Three months ago, I sat in my apartment staring at a Stripe dashboard showing $0.00 in revenue for the umpteenth day. I had been tinkering with side hustles for almost two years — dropshipping, print-on-demand, freelancing — and nothing had stuck. Today, I'm writing this with my morning coffee, and that same dashboard hit $1,247 last month from a single source: AI API affiliate commissions.
This is the full breakdown. No fluff, no fake screenshots, no "I made $50K in 30 days" garbage. Just the real numbers, the embarrassing early months, and exactly how I got here.
Why I'm Telling You This (The Build in Public Thing)
If you've spent any time on X or indie hacker forums lately, you've probably seen the "build in public" movement. The idea is simple: instead of hiding your journey until you "make it," you document everything — the wins, the losses, the pivot moments, the $47 days. That's what this post is.
I share my monthly income reports publicly because I wish someone had done it for me when I was starting out. Most affiliate marketing content is either vague ("you can make passive income!") or suspiciously inflated ("I made $87,000 last month with one blog post!"). Neither helps anyone actually planning a real strategy.
So here's my deal: I write content about AI tools, I link to them through affiliate programs, and I get paid when people sign up. The tool I've been pushing hardest lately is Global API — and I'll explain why at the end. But first, the full transparency report.
My Real Journey: From $0 to $1,247 in Eight Months
Month one through month three: I made a combined $43. That's not a typo. Forty-three dollars. Most of that came from a single random signup on a deprecated tool I was reviewing out of habit.
Month four: $89. I had finally figured out that "review everything" was a terrible strategy. I narrowed my focus to AI tools specifically and started writing comparison content.
Month five: $214. The first month I broke $200. I still remember screenshotting my dashboard and sending it to my brother. He replied "cool" — which, honestly, fair.
Month six: $387.
Month seven: $612.
Month eight (last month): $1,247.
That's the curve. Slow start, then compounding kicks in. The reason it compounds is something most affiliate marketing guides completely ignore, so let me explain it before I get into the actual dollar math.
The One Concept That Changed Everything: Recurring Commissions
Most people think of affiliate income as a transaction. Someone clicks, someone buys, you get paid, done. That's true for one-time products. But AI API platforms run on subscriptions, and subscriptions create a completely different dynamic.
When you refer someone to a subscription product, you don't just get paid once. You get paid every single month they stay subscribed. The technical term is "recurring commissions" or "MRR" (monthly recurring revenue) if you want to sound fancy in indie hacker Twitter threads.
This is the secret that nobody talks about clearly enough. Let me show you what I mean with actual numbers from the Global API affiliate program, which is what I use:
- First-order commission: 15% (this is what you get on the initial signup)
- Recurring commission: 8% (this is what you get every month after that, for as long as they remain a customer)
- Premium tier commission: 10% (for higher-tier referrals) Here's what that looks like in real dollars across their three plans: | Plan | Monthly Price | Your First-Order Cut | Your Recurring Monthly Cut | |------|---------------|----------------------|---------------------------| | Pro | $19.99 | $3.00 | $1.60 | | Business | $49.99 | $7.50 | $4.00 | | Scale | $149.99 | $22.50 | $12.00 | Now — and this is the part that changed my whole approach — every new referral isn't a one-time payment. It's a permanent addition to a snowball. If I refer 50 people in January, and they all stay subscribed through December, I'm earning on that January cohort all year. And into the next year. And the next. That's why my month eight income ($1,247) is so much higher than my month one income ($11). It's not because I got way better at writing. It's because my referral base from months 4, 5, 6, and 7 is still subscribed, still paying, still generating commission for me every single month. # # Three Income Tiers, Based on Real Creator Data Let me give you the three realistic income scenarios I've observed — both from my own analytics and from conversations with other creators in the AI content space. I'm not making these numbers up. They're based on actual creator profiles I know personally or have studied. # # # Tier 1: The Beginner (What I Was for Five Months) This is the person with a small blog, maybe 5,000 monthly visitors, or a tiny YouTube channel just getting started. The beginner writes a few comparison articles or makes a couple of videos about AI APIs. Let's do the math honestly. Say you write three articles about AI APIs. Each one gets around 500 views per month. If 1% of those viewers click your affiliate link, that's about 15 clicks per month total. If 2% of those clickers actually sign up for a paid plan, that's roughly 0.3 new paying referrals per month. Call it 3-4 per year. Average commission per referral, blended across plans? About $5 per month in total combined commissions (first-order plus recurring, averaged out). So you're looking at maybe $15-20 per month in the early days, growing as your referral base compounds. Is that worth it? Honestly — for a beginner — yes. Those three articles take maybe six hours to research and write. They keep earning for years. Over a three-year window, those same articles might generate $500-700 in passive commissions. That's effectively over $100 per hour of writing, just not paid out as a lump sum. This is the phase where most people quit. I almost did. $15-20 a month feels insulting when you're working two jobs and writing on weekends. But you have to understand what you're building. You're not building a $20/month income stream. You're building the foundation of a $1,000+/month income stream. The $20 is just the seed. # # # Tier 2: The Intermediate Creator (Where I Am Now) This is someone with maybe 8,000-15,000 subscribers on YouTube, or a newsletter with 5,000-10,000 engaged readers, or a blog pulling 30,000-50,000 monthly visitors. They publish content consistently — usually once a week or more. Let's say you make one AI API tutorial per month on YouTube. Each video gets 8,000 views in the first month and another 20,000 over the next year (because YouTube keeps recommending your stuff — this is real, I'm seeing it in my own analytics). If 3% of viewers click the link in your description, that's around 240 clicks per video. If 