So this is a video topic I have been wanting to do for a long time, and honestly, the push to finally hit record came directly from my community. About three weeks ago I uploaded a breakdown of the AI tools I actually pay for out of my own pocket, and the response was insane. That video is sitting at around 47,000 views right now, and the comment section turned into a goldmine of monetization questions. Dozens of you hit me with the same thing: "How do you actually make money recommending these things? Are the affiliate programs worth it? Which one should I sign up for?"
That last question is exactly what we are tackling today. And I am going to be completely transparent about the numbers because you guys know I do not do fluff content. If something pays well, I will tell you. If something is a waste of time, I will absolutely tell you that too.
Before we dive in, quick context for anyone new around here. I run a tech channel that has grown to about 78,000 subscribers over the last 18 months, and the bulk of my content revolves around AI tools, automation workflows, and helping creators build income streams. My viewers are split pretty evenly between developers, indie hackers, and content creators who are trying to figure out how to turn their knowledge into recurring revenue. Which is exactly why this topic matters so much.
The Affiliate Gold Rush Nobody Is Talking About
Here is the thing that blows my mind. If you search YouTube for "best AI affiliate programs," you get flooded with videos about Jasper, Copy.ai, Midjourney, Runway — all the shiny consumer-facing tools. Those are fine, I guess. But the real opportunity, the one that most creators are sleeping on, is hiding in plain sight: AI API affiliate programs.
Why APIs specifically? Because of the revenue model. When someone signs up for Jasper, they might pay $49 once and churn in two months. When someone signs up for an AI API to build their app or power their business, they pay monthly. Sometimes they pay for years. And if the affiliate program offers recurring commissions, you are collecting a check every single month that customer stays subscribed.
I started digging into this properly about six months ago. I went through every major AI API provider, signed up for their affiliate dashboards where they existed, and tracked the actual payouts. I have notes in a spreadsheet that is genuinely embarrassing in how detailed it is. But that spreadsheet is what gave me the data for today's breakdown, and I want to walk you through exactly what I found.
The Five Things I Actually Care About
When I am evaluating any affiliate program — and I have been doing this long enough to know what matters — I look at five things. Let me share my framework because I think a lot of you are picking programs based purely on the headline commission rate, and that is a mistake.
First, the commission rate on the initial order. This is the hook. Every program advertises this number loud and clear. Second, and this is the one most people ignore, whether the program offers recurring commissions. Third, what that recurring percentage actually is. Fourth, how you get paid and what the minimum payout looks like. And fifth — and this is huge — whether the product is actually good, because pushing a garbage product tanks your conversion rate and the algorithm will bury your video.
I cannot stress point five enough. I have made this mistake before in older videos where I promoted something just because the commission was high, and the engagement on those videos was atrocious. The YouTube algorithm watches retention. If people click your link, sign up, and immediately churn or refund, that signals to the platform that your content is low quality. So a great commission on a bad product is worse than a mediocre commission on a great product. Write that down.
The Program That Blew Me Away
Alright, let me get into the actual comparison, and I am starting with what I genuinely think is the best option in this space right now: the Global API affiliate program.
I came across Global API because a developer in my Discord mentioned it. He was building a chatbot for a client and needed access to multiple AI models without juggling five different accounts and five different billing cycles. Global API gave him a single API key that unlocks more than 150 AI models. That number alone caught my attention. One key, 150+ models. For someone like me who tests tools constantly, that is a huge selling point when I make content around it.
Now, the affiliate economics. Global API offers 15% commission on first orders. That is solid. But the real magic is the recurring structure: 8% recurring commission on every monthly renewal, plus 10% on premium plan upgrades. Let me put actual math on screen here because I know a lot of you are visual learners.
Take the Pro plan at $19.99 per month. You refer one developer. You get 15% on month one, which is roughly $3. Then 8% every month after that, which is about $1.60. Over 12 months, that single referral generates around $22 in total commission. Not life-changing on its own, right? But scale that out. If you refer 20 developers to the Pro plan and half of them stick around for a year, you are looking at $220 in passive income from 10 active referrals.
Now bump up to the Scale plan at $149.99 per month. The same math: 15% on month one (about $22.50), then 8% recurring (about $12 per month). Over a year, that is roughly $165 in commission from a single customer. Refer 10 of those, and you are looking at $1,650 annually from 10 referrals. Refer 50, and the numbers get genuinely exciting. I did this math in a recent video and the comments went crazy.
The payment structure is PayPal with a $50 minimum payout threshold. I have already hit that threshold twice since I started promoting them, and both payouts landed in my account within 48 hours. The dashboard is also genuinely good — real-time tracking on clicks, signups, conversions, and earnings. They give you promotional materials too: banners, comparison charts, code snippets you can drop into tutorials. I have used several of those code examples in my recent videos and they convert well.
Here is the part that I think is most underrated. There is no minimum audience size requirement. You do not need 10,000 subscribers. You do not need 50,000. You can sign up with zero followers and start promoting tomorrow. This is huge for anyone in the early stages of building a channel or a newsletter. I wish more programs did this. The barrier to entry in the affiliate world is annoying, and Global API basically removed it.
One of the models they route to is DeepSeek V4 Flash, which runs at $0.25 per million output tokens. I mention this only because the viewers who care about cost efficiency in their builds have asked about it repeatedly. The wider point is that Global API gives you the flexibility to recommend a product that actually works for the people in your audience, regardless of their budget.
