Getting started with Finder
The five setup decisions that start your first scan, and the brand settings that change any of it later.
Setup is five short decisions. It takes about ten minutes, and there's no card at any point. Your first scan starts in the background after you choose competitors and topics. You can finish setup and use Finder while it runs.
The five steps
Your domain
Type your product's domain, like acme.com. That's what the scan runs on. A trial covers one domain, and a domain gets one trial. If someone has already run a trial for yours, we tell you, and you can email support to sort it out.
Your 14-day trial starts here.
What we found
We read your home page and write two or three sentences about what you sell. It takes 20 to 60 seconds, and the screen says what it's doing while you wait.
Fix anything that's wrong. The scan works from this summary. Your country comes from your browser, and we never assume the United States. If your browser doesn't say where you are, you pick.
Some sites block readers like ours. If yours does, try again or type the summary yourself. Two sentences is plenty.
Who you're up against
Pick up to 10 competitors and up to 20 topics. We preselect the first five competitors and eight topics when enough credible suggestions exist. Every suggestion stays visible, so you can remove one or pick another in place. You need at least one competitor or topic.
Your first scan starts when you press Next here. It runs while you do the next two steps.
Your offer
This is the step most tools skip. Your offer is what an affiliate earns for sending you a customer: the rate, and how long it pays.
- Rate. A percentage of each sale, or a fixed amount per sale.
- How long. For as long as the customer pays, for a number of months, or on the first payment only.
- Tiers, optional. A tier is a higher rate once an affiliate has brought you a number of customers. There's a three-tier template: your rate to start, more after an affiliate's third customer, more again after their tenth. Change any number.
- Bonus and gifting, optional. A one-off payment, or a free account.
Beside the rate is a note on what affiliates of each size tend to expect. Bigger ones often want a fee up front as well.
Nothing can be sent until your offer exists. Every deal you make later starts from it.
Who you want
Every field here has a default, so you can press Next.
- Size. Small, medium, large, or any. It moves the ranking. It never hides anyone.
- Countries. Yours, plus the ones next to it.
- Outside those countries. Rank them lower, or hide them. Hiding only removes an affiliate whose country we know. If we don't know where someone is, they stay in your list. Your trial still shows fifty.
Follow the first scan
The scan status stays above Discover, Saved, Brand and Settings. It shows elapsed time and which sources have completed. Results appear after a source has committed its pass, so a count never promises rows that are not ready.
At four minutes, Finder names any sources still running. A scan is terminal by five minutes. If one source reaches its limit, results from completed sources remain usable and the warning offers a retry. A failed scan keeps your setup and gives you the same recovery action. The completion notice stays until you dismiss it, then the shell shows the next scan date.
Change it later: brand settings
Open Brand in the sidebar. There are seven tabs, and each one says what an edit changes and when.
| Tab | What's in it | When a change takes effect |
|---|---|---|
| Search | Your summary, competitors and topics | Your next weekly scan |
| Targeting | Size, countries, languages, hide or rank lower, plus an optional Advanced revenue estimate | Now. We re-score your rows, which takes 30 to 90 seconds |
| Offer | The rate, how long it pays, tiers, bonus, gifting | Every new deal. Saved deals keep their terms |
| Voice | Who buys from you, proof, things to avoid, tone | The next email we draft |
| Sending | Daily limit and signature | The next email sent |
| Exclusions | People you already work with | Discover now, and every scan after |
| Approvals | Not in this release |
Two things worth knowing:
- The number beside a competitor is how many of your rows name that competitor in a review, a comparison or a video. It's measured from your own scan. Before your first scan it says "not measured yet".
- Hiding by country shows a count first. Before you save, the Targeting tab tells you how many of your rows would leave Discover. They aren't deleted. Switch back and they return. A row with no known country is never hidden.
- The revenue estimate is optional. Open Advanced revenue estimate under Targeting to enter customer value, conversion rate and tracked share. Leave customer value empty to keep no estimate. Finder shows a range for every 1,000 visitors.
Exclusions
An exclusion is someone you already work with, so we don't show them to you as new. There are two ways to add them.
- From AffiliateRail. Press Sync and your partner list becomes exclusions. It's free, because it's the same account.
- From a CSV. Any columns, in any order. Put one email, website or YouTube link in each cell. We match on all three, skip what we can't read, and tell you how many cells we skipped. A file can hold up to 5,000 rows and 1 MB.
The checklist
Four steps sit on your board until they're done: review your top 50, write your offer, connect your inbox, send your first sequence. "Reviewed" means you saved a row or marked it not a fit.
Next: the deal and the hand-off.