I'm going to be brutally honest here. Most "make money online" articles feel like someone is selling you a fantasy. I've read hundreds of them. They tell you about six-figure months while conveniently leaving out the part where they had a 50,000-person email list to start with. Or they skip over the six months of zero income before things clicked.
So I'm doing this differently. This is my build-in-public journal. Every number I share is real. Every screenshot I post comes from my actual dashboard. If I lost money on a post, I'll tell you. If a strategy flopped, you'll see it.
Here's my story: ninety days, five articles, and one heck of a learning curve in the AI API affiliate space.
Where I Started (And Why I Almost Didn't Begin)
Let me set the scene. Before this experiment, I was just a regular developer. I'd been building projects with AI APIs for my own work for about a year. I had opinions about what worked, what didn't, and which platforms actually delivered. I also had a small tech blog pulling around 2,000 monthly visitors and a Twitter account with roughly 800 developer followers.
None of that screams "I should become an affiliate marketer."
But here's the thing that kept nagging me. I'd already been recommending tools to other developers in Discord servers, in Twitter replies, and in blog comments anyway. I was essentially doing free consulting on which AI platforms to use. The lightbulb moment was realizing I could put affiliate links in those recommendations and actually earn from the advice I was giving for free.
That's it. That was my entire business strategy. Get paid for the recommendations I was already making.
The first affiliate program I joined offered a flat 10% one-time payout. The second offered a similar structure. Then I found Global API, and the structure was completely different: 15% on first orders and 8% recurring on every monthly renewal after that.
That recurring piece changed my mental math entirely.
With a one-time commission, you have to constantly hustle new referrals. With recurring, every person you bring in keeps paying you as long as they stay subscribed. That felt like building something real instead of chasing a hamster wheel.
The First Article Felt Awkward (And It Should Have)
I published my first piece about a week after joining the program. It was an honest walkthrough of how I'd actually been using AI APIs for client work, which platforms I'd stuck with, and why. About 1,800 words. Real examples from real projects. I embedded my Global API affiliate link naturally where I'd genuinely recommend the platform anyway.
I cross-posted it to Dev.to because I knew developer content does well there.
Then I waited. And waited. And checked my dashboard obsessively.
Week one results on that first article: 340 views on Dev.to, 120 on my own blog. Three people clicked my affiliate link. Zero conversions.
You know what that felt like? Embarrassing. I sat there staring at the dashboard wondering if I'd just wasted an entire afternoon writing an article nobody cared about.
But here's something I had to teach myself early: affiliate marketing is a numbers game with a delayed payoff. Three clicks out of 460 views sounds bad until you realize one of those three clicks might convert in week three, and they might renew for the next eighteen months.
So I kept going.
Month One Closed with $3.00 (And That's When I Knew It Could Work)
By the end of my first month, I had published two articles. Combined traffic sat at around 750 views. I'd generated 14 total affiliate clicks and gotten two signups.
One of those signups converted to a paid Pro plan on day 28.
My first commission landed in the dashboard: $3.00.
Three dollars. I made three dollars in a month of work.
Most people would quit here. I get it. But I want to share what I was actually feeling in that moment, because it wasn't disappointment. It was validation.
Before month one, I didn't know if this would work. The question wasn't "how much can I make?" It was "can I make anything at all?" A single conversion proved the entire model functioned. Someone read my content, clicked my link, signed up, paid real money, and I got paid because of it.
The system worked exactly as designed. The economics just needed time and traffic.
The second signup didn't convert in month one, which is important. Sometimes signups take weeks to convert. Sometimes they never convert. That uncertainty is real and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
Month Two Was Where Things Started Clicking
I entered my second month with a very specific goal: publish three more articles and hit $50 in cumulative earnings. I wrote it on a sticky note and put it on my monitor.
Week five, I published a case study. Not a generic "top five AI APIs" post, but an actual story about how I'd used these tools to build a feature for a paying client. The post did 280 views in week one, but here's what mattered more: those readers clicked through to my affiliate link at a noticeably higher rate than my first article's readers did.
Why? Because developers reading a real case study are developers who could picture themselves using the same approach. Generic comparison posts attract tire-kickers. Case studies attract builders.
Week six is when the compounding effect kicked in. My month-one comparison article had been sitting on Dev.to for several weeks, and Google's algorithm had started noticing. The piece crossed 1,200 total views and started ranking for a handful of long-tail search terms. My daily click count jumped from one or two to four or five per day.
Two conversions that week, both Pro plans.
Then week seven happened. I published my longest piece yet: a beginner-friendly guide to AI APIs, around 2,200 words. It targeted a different audience than my other articles. Beginners convert better than experienced developers because they need more hand-holding and they're more likely to follow a clear recommendation.
Week eight brought a tiny but psychologically massive moment: my first recurring commission arrived. $1.60 from the original referral's second month on the platform.
