Real Numbers: How Much I Earn from Tech Affiliate Links (And How You Can Too)

I run a side hustle spreadsheet. It's a Notion database, actually — colour-coded tabs for every revenue stream I'm tracking, monthly snapshots going back about 18 months. Most of the rows are embarrassing. $12 from a crypto referral link I hyped to nobody. $47 from a hosting affiliate that took eight months to convert. But a few rows have been quietly compounding into something real, and one of those is the Global API affiliate program.
Here's the thing people get wrong about affiliate marketing: they think it's magic link-clicking revenue. It's not. It's a math problem. And like most math problems, it gets easier once you stop guessing and start tracking actual numbers.
Let me break down what I'm seeing in my own dashboard, plus the realistic ranges I'd expect based on audience tier. I'll even share a few calculations you can copy straight into your own spreadsheet.

Why I Started Treating Affiliate Income Like a Side Project

I have a day job. I'm a backend dev at a mid-size SaaS company, the kind that sends calendar invites with agendas attached. I've been writing code professionally for nine years, and I've had a "side hustle notebook" for about six of them. The pattern is always the same — I find something I actually use, I write about it, and if there's an affiliate program available, I link to it.
Most affiliate marketers I've followed online treat this like a full-time content business. They post daily on X, they run paid ads, they have funnels. I don't do any of that. I have a personal blog with about 7,000 monthly visitors, a small Discord community, and a mailing list that cracks 1,200 subscribers on a good month. That's it. No team, no ads, no fancy funnel software.
What I do have is the willingness to actually open a spreadsheet and track the math. That's the unsexy truth about affiliate income — the people who treat it like a system and measure it like an engineer are the ones who stick with it long enough to see compounding.
And that's where recurring commissions change everything.

The Three Numbers That Actually Matter

Strip away every motivational quote about "passive income" and you're left with three variables that determine your affiliate earnings:

