How much money is it realistically required to jump into affiliate marketing without burning through it?

Hey everyone,
I've sitting on this question for a while and figured this is the right place to ask.
Not looking for a magic number just trying to understand how people actually thought about their starting budget when they were new. Because everything I read says start small but nobody really explains what small actually means in practice.
Is $100 enough to learn something useful or does it run out before you have enough data to make any real decisions? Does $500 give a fairer shot or is even that not enough depending on what traffic source you're using?
Also wondering how people split their budget when starting out. Between tracker, landing page, tools and actual ad spend how much of the budget goes before traffic even starts running?
And if the initial budget runs out without a single conversion is that just part of the learning process or does it usually mean something in the setup was off?
Just trying to go in with realistic expectations rather than assumptions. Would really appreciate hearing how people who've been through this early stage approached it what they wished they'd done differently with their starting budget and whether they feel they underspent or overspent before things started making sense.
Any honest perspective appreciate

I am assuming you talking about affiliate traffic + paid traffic.
You need to start with learning and familiarizing yourself with ads spy tools. There one of each and every kind of traffic you can think of.
You can get a free trial or a cheap groupbuy of spytool.
All tracking and landing page software and tools offer free trial.
So you should be lock stock for first 15 days without spending a single penny.
They only spending you will need to do is on paid ads.
Staring budget of around $500-$5000 will get you up the speed with positive ROI.
Things to avoid : the biggest one is the bot traffic.
Lots of ads networks with fake traffic are looking for guys like you.

$100 is enough to learn the setup, but usually not enough to judge a campaign. $500 gives you a fairer test if you keep tools cheap and put most of it into traffic. I’d spend 70–80% on clicks, not trackers/courses/fancy landers. If you get zero conversions early, it doesn’t always mean the method is dead, it usually means you need to find the leak - offer, angle, targeting, lander, or traffic quality.