The AFFMAX workflow end to end
How offers, pipeline, funnels, and flights fit together from import to live traffic.
AFFMAX turns an affiliate offer into live traffic. Before you touch anything, it helps to hold one idea in your head: AFFMAX runs as two separate worlds. Getting an offer ready is one world; sending it traffic is another. Nothing is ever "launched" by climbing the readiness ladder — traffic is a deliberate, separate act.
World 1 — Readiness (the pipeline)
Every offer you import climbs a pipeline, one stage at a time:
parse → guidelines → assets → compliance → approval
Most of this is automated. The system parses the offer, fetches brand guidelines, generates landing pages and creatives, runs them through a compliance check, and then waits for internal and network approval. An offer at the end of the pipeline is a candidate, ready to use — it is never "live" on its own.
You watch and steer this on the Pipeline tab's board.
Gotcha: dragging an offer to a different column on the board only relabels its status. It does not skip the automated work behind that stage. A forced move is an operator override, recorded in the audit log — use it deliberately, not to fake progress.
World 2 — Traffic (funnels and flights)
A funnel is how visitors actually move. It owns all routing — which landing page they see, how they branch, where they end up. Funnels live on the Funnels tab.
A flight buys traffic and points it at a funnel URL. Flights live on the Traffic tab.
Two rules that matter:
- A funnel is the only path traffic takes. A URL with no funnel behind it hard-404s. There is no "just send traffic to the offer" shortcut.
- There is no offer → funnel ownership. A funnel doesn't "belong" to an offer; membership is just the funnel's graph referencing that offer's destination.
"Live" is something AFFMAX works out for you
You never set an offer to "live." It is derived:
| Question | True when |
|---|---|
| Is the offer routable? | An Active funnel references its destination |
| Is the offer in flight? | An Active flight runs to one of those funnels |
Change the funnel or pause the flight and the derived state changes with it.
Where each step happens
| Tab | What you do there |
|---|---|
| Pipeline | Import offers, watch them get ready, approve |
| Funnels | Build and publish the funnels that route traffic |
| Traffic | Create flights that buy traffic to a funnel URL |
| Search Arb | Search-arbitrage campaigns |
| Analytics | Reporting on clicks, conversions, and spend |
| Settings | Networks, domains, team, and account config |
The short version: get an offer ready on Pipeline, build a funnel on Funnels, buy traffic with a flight on Traffic. That's the whole loop.