For drivers · 6 min read · Updated October 2026

How Drivers Get Matched: Your First Campaign, Week by Week

From approved profile to first paid mile: how matching actually picks your brands, why it can take a little while, and the four-week launch once a campaign says yes.

You've qualified, your car's verified, your profile says ready — so where are the stickers? The honest answer: your first campaign arrives when a paying local business's needs line up with your car, your zones and your preferences, and from that match it's roughly four weeks to verified, earning doors. This article walks the whole timeline — what matching actually considers, what you control while you wait, and what each week of the launch looks like — so the quiet stretch between signup and first payment makes sense instead of feeling like a void.

What matching actually considers

• Your zones: you draw 'where you drive' circles on the map, and campaigns match on them — a business buys presence in specific neighbourhoods, and your everyday driving is the inventory. Each circle is deliberately neighbourhood-sized (up to 10 km radius in Canada, 5 miles in the US), so draw several honest circles — home, work, the weekend loop — rather than one giant one. Accurate zones are the single biggest thing you control about match speed.
• Your preferences: you can name local businesses you'd like to carry. That is a preference, not an application or a promise: when those businesses are on Lunar, Lunar's team looks at them first, then at overlap with your zones, then at the same city.
• Your car and spots: a four-door offers up to four circle spots (front and rear doors, both sides); you choose how many to fill — there's no minimum.
• The pool itself: matching can only hand you campaigns that exist. Vancouver and Tulsa businesses buy in over time, so wait length is mostly about demand in your zones at your moment — not about anything wrong with your profile.

The honest part: the wait is real and variable

Some drivers match in days; some wait weeks. The difference is almost always geography — how many businesses are currently buying presence where you actually drive. While you wait: keep your zones honest (adding a circle where you genuinely drive widens your inventory), keep your profile complete, and don't game it — claiming zones you rarely visit just produces verification photos that don't match a campaign's expectations later. One more lever: businesses can be told about Lunar by their customers, and plenty of drivers have shortened their own waits by mentioning it to the shop whose sticker they'd happily carry. That's not a program; it's just how a two-sided neighbourhood marketplace grows.

Match day: what you'll see and decide

When Lunar's team has a match for you, it arrives as an offer that holds for 48 hours. You can accept or decline it, and declining is free and unlimited. Once you accept, the business has 24 hours to veto the match (silence counts as approval), and your sticker kit prints and ships only after that window closes. Each sticker then runs a 3-month phase — a real commitment to the business paying for it, which is why the decision comes now rather than mid-phase. Once the window closes, the launch pipeline starts.

The four-week launch, week by week

• Week 1 — print: your decals are produced per campaign — automotive-grade removable vinyl printed for the exact brands on your doors, not pulled from a bin. (Business-side design changes can restart this step; it's the usual culprit when this week stretches.)
• Week 2 — ship: the envelope heads to your mailbox with one circle per filled spot and a placement guide. Production plus shipping typically runs days to a couple of weeks depending on where you live.
• Week 3 — install and verify: clean the doors, apply by hand per the guide, photograph. Verification is the gate to money: once your install photos are approved, your stickers are active.
• Week 4 — earning: your monthly cycle runs per sticker from its own start date, and you can earn up to $500 a month — every figure verified from real driving, never promises.

The rhythm after launch

• Weekly: one check — two quick photos per sticker (a close-up and the whole car) and one odometer reading — keeps your display verified.
• In the same weekly check: one odometer reading, with at least 25 miles (40 km in Canada) driven since the last one. Approved readings are what the business's mileage reporting rides on.
• Monthly: payouts via Stripe (Lunar never holds your funds).
• Every 3 months: a phase ends — a brand renews or a new one takes the spot, with the replacement decal shipped on the same print-and-mail flow so your doors aren't empty long.
• And the neighbourly bit: you pick a local nonprofit, and Lunar gives 3% of what you actually earn to it — from Lunar's share, never your pay.

What speeds things up (and what doesn't)

Helps: honest, multiple zones; a complete profile; prompt install photos when the envelope lands; smooth weekly verification once live (a missed week counts as a strike). Doesn't help: giant exaggerated zones, repeated support pings about match timing, or filling preferences with brands that aren't local businesses. The system is deliberately boring — verified cars, real driving, local money — and the drivers who treat it that way have the smoothest ride from signup to steady monthly earnings.

The bottom line

Matching is inventory meeting demand: your real driving, offered honestly, waiting for the local businesses buying your neighbourhoods. When it clicks, four predictable weeks — print, ship, verify, earn — turn your doors into paid space. Draw your zones like you actually drive, name the brands you'd be proud to carry, and let the marketplace do what it's for. The full mechanics live in how it works.