your pages appear in search rankings. All account tiers get Open Graph and Twitter Card tags so your links look great when shared on social media.

Yes — every public gear list and profile page includes Open Graph and Twitter Card metadata. When you paste your gear list URL into Twitter/X, Facebook, Discord, Slack, or most messaging apps, it will show a rich preview with the list title, description, and cover image.

Yes — the MakerManifest status page at stats.uptimerobot.com/mjRzlSwJBJ shows real-time uptime for the site and database. You can also subscribe to email or SMS alerts directly from that page if you want to be notified of any outages.

The fastest way is to message @help from Dashboard → Messages — it goes directly to the support team. You can also use the Contact page (/contact) with no account needed.

Message @help from Dashboard → Messages, or use the Contact page (/contact). No account needed for the contact form — just include your email so we can follow up.

Yes — logged-in users can send direct messages to any other user from Dashboard → Messages. Messages are not real-time, but you'll receive a toast notification when a new message arrives while you're logged in.

Yes. While you're logged in, MakerManifest checks for new messages every 30 seconds and whenever you switch back to the browser tab. A slide-in notification appears when something new arrives.