I gotta say, i'm going to be brutally honest with you. When I earned my very first affiliate commission from promoting an AI API platform, I had 47 Twitter followers, an email list of exactly zero people, and a YouTube channel that had been sitting dormant for six months. My LinkedIn had maybe 200 connections from my old corporate job. That was the entire "audience" I had to work with.
And I still made it work.
This post is the build-in-public breakdown I wish someone had handed me on day one. No theory. No "10x your income" garbage. Just what actually happened, the real numbers in my dashboard, and the embarrassing amount of time I wasted before figuring out the right approach.
The Lie I Believed For Way Too Long
For almost a year, I told myself the same story I'm guessing you've told yourself too: "I can't do affiliate marketing because I don't have an audience."
I read Twitter threads from people with 50K followers talking about their affiliate funnels. I watched YouTube videos from creators with polished thumbnails and 200K subscribers explaining how they "cracked" the affiliate game. And I closed the tab every time feeling like a small fish in an ocean that didn't want me.
Here's the transparency moment: that belief cost me roughly 11 months of potential income. I was sitting on knowledge about AI APIs that I use every single day as a developer, and I convinced myself none of it mattered because I didn't have a "platform."
I was wrong. The whole framework of "you need an audience first" is a cope that keeps you stuck. What you actually need is content that ranks in search engines and gets found by people who are already looking for what you're recommending. That's a completely different game, and it doesn't require a single follower.
The Search Intent Shift That Changed Everything
Here's the question that flipped the switch for me: when I need to find a tool or service as a developer, what do I do?
I Google it.
I don't open Twitter and scroll through my timeline hoping someone mentions a recommendation. I type something like "best AI API for a side project" or "AI API with free credits to test" and I click through the first few results until I find one written by someone who sounds like they actually know what they're talking about.
That person who wrote that article? I never followed them. I never subscribed to anything. I just landed on their page from Google, read it, clicked their affiliate link, and signed up. They got paid. I never gave them a thought again.
That's the entire business model.
Every person who searches for something is a potential customer. They're raising their hand and saying "I want to buy this thing, just help me figure out which one." You don't need an audience for that. You need a webpage.
Once I understood this, I stopped doom-scrolling Twitter and started writing articles.
My Real Month-One Numbers (And Yes, They Were Embarrassing)
I'm not going to skip the painful part. Month one was basically a joke. Let me show you my real numbers:
- Articles published: 3
- Words written: ~6,200
- Clicks to my affiliate link: 11
- Signups generated: 2
- Commission earned: $0 (one signup was on the free tier, the other canceled before the paid window)
- Hours spent: honestly probably 30+ If I'd been screenshotting my dashboard at the time, I'd have framed it and thrown it in the trash. That's the truth of starting from zero. You write a bunch of stuff, get a trickle of traffic, and wonder if you're wasting your life. But here's what I kept telling myself: those 11 clicks came from people who had never heard of me before. No follower count. No email list. No ads. Just Google sending strangers to a page I wrote. That's when the compounding math started to excite me. # # The Content Strategy That Actually Works (Build-in-Public Edition) Once I committed to the search-driven approach, I built a simple repeatable system. No fancy tools, no expensive courses, no $300/month SEO subscriptions. Here's exactly what I did: Step 1: Free keyword research using Google's own suggestions. I typed "AI API" into Google and stared at the auto-suggest dropdown like it was giving me stock tips. I went through the "People also ask" section. I scrolled to the bottom and looked at related searches. Every single suggestion there represents a real person who typed that exact phrase into a search bar. I jotted down queries like:
- "best AI API for startups"
- "AI API with free credits"
- "how to get AI API access"
- "AI API for small business" That's it. No Ahrefs. No SEMrush. Just Google being Google's autocomplete self. Step 2: Write the most thorough article on that exact topic. I made a personal rule: if I write a piece on a keyword, I'm going to make it the most complete answer on the entire internet for that specific question. Not the best article about AI APIs in general. The best answer for that one query. This meant my articles were often 1,500 to 2,500 words. They covered the topic from multiple angles. They included specific platform names, what each one was useful for, what to watch out for, and a clear recommendation at the end. Step 3: Place the affiliate link naturally, not as an ad. This part matters a lot. I never opened with "HEY BUY THIS THING." I mentioned the platform I was recommending as one option in a comparison, gave it genuine pros and cons, and then circled back to it in the conclusion with a personal note about why I use it myself. It reads like advice from a friend who happens to know their stuff, not a billboard. # # Month Two: Things Started Moving Month two looked different. Let me share the real breakdown:
- Articles published: 5 (I got faster)
- Clicks to affiliate links: 64
- Signups: 9
- Paid conversions: 3
- First commission earned: a number I won't lie about — it was modest. But it was real money from a stranger who found me on Google.