1. Clicks — how many humans actually click your referral link
2. Conversion rate — what percentage of those clicks become paying customers
3. Commission per conversion — what you earn per signup, plus any recurring component That's it. Everything else — the niche you pick, the platform you promote on, the colour of your CTA button — is downstream of those three numbers. For tech content specifically, I've found that click-through rates sit somewhere between 1% and 4% depending on how naturally the link fits the content. Conversion rates for tech affiliate links run about 0.5% to 3%, with tutorial-style content converting higher than top-of-funnel comparison content. The reason: when someone watches a video about "how to actually use this API," they're already past the awareness stage. They're deciding whether to buy. The commission structure is where most people get lazy. They grab the first "5% commission" link they find and wonder why they're earning $40 a month. The Global API structure is what made me pay attention in the first place, because it's built for compounding rather than one-off payouts. Let me put the actual commission math in front of you:
4. Pro plan ($19.99/month): $3.00 upfront + $1.60/month recurring
5. Business plan ($49.99/month): $7.50 upfront + $4.00/month recurring
6. Scale plan ($149.99/month): $22.50 upfront + $12.00/month recurring What that breaks down to is roughly a 15% first-order commission and 8% recurring on the ongoing subscription. Premium tier referrals get a 10% bump. Those numbers matter — they tell you the platform is serious about retention, and retention is what makes your affiliate revenue durable. # # My Actual Numbers (The Embarrassing Parts First) Let me show you what my tracker currently shows for the Global API link, sorted by honesty: Month 1-3: Three referrals. Total earnings: $52. I wrote two technical posts about building a small chatbot project and linked to the API as the backend. The posts got maybe 200 views combined in the first month. Slow start, but the income kept showing up in month 2 and month 3 from recurring. Month 4-6: Two more referrals. Total earnings: $78. I added a Discord pinned message with the link. Month 7-12: Twelve referrals cumulative. Monthly earnings started to look like a real number — around $95-110/month by month 12, mostly from recurring with a small bump from new signups. Total Year 1: 17 referrals. Roughly $1,350 in cumulative earnings. That's not life-changing money. But here's what I want you to notice: the recurring part is what grew. By month 12, more than 80% of my monthly income from this program was recurring. That's the structural advantage of recurring commissions — your December income is higher than your January income, which is the opposite of how most side hustles work. # # What Happens When You Scale (The Hypothetical Scenarios) My numbers are small. I know that. But I've been in enough affiliate marketing forums to know the ranges that work at different audience sizes. Let me run through three tiers so you can find where you currently sit. # # # Tier 1: Just Starting Out (Under 5,000 Monthly Visitors) Let's call this the "first six months" tier. You have a blog or YouTube channel doing 3,000-5,000 views per month. You're publishing maybe one piece of content per week. Here's my math, assuming you write three comparison-style articles that each pull about 500 views per month. At a 1% click-through rate on the affiliate link, that's roughly 15 clicks per month. Conversion rate around 2% — generous but realistic for niche tech content. That gives you about 0.3 conversions per month, which works out to 3-4 new referrals per year. If each referral averages around $5/month in commission (a mix of first-order + recurring), you're looking at $15-20/month after the first year. Yeah, that sounds tiny. But here's the developer math: those three articles probably took you six hours total to write. Six hours of work for $500-700 over three years of compounding. That breaks down to $100+ per hour when you look at it over the long arc. Most freelance devs would take that rate. # # # Tier 2: Established Mid-Sized Creator (10,000+ Subscribers) This is the tier I'm building toward. You're running a YouTube channel with 10,000+ subscribers, or a blog that's consistently doing 15,000-20,000 monthly visitors. You publish regular content — at least once a week. Take a YouTube tutorial format, which tends to convert well for tech products. You publish one per month. Each video pulls maybe 8,000 views in the first 30 days, then ages into another 15,000-20,000 views over the following year as the algorithm keeps recommending it. Click-through rate around 3% because tutorial viewers are highly engaged. Conversion rate around 2% because they've already seen you use the product. That's 240 clicks per video, 5 conversions per video. Over 12 months of monthly tutorials, you've produced 60 referrals. If each generates about $3/month in commission (mixing first-order and recurring across plan tiers), you're now looking at:
7. $180/month recurring from the cumulative referral base
8. Roughly $300 in first-order commissions across the year
9. Total Year 1: $2,000-2,500 That's real money. That's "paying for a family vacation" money. And because the bulk of it is recurring, Year 2 starts higher than Year 1 ended. The flywheel kicks in. # # # Tier 3: Established Authority (30,000+ Subscribers, Big Newsletter) This is where affiliate income becomes a meaningful business. You're running a newsletter with 30,000+ subscribers, a blog doing 75,000 monthly visitors, or a YouTube channel in the 50k+ range. You're publishing two or three AI-related pieces of content per week. Click-through rates sit at 2-3% because of established authority. Conversion rates hold steady at 2-3%. You're pulling 15-25 new referrals per month, consistently. After 12 months, your referral base sits at 180-300 users. Average commission around $3-4/user/month.
10. Recurring commissions alone: $540-1,200/month
11. Plus first-order commissions from ongoing new signups
