The best to do affiliate is... launch your website as a brand that provides relevant information. Now to establish as a brand, you'll need to do mostly two things-- (a) a lot of quality content on your website, (b) social media marketing.
Regarding backlinks, focus on high-quality guest posting or blog outreach and forget about everything else.
I second this.
Assuming you´re website is fully optimized for SEO.
Your next step is to heavily focus on keyword research and competitive analysis.
Spend as much time on these 2 facets of SEO.
You will thank me within 4 to 6 months.
Next, you need to focus on creating not only high-quality and engaging content but also something that most people overlook but it´s one of the most critical and vital ranking factors and is where Google is investing millions of dollars every year and is the core of every single major update to its algorithm...RELEVANCY!
It just doesn´t matter how amazing your content is or how engaging it is, if it´s not relevant to Google user´s search intent, it´s just a matter of time before you come here and open a thread to complain about a drop in your keywords rankings.
Lastly, focusing on promoting your content while waiting for SEO to kick in rewarding all your efforts with organic traffic, you need to focus your content promotion efforts on finding the highest-quality and relevant linkbuilding opportunities for your blog.
Analyzing every backlink profile would be your most important task.
Also, i can stress enough to just focus on white hat techniques only.
This, if you´re aiming to build a long-term business.
Ahrefs have some amazing content on keyword research, Advanced SEO practice and Linkbuilding playlists on their YouTube channel i strongly suggest you check them out.
Anyway, i hope this helped you,
Cheers!