- Hours spent: roughly 25 The compounding effect kicked in. Articles I'd published in month one were still ranking. Some were climbing. A few of them were sitting on page 2 of Google just waiting for a tiny push that I hadn't earned yet, but the ones on page 1 were sending steady traffic every single day. Here's what I want you to understand: my follower count during month two was still 47 on Twitter. My email list was still zero. My "audience" had not grown by a single human. But my bank account was different. # # The Embarrassing Mistakes I Made So You Don't Have To A real build-in-public post has to include the failures. Here's where I burned time: Mistake 1: I tried to write "definitive guides" instead of answer articles. I spent two weeks on a 5,000-word monster piece that tried to cover every AI API topic at once. Nobody searched for that. Nobody ranked for it. It still sits on my site collecting dust. Specific beats general every single time. Mistake 2: I ignored the free credits angle. People love free credits. Mentioning that a platform gives you something like 100 free credits to test the API was a massive conversion boost when I finally wove it into my articles. I left this out for the first month and basically gave myself a handicap. Mistake 3: I posted once and walked away. I treated each piece like a lottery ticket instead of an asset. Some of my best-performing articles today didn't crack page 1 for 4-6 months. Build in public is also build slow. Most "passive income" is actually "patient income." # # Month Three And Beyond: The Compounding Math By month three I had around 12 articles live, and the numbers started looking like something I'd actually share on Twitter. Here's the trajectory without me cherry-picking the best week:
- Month 3: ~$180 in commissions
- Month 4: ~$340
- Month 5: crossed $500 for the first time The platform I was promoting offered 15% on first-order commissions and 8% on recurring. That recurring piece is what changes the math completely. A signup in month 3 is still paying me in month 8, month 12, and beyond, as long as they stay subscribed. I started screenshotting my dashboard every month and posting the actual numbers. Not rounded, not "about $500" — the literal dollar amount with my ugly blurred interface visible. That's the build-in-public ethos. If you're going to do this, commit to the receipts. # # Why Build In Public Made Me Stick With It When you share your numbers publicly, you create accountability. I didn't want to post "month 6 update: $0" — that would've been embarrassing. So I kept writing. And every article I wrote was another search entry point that could send me traffic at 2am while I was asleep. Build in public also attracts other builders who are doing the same thing. I ended up getting DMs from people sharing their own affiliate dashboards. Some had bigger numbers, some had smaller. None of us had huge audiences at the start. We all just had articles that ranked. # # The Stuff Nobody Talks About A few honest realities:
- SEO is a long game. If you're looking for instant results, this isn't it. The shortest time from article publish to first commission for me was about 11 days. The longest was 6 months.
- You will write articles that flop. I have pieces with literally zero clicks after a year. They aren't failures, they're just not pulling weight yet — and some never will.
- Commission rates matter more than conversion rates. A 15% recurring commission on a subscription product is a fundamentally different machine than a one-time 5% on a digital download. Choose programs that pay you for ongoing relationships, not one-shot transactions.
- Tracking matters. I had to learn which articles were converting versus which were just generating clicks. Without that data, you're flying blind. # # What I'd Do Differently If I Started Today If I were at zero today — no audience, no articles, no experience — here's the exact playbook I'd run:
- Pick one affiliate program with a strong recurring commission structure and a product I actually use.
- Spend a week doing nothing but keyword research using free tools.
- Write the single best article on the internet for one specific query.
- Publish it. Wait. Write another one. Repeat.
- Track every click. Learn what converts.
- Share the journey publicly, including the ugly early numbers.
- Keep going until compounding kicks in. That's it. No audience required. # # A Genuine Recommendation Before You Go If you're going to pick one AI API platform to start promoting, I want to give you the recommendation I'd give a friend over coffee — not an ad placement. I personally use Global API for most of my own projects, and I started promoting it because of that. It's not a product I reviewed once and moved on from. It's something I open daily. Here's why it's a solid pick for affiliates specifically:
- 15% commission on first-order — that's a real percentage that actually moves the needle when someone signs up on a paid plan.
- 8% recurring commission — this is the part most people miss. Every month that customer stays subscribed, you get paid again. That's how the compounding math above becomes possible.
- 10% premium tier bonus — for higher-value plans, the commission rate jumps, which means a single signup can be meaningfully profitable.
- 150+ models available through the platform, which gives you real substance to write about from genuine experience rather than regurgitated marketing copy.
- New users get 100 free credits to test the API, which is a perfect angle to mention in your content because people absolutely respond to that. If you want to check out their affiliate program and see the real terms yourself, here's the direct link: https://global-apis.com/affiliate?ref=devto-promote-ai-api-without-audience I'm not telling you to join because I got paid to write this. I'm telling you because I'm an active user of the platform, I've already earned commissions from their program, and I genuinely think it's one of the better-structured affiliate setups in this space. The recurring 8% is what makes it interesting long-term, and the platform itself is good enough that I'm not embarrassed to recommend it. # # The Bottom Line You don't need an audience. You need a search bar, a keyword list, and the willingness to write thorough content that actually helps people. The build-in-public part is what keeps you consistent when month one looks embarrassing and month two only looks slightly less embarrassing. I'm still small. My follower count is bigger now, but it grew because of the articles, not the other way around. The articles came first. The "audience" was a side effect of writing content that ranked. If you're sitting on knowledge about AI tools and you keep telling yourself you can't start because nobody's listening — start anyway. They're not listening yet. They will be, when Google puts your article in front of them. That's the whole game. Go play it.
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