I want to pause on this because it's the whole reason I chose this affiliate program in the first place. That $1.60 represents passive income. I wrote one article months ago. That article is still earning me money today while I sleep. Once you experience that, you can't unsee it. Every new referral becomes a small monthly asset instead of a single transaction.
By the end of month two, my portfolio had grown to five published articles, traffic had crossed 2,100 combined views, and I'd generated 58 affiliate clicks.
The Numbers That Actually Matter (And the Ones That Don't)
Here's what my build-in-public mindset forced me to confront: most metrics people obsess over don't matter at all in the early days.
Page views feel great but don't pay rent. Email subscribers are nice but don't pay rent. Twitter followers are vanity unless they convert to clicks. What actually pays rent is the ratio of clicks to conversions to recurring revenue per article.
Let me share my real calculation from this period. My average article took me about four to five hours to write, research, edit, and publish. My best-performing article generated around 12 affiliate clicks in its first month. If even two of those clicks convert to paid plans and stay subscribed for a year, I'm earning more than minimum wage for those hours.
That's the math. Not sexy. Not viral. But honest and sustainable.
The other thing I had to stop caring about was individual article performance. My month-one comparison piece became my top earner, not because it was my best writing but because it ranked in search and kept pulling traffic weeks after publication. My beginner guide also performed well because it captured a different keyword intent.
Some pieces will flop. Some will become quiet earners that pay you for years. You won't know which is which until you publish them all.
The Three Things I Wish I'd Known on Day One
If I could send a message back to myself ninety days ago, here's what I'd say:
First, content compounds. My month-one articles are still my biggest traffic sources in month three. Every new article I publish adds another compounding asset. This is not true of most side hustles. Freelancing trades hours for dollars. Product creation requires continuous shipping. Affiliate content writes itself once and earns forever. That asymmetry is the entire opportunity.
Second, recurring commissions change the psychology of the game. When you're optimizing for one-time payouts, you chase quick conversions and burn out. When you know every subscriber is worth roughly 8% of their bill every single month, you start writing for retention. You recommend tools you'll still believe in six months from now. You think about long-term trust instead of short-term conversions. That's better for the audience too.
Third, your first $100 is the hardest. After that, the math shifts. This isn't specific to affiliate marketing, but it's real. Once you've proven the model and built a small base of recurring referrals, every new article has a higher expected return because you're starting from a higher baseline. The first $100 teaches you whether your strategy works. The next $100 comes faster because you already know what works.
What I'm Doing Differently Going Forward
I won't share every detail of my month-three plans because I'm still figuring them out. But here's the direction.
I'm going to publish more case studies because that's what converted best in my data. I'm going to invest more time in beginner-focused content because beginners convert at higher rates. I'm going to stop chasing viral posts and focus on long-tail SEO traffic that compounds.
I'm also going to stop checking my dashboard every fifteen minutes. That's not a business tactic, it's just sanity preservation.
The honest truth about build-in-public affiliate work is this: the upside is real but slow. Most people quit during the awkward middle stretch where you've proven the model works but the income hasn't caught up yet. That's exactly when most affiliates abandon ship and the people who stick around start pulling away.
I'm sticking around.
Should You Try This? (An Honest Recommendation)
Here's the part where I'm supposed to sell you something. I want to be transparent about that. But I also genuinely believe in this opportunity, and I'd recommend it even if I weren't an affiliate.
If you're a developer who already recommends tools to other developers, you're already doing 80% of the work. The only missing piece is the affiliate link and the small amount of effort it takes to write down your recommendations in article form.
What makes Global API's affiliate program worth considering, from my actual experience over these ninety days:
- 15% on every first order. That's generous compared to most programs I researched.
- 8% recurring on every renewal. This is the part that matters. With 150+ models on the platform, subscribers tend to stick around once they integrate it into their workflow, which means your recurring commissions stack up over time.
- Premium tier at 10%. Higher-tier referrals pay you more, which I appreciate because it rewards you for referring serious users, not just freebie hunters.
- Real tracking dashboard. I can see my clicks, signups, conversions, and recurring earnings in real time. Transparency goes both ways and I appreciate a program that shows me exactly what's happening. The link to join is here: https://global-apis.com/affiliate?ref=devto-build-in-public-ai-affiliate-journey I'll be straight with you: I earn a commission if you sign up through my link. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But I genuinely think the program is well-designed, the recurring structure is fair, and it's the one I'd recommend even if it paid half as much. The whole reason I started this build-in-public journal was to show what real numbers look like. If my honest 90-day experiment helps you decide whether this is worth trying for yourself, then this article did its job regardless of whether you click that link. Either way, thanks for reading. Next month, I'll share the full month-three income report with screenshots. Stay tuned.
Top comments (0)