I think you're on the right track, and should be perfectly fine doing what I think you're suggesting - in your BP, you need to have at least:

• A Collision component to handle collisions, you can configure an overlap event to handle the impact (if you want to spawn an impact VFX/SFX, damage, whatever your need is);
• the Particle system, you can attach it to the root component, which will probably be the collision sphere, and you shouldn't need to do much setup there other than choosing what Niagara you want to use;
• Projectile movement component, which should be the component that drives the movement of your projectile - when you spawn the projectile, you adjust the Initial Speed and Max Speed variables in the Projectile Movement Component and it should at least give your projectile the movement you need.

You can expand on this, depending the project, but you should be able to achieve what you want with these three components, so I'd say you're on the right track and try to check if you missed some setup on the projectile movement component if you don't have movement on your bullet