How MakerManifest Works: Gear Lists, Short Links, Affiliate Tracking

If you make videos about making things, you've had to deal with the description section. Long Amazon URLs. Affiliate tags you forgot to add. Links that broke six months later. A format that varies from video to video because you assembled it manually each time. MakerManifest is the system built to handle all of it.

The Core Concept

MakerManifest is built around gear lists — organized collections of products you recommend. Each list can be for a specific video project ("Walnut Bowl Build — Tools and Materials"), a recurring kit ("My Everyday Laser Cutting Setup"), or a product collection ("Favorite Hand Tools Under $50").

Once a product is in a list, MakerManifest handles:

• Applying your Amazon Associates tag automatically
• Generating a short mkr.ms link for each product
• Tracking how many clicks each link gets
• Exporting the entire list in YouTube-description format

Amazon Tag Application

Set your Amazon Associates tag once in account settings. After that, every Amazon product URL you add to any list automatically gets your tag appended. You never have to remember to do it manually.

Important: MakerManifest's automatic tag application works for Amazon Associates. You can add links from any store — Rockler, Home Depot, Woodcraft, wherever — but the automatic affiliate tag function is Amazon-specific. Other network integrations may come in future updates.

mkr.ms Short Links

Every product in a MakerManifest list gets a short link at the mkr.ms domain. Instead of pasting a long Amazon URL like amazon.com/dp/B0XXXXX/ref=...&tag=yourtag-20, you get a clean short link like mkr.ms/[yourslug].

Two reasons this matters:

1. Cleaner descriptions — a YouTube description full of short links reads better than one full of raw Amazon URLs
2. Verbally usable — you can actually say "mkr.ms/KutzallWheel" in a video and have someone type it in later. You cannot say a raw Amazon affiliate URL.

All short links are tracked — click counts per link show up in the dashboard.

YouTube Description Export

When your list is complete, the YouTube Description Export button generates a formatted text block ready to paste directly into a video description. The format matches what you see from professional creator channels — product names, short links, clean layout. It used to take 20 minutes per video. Now it takes about 2.

Click Analytics

The dashboard shows click counts for each link, updated in real time. Over time this tells you which products in your recommendations are actually getting traffic — and helps you prioritize which things to mention on-camera.

Multi-Store Support

The gear list can include products from any store. Amazon, Home Depot, Rockler, Woodcraft, Lowe's, specialty suppliers — MakerManifest doesn't restrict which stores you can add. The short link works regardless of destination. Only Amazon gets automatic affiliate tag insertion, but you can manually add affiliate links from other stores to the destination URL before saving.

Free to Start

No credit card required. Create a list, add products, generate links, export — all free. Visit makerManifest.co to get started.