Methodology

Data transparency and ranking logic.

TradeInFinder is deliberately honest about what is verified, what is estimated, and what still depends on future ingestion. Seeded data is realistic, but the UI keeps freshness, confidence, and caveats visible.

Data sources

The platform currently uses realistic seeded data split into normalized tables for devices, merchants, offers, acquisition sources, saved scenarios, and raw ingest records.

Offers show verified, estimated, or manual source labels rather than pretending every value is live.

Acquisition prices are seeded from marketplace or retailer-style comps to support buy-first arbitrage logic.

Raw ingest rows exist now so future scrapers and CSV imports have a place to land before promotion into production tables.

Ranking engine

Every path starts with headline trade-in value, then discounts for condition drag, bill-credit delay, merchant lock-in, and acquisition risk.

Instant cash and store credit keep more of their headline value because realization is immediate.

Bill-credit offers can still win if the spread is strong enough after 36-month drag is applied.

Merchant trust and confidence scores are positive signals but do not overpower net value.

Affiliate transparency

Links are abstracted so the product can add affiliate or referral monetization without changing ranking logic or biasing recommendations.

Every recommendation can include an acquisition CTA and a redemption CTA separately.

Direct links remain first-class when no affiliate program is available.

A production system would log click attribution independently from ranking decisions.

What is seeded vs dynamic

The UI is built like a real production app, but the data source is currently seeded and deterministic rather than a live ingest pipeline.

Seeded today: devices, merchants, offers, acquisition sources, saved scenarios, and raw ingest examples.

Dynamic-ready: route handlers, environment config, Supabase-friendly schema, and normalized query utilities.

Next production step: connect scheduled ingestion and verification jobs through Vercel Cron plus hosted storage.