Creating a test affiliate is a great way to see how it all works. That way, you can be comfortable and confident in running your program.
Why is this helpful?
Experience the sign up process from their perspective, starting on the sign up page of your affiliate program.
See the platform from the publisher's end, and more importantly, understand where is what.
Get to know affiliate-specific perks, such as Sources.
Learn how they can customize their referral links.
If your affiliates approach you with questions, you'll know exactly where to point them to.
Next to that. having an affiliate is also a pre-requisite for performing certain actions and exploring features, such as:
Manually creating a conversion
Setting up multiple tiers of commission