You don’t always need a network to become an affiliate, but the other three parties (the affiliates, the product creators, and the consumers) form the core of an affiliate program.
If you’re new to affiliate marketing, learning the ins and outs can be overwhelming at first. My advice is to go slowly by crafting a simple strategy.

This is one of the crucial factors while you’re selecting a niche. Any topic demands hundreds of posts means it’s a large category and you can do a lot around it. On the other hand, if it seems like you find it difficult to write on the niche after 20/30 posts – leave it for the greater benefit. Make sure the topic you’re choosing is broad enough that you can develop as much content as you want.
Once you start bringing in money, you can reinvest some of it in paid traffic. You just create an ad (on a search engine or social media platform) and it draws people into your site. While it's not a guarantee that you'll get affiliate sales, it's still a great way to build traffic and potentially get your site ranked higher so it's found more often by the people who are interested in what you have to offer.