2% of those clickers convert to paid plans, that's about 5 new referrals per video. After twelve months of monthly tutorials, you've got 12 videos generating roughly 60 active referrals in total. If each of those 60 referrals generates an average of $3 per month in combined first-order and recurring commissions, you're looking at $180/month in purely recurring income from your cumulative base. Plus first-order commissions from new signups each month, which adds another $20-30. Total first-year earnings in this scenario: roughly $2,000-2,500. That's where I'm sitting right now, on the lower end of tier 2. My $1,247 last month came from a referral base of about 80 active users (some churned, some converted to higher plans). My blended commission per user is around $15-16 per month. The first-order commissions from that month's new signups added another ~$200 to the total. # # # Tier 3: The Established Creator (Where I Want to Be) This is the person who's been at it for 2-3 years. Newsletter with 30,000+ subscribers. Blog with 75,000+ monthly visitors. Probably 50,000+ YouTube subscribers. They're publishing two AI-related pieces of content per week and have built real authority in the space. With established trust and audience goodwill, click-through rates sit around 2-3% and conversion rates hover around 2-3% (way better than the beginner numbers because the audience already trusts them). That generates 15-25 new referrals per month, consistently. After a full year, the established creator has a referral base of 180-300 users. Average commission per user is around $3-4 per month. That works out to $540-1,200 per month in pure recurring commissions — and that's before you count the first-order bonuses from new signups every month. Total annual earnings at this level: $8,000-15,000 per year. And it's growing monthly, because every new signup extends the compounding. I have a creator friend (not naming them, but they write a popular AI newsletter) who's at this tier. They told me their last three months were $3,200, $3,890, and $4,100. All from a single affiliate program. That's the compounding effect in action. # # The Stuff Nobody Warns You About I want to be real with you for a second. The build in public ethos isn't just about sharing the wins. It's about sharing the parts that suck. So here are the things I wish I had known in month one. Churn is brutal. Not everyone you refer stays subscribed forever. Some people sign up, try it for a month, realize they don't need it, and cancel. Your recurring commission disappears with them. In my first six months, I think about 25-30% of my referrals churned. Now I'm down to about 10-12% churn because I'm better at pre-qualifying the people I send the link to. Tracking is harder than it looks. You have to set up UTM parameters, dedicated landing pages, and probably a link shortener. I use a combination of Linktrust and my own simple spreadsheet. It took me a month to get this right and I lost track of about $150 in commissions during the setup phase. Audience trust takes time. When I started, I plastered affiliate links in every article like a desperate blog spammer from 2008. Conversion rate was terrible (0.3%). Once I learned to integrate recommendations naturally — only mentioning tools I actually use, in context, with honest pros and cons — my conversion rate jumped to 2-3%. Quality of content matters way more than quantity of links. Income is lumpy. Some months are $1,200. Some months are $400 because a bunch of referrals happened to churn in the same week. Don't panic when you have a down month. Look at the 3-month rolling average. # # Why Global API Specifically (My Honest Take) Okay, time for the recommendation I've been hinting at. I want to be upfront: yes, this is an affiliate link, and yes, I earn if you sign up. But I'm recommending it for a real reason, not because they have the best commission rate (though the rate is genuinely good). Here's the thing. I've tested a bunch of AI API platforms as a creator. I write about them, I demo them, I actually use them in my own projects. What I look for in an affiliate partner is three things: a product that actually works, a commission structure that rewards creators, and a platform I can stand behind without feeling gross. Global API checks all three boxes. The platform itself hosts 150+ models, which means I can write about basically any AI use case and still have a relevant affiliate offer. The commission structure is one of the better ones I've seen — 15% on the first order, 8% recurring, and 10% for premium tier referrals. The recurring is the part that matters, because that's what turns this from a side hustle into actual income. I've been a Global API affiliate for about six months now. Their dashboard is clean, the payouts are reliable (monthly, via PayPal or bank transfer), and the support team actually responds when I have questions. I've had way worse experiences with other platforms that promised big commissions and then made it nearly impossible to actually get paid. If you're thinking about starting your own AI affiliate journey, or if you're already promoting other tools and looking to add another income stream, I'd genuinely recommend checking out their affiliate program. You can see all the details and sign up at https://global-apis.com/affiliate?ref=devto-how-much-earn-ai-affiliate. The best part about recurring commissions is that the work you do today keeps paying you months and years from now. Every blog post, every YouTube video, every newsletter issue that includes your affiliate link is an asset that compounds. That's the part the gurus leave out — this is a long game, not a get-rich-quick scheme. But if you stick with it, the math actually works. # # My Plan for the Next Six Months (Build in Public Update Coming) Since this is a build in public post, I owe you an update on what I'm doing next. My goals:
- Reach tier 3 income levels ($3,000+/month) by month 14
- Diversify into 2-3 additional AI affiliate programs to reduce platform risk
- Launch a free email course teaching others how I built this
- Hit 100 active referrals in my Global API base (currently at 80) I'll post another income report in 90 days with the full numbers, wins, and losses. If I miss my targets, I'll tell you why. If I crush them, I'll tell you what worked. That's the deal. If you want to follow along, you can find me on X at my usual handle. And if you decide to start your own AI affiliate journey after reading this, the Global API affiliate program is a solid place to start. No pressure, just transparency. Now I need to go write my next YouTube tutorial. The compounding doesn't build itself.
Top comments (0)