First offer and I've never bought traffic. What do I actually need set up?

Sorry if this is the wrong section, it felt too basic for the affiliate board.

I got approved at a network last week, which I honestly didn't expect. Now I'm looking at a dashboard with about four hundred offers on it and I have no idea which of them is a sensible first one, and worse, I don't know what I'm supposed to have built before I pick.

What I've got: a laptop, about £400 I can afford to lose, and I read this board most evenings. I can write reasonably well and I can put together a page without help.

What I think I need, and please tell me what's missing or wrong: an offer, a lander, a tracker, and traffic. Is that the list? Is there an order? Everyone writes as if you already know the order.

Thanks in advance, and sorry for the length of this.

the order is traffic first. everything else is a decision you make after you know where the clicks come from

Your list is right and it's missing one item, which is the one that catches almost everybody: how you get paid, and how you pay for things.

Taking them in the order I'd actually do them:

1. Pick the traffic source first, as above. The offer has to suit the traffic, not the other way round, and £400 rules out several sources on minimums alone before you've made any other decision.
2. Pick an offer that fits it. For a first one: a low-friction lead offer, wide geo, payout somewhere between $2 and $8. Not a $90 payout that converts once a week — you cannot learn anything from one conversion every four days, and at £400 you need volume of feedback, not volume of money.
3. Lander, then tracker. Both before you spend anything.
4. The money plumbing. You'll need a way to pay a traffic source that isn't your personal debit card, and a way to receive a payout from a network that may well not do bank transfers to your country. Neither is hard, both take longer than you think, and the Crypto Cards & Prepaid board here covers the paying-for-things half properly — worth reading a week before you need it rather than the evening you do.

The reason I put number four on the list at all is that I've watched three people get a campaign live, get it working, and then discover the payout terms don't fit anything they own.

That's genuinely helpful, thank you. I hadn't thought about the paying-for-things part at all, I just assumed I'd put it on my card.

On the offer — my manager has been pushing me towards a $45 payout finance thing, which by your logic is exactly wrong for me. Is it rude to say no to what the manager suggests?

Had this exact thing on my first network in 2019 - the manager put me on a high-payout offer immediately and I burned about $600 in nine days learning nothing.

It isn't rude and it isn't malice on his part either. He's pushing what his advertiser wants pushed this month, and he genuinely doesn't know whether you're going to be a guy who spends $200 or a guy who spends $200k, so he shows everyone the same thing. Say you want to start on something with volume while you learn and he'll shrug and send you a list.

What's the traffic source you're leaning towards? That's the bit that decides the rest and you haven't said.

I don't have one, that's the honest answer. I've been reading about push and about native and I can't tell which is the beginner one.

I'd assumed I'd start with free traffic to be safe, and only spend money once something works.

"Free traffic to be safe." It's not safe, it's slow. You'll spend four months finding out what £80 would have told you in a weekend.

push! cheap clicks, tiny minimums, you'll get data in like two days

Cheap clicks and a beginner. Nothing has ever gone wrong there.

One item for the list that nobody enjoys, and I raise it knowing exactly how it will be received.

Before your first payout arrives, decide how you are going to record this. Not for anyone else's benefit — for yours, in eighteen months, when you are trying to work out whether the whole exercise made money. A spreadsheet with spend on one side and payouts on the other, kept from day one, is twenty minutes of setup and it is the difference between knowing and guessing.

The tax position is a separate conversation and I'll spare you it, except to say that it starts at your first payout and not at the point you feel like a business.

he's got four hundred quid and no campaign, mate

Which is precisely when a spreadsheet is a two-minute job rather than a weekend of archaeology. I accept nobody ever takes this advice at the right time.

Update in case it helps anyone finding this later.

Went with push, a $4 lead offer in three geos, and told the manager I wanted volume rather than payout — he was completely fine about it and sent me six alternatives within an hour, exactly as grubstake said.

Spent £180 of the £400 so far. It has not made money. What it has done is show me that two of my three geos are worthless and that my lander does about a third of the work I thought it did, which for £180 feels like a fair trade.

The thing that took longest was none of the things I asked about. It was sorting out how to pay the traffic source, which took nine days and two failed attempts. Read that board first, not last.