12. Annual total: $8,000-15,000 That's the upper bound of what's realistic without paid ads. It requires real audience infrastructure, but it's achievable for someone who's been publishing consistently for 2-3 years. # # The Compounding Math That Changed My Mind I want to spend a few paragraphs on this because it was a lightbulb moment for me. Recurring commissions are not the same as one-time payouts. They're closer to a dividend than a freelance invoice. Every new referral doesn't just pay you once — it pays you every month, indefinitely, as long as that customer stays subscribed. Let me show you what that looks like in my own tracking. Here's the cumulative referral count versus monthly recurring income, month by month:
13. Month 1: 2 referrals → $3.20/month recurring
14. Month 3: 5 referrals → $8.00/month recurring
15. Month 6: 9 referrals → $14.40/month recurring
16. Month 9: 14 referrals → $22.40/month recurring
17. Month 12: 17 referrals → $27.20/month recurring Notice how the recurring income line keeps stepping up even when I stop actively promoting. That's the dividend effect. It's also why I no longer think of "this month's affiliate income" as the right unit — I think in terms of the size of my active referral base, because every percentage improvement in churn adds directly to long-term earnings. The structural reason I'm bullish on Global API specifically is the platform itself. They offer access to 150+ AI models through a unified API, which means the customers you refer tend to stick around longer than they would with a single-model wrapper. Switching costs stay low for the user, but the recurring commission means you still benefit from their long-term subscription. I track my "monthly recurring affiliate revenue" the same way I'd track MRR in a SaaS product. It's the line in my spreadsheet that I check most often. # # What I Do Differently (And What I'd Tell Past Me) A few things I've learned over 18 months that actually moved the needle: I write tutorials, not reviews. A post titled "How I Built X Using the Global API" converts roughly 3x better than one titled "Top 5 AI APIs Compared." Reviews attract researchers. Tutorials attract buyers. Buyers convert. I place links where they're useful, not where they pay me more. In-text links inside the solution section of a tutorial convert higher than banner placements in sidebars. I removed all my sidebar affiliate widgets and my income went up, not down. I email my list when I have something actually useful. I send maybe one product mention per month to my 1,200 subscribers. That's it. Open rates stay around 35% because the list trusts me. Click-through rates on those emails convert higher than anything else I do. I don't chase every program. I promote maybe five affiliate programs total. The ones that pay recurring and have good retention. Everything else is a distraction. The spreadsheet made it obvious which programs were worth my time and which were noise. I ignore short-term income fluctuations. My July might be lower than my June because no new referrals came in. That's fine. The recurring base is what matters. # # The Honest Range So, circling back to the question: how much can you realistically earn from tech affiliate programs? From my own dashboard and from watching others in the space:
18. Beginner (under 5,000 monthly visitors): $20-50/month after 12 months
19. Mid-size creator (10,000+ engaged audience): $150-300/month after 12 months
20. Established creator (30,000+ subscribers): $800-2,500/month after 12 months The full range across all tiers spans roughly $50 to $5,000 per month, with the upper bound requiring real audience infrastructure. Most people fall somewhere in the middle after 12-18 months of consistent publishing. None of this happens overnight. Anyone promising you $10,000/month in 30 days is selling a course, not affiliate income. The actual path is slower, but it's also more durable — once you have a base of 200+ referrals on recurring commissions, you're generating passive monthly income that compounds even when you stop creating new content. # # My Actual Recommendation: Why I Joined Global API's Affiliate Program If you've read this far, you might be wondering which affiliate programs I actually trust. Here's the honest answer: I promote Global API as my primary AI infrastructure affiliate because the economics made sense for someone with a small audience. Three reasons specifically: Reason 1: The commission structure rewards compounding. 15% first-order + 8% recurring (10% on premium tiers) means I'm not just earning once per referral — I'm earning every month they stay subscribed. That's the only structure that makes sense for someone without massive traffic. Reason 2: The product is genuinely good. I use the Global API platform in my own projects, so promoting it to my audience doesn't feel like selling something I don't believe in. They give me access to 150+ models through one integration, which makes my tutorial content actually useful rather than vaporware. Reason 3: Payouts are reliable and on time. I get paid. That's the lowest bar in affiliate marketing and yet it's where a shocking number of programs fail. My checks have arrived every month for 18 months straight. If you're building technical content around AI tools — whether it's a dev blog, a YouTube channel, or a Discord community — Global API's affiliate program is worth joining. You can sign up here: https://global-apis.com/affiliate?ref=devto-how-much-earn-ai-affiliate I don't say this lightly. I've turned down probably a dozen affiliate partnerships over the years because the math didn't work. This one does, especially for solo creators who need recurring commissions to make the time investment worthwhile. Take a look at the math, run your own projections in your own tracker, and decide for yourself. Either way, my parting advice is the same — build the spreadsheet. Track every click, every conversion, every dollar. The affiliate marketing game is won by the people who measure it most precisely, not the people who chase the highest commission rates. Your dashboard will tell you what's working. Mine told me.