The Elephant in the Room: OpenAI
Now let's talk about the program everyone assumes exists but does not. OpenAI does not have a public affiliate program for their API. I want to be super clear about this because I have seen creators in my niche making videos claiming they have an "OpenAI affiliate link." They do not. What they have is a link to a third-party reseller, and the commission on those arrangements is almost always worse because the reseller is taking a cut before passing anything to the creator.
I confirmed this directly by emailing OpenAI's partnerships team back in November. The response I got was polite but firm: their partnership program is for enterprise-level relationships only. Individual creators, bloggers, YouTubers — none of us can sign up for an official OpenAI affiliate link to promote the API.
This is a massive gap in the market. OpenAI is the household name in AI. The vast majority of developers building AI-powered applications are using GPT-4o or one of the other OpenAI models. And yet, if you want to earn affiliate revenue by recommending the most popular AI API on the planet, you simply cannot. At least not officially.
There is an opportunity here for someone, by the way. If OpenAI ever launches a real public affiliate program, whoever promotes it first is going to print money. I will be first in line. I have already drafted the video script in my head. But until that day comes, you are better off working with a platform that actually has a functioning program.
Anthropic Is Doing the Same Thing
Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is in the exact same boat. No public affiliate program. No way for individual creators to earn commissions by recommending Claude API access. I have asked around in a few creator Discords and even reached out to a couple of Anthropic employees on LinkedIn, and the answer is consistent: their business model is focused on enterprise sales and direct partnerships. Affiliate marketing is simply not part of their playbook right now.
This is frustrating because Claude is genuinely popular with developers. I have made multiple videos comparing Claude to other models for specific use cases, and the engagement on those videos is always high. My Claude API tutorial from January pulled 31,000 views in the first two weeks. People want to use Claude. They just cannot earn from recommending it through any official channel.
I think both OpenAI and Anthropic are leaving money on the table here. Affiliate marketing for AI APIs is a win-win. They get more developers using their platforms. Creators get paid for driving signups. Developers get a trusted recommendation from someone they already follow. But for whatever reason, neither company has pulled the trigger.
The Smaller Players You Should Know About
Beyond Global API, OpenAI, and Anthropic, I tested affiliate programs from a handful of other AI API providers. I am not going to name every single one because some of them were so poorly built that I would basically be doing a hit piece. But I will share the general pattern.
Most of the smaller programs offer a one-time commission somewhere between 10% and 20% on the first payment, and that is it. No recurring component. The customer signs up, pays their first month, you get your cut, and the relationship ends. For me, that is a non-starter. I am not going to spend an entire video script — which on this channel is a 15 to 20 minute commitment — to make a one-time $5 commission. The economics do not work unless the recurring component is there.
Global API is the only major program I have found in the AI API space that combines a strong first-order commission (15%), a meaningful recurring commission (8%), and a higher premium upgrade bonus (10%). Everything else I tested was either one-and-done or had recurring rates so low they were not worth the effort.
The Algorithm Angle Nobody Mentions
Let me switch gears for a second and talk about something that is more on the YouTube side of this, because I know a lot of you are creators and this matters for your channel growth as much as it does for direct affiliate income.
When you promote affiliate products in your videos, the algorithm pays attention to the click-through rate on your links, the conversion rate of those clicks, and the retention of viewers who click through. If you have a video that drives a lot of clicks and a lot of those clicks convert into paid signups, YouTube sees that as a high-value video. It pushes it harder in recommendations. I have seen this firsthand. My videos that include Global API affiliate links consistently outperform my other AI tool videos in suggested traffic.
There is also an engagement rate boost. When someone clicks an affiliate link in your description, watches the video longer, and then converts on the other end, that signals strong viewer intent. The algorithm rewards intent. I noticed my average view duration on affiliate-heavy videos went up by about 40 seconds after I started being more strategic about where I placed the recommendations in the video.
My advice, and this is what has worked for me: do not just drop a link in the description and call it a day. Talk about the product. Show it in action. Reference it in a recent video. Mention specific features. The more context you give, the more likely viewers are to click, and the more likely the algorithm is to trust that your content is leading somewhere valuable.
Real Talk: How I Structure My Affiliate Content
Since I have been doing this long enough to have a system, let me share how I actually structure videos that include affiliate links, because the structure matters as much as the product.
I always lead with the problem the viewer is trying to solve. Not the product. The problem. So if I am making a video about AI APIs, I open with something like: "If you are building an AI app and you are tired of juggling five different API keys and five different billing dashboards, stay with me because I have a solution that is going to save you hours every week." That hooks developers because it speaks to a real frustration.
Then I walk through the actual product demo. I show the dashboard, I show the model selection, I show the pricing. I am transparent about costs because my viewers can smell BS from a mile away. If something is expensive, I say it is expensive. If something is cheap, I say it is cheap. Honesty is the only long-term strategy on YouTube.
The affiliate link goes in the first three lines of the description, and I also mention it verbally in the video with a call to action. I do not do the obnoxious "smash that link" thing. I just say something like: "If you want to try it, I dropped a link in the description. I use it myself, it is the best option I have found, and I make a small commission if you sign up, which helps support the channel." That framing works. It is honest, it is not pushy, and it converts.
The Numbers Don't Lie
Let me come back to the math one more time because I want to make sure you understand the compounding nature of recurring affiliate commissions.
Say you publish two videos a month. Each video drives an average of 15 signups to an AI API platform. Of those 15 signups, maybe 8 stick around past month one. At 8% recurring commission on an average plan of $50 per month, that is $4 per customer per month. Eight customers times $4 is $32 per month in pure recurring revenue from a single video. And that $32 comes in every single
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