What Happened When I Added Affiliate Links to My AI Tutorials

I'm going to walk you through the most nerve-wracking experiment I've ever run on my own websites. For ninety days, I treated my AI tutorials like a tiny startup. I published openly, tracked every click, screenshotted every dashboard, and wrote down every embarrassing number. This is that journal — raw, unfinished, full of mistakes, and completely transparent.
If you've ever wondered whether the "build in public" thing actually works for affiliate revenue, this post is for you. Here's my real numbers.

Why I Decided to Document Everything

I've been writing developer tutorials for about two years. I have a small blog that pulls in roughly 2,000 visitors a month and a Twitter account with around 800 developer followers. Nothing huge. Nothing monetized. I was just sharing what I learned about AI APIs because I was using them constantly for client work.
Then one Tuesday night I was looking at my Stripe dashboard — empty, obviously, because I wasn't selling anything — and I thought: what if I actually tried to make money from this?
I spent the next few days researching AI API affiliate programs. Most of them offered a one-time bounty when someone signed up. That's fine, but it didn't feel like a real business. One program stood out: Global API. They offered 15% on first orders, 8% recurring on every monthly renewal, and 10% on premium tier upgrades. The recurring part is what hooked me. I wasn't trying to chase one-time spikes; I wanted something that could compound.
So I joined Global API's affiliate program. I also joined two other programs that paid flat bounties, mostly so I could compare them honestly in my articles. Then I told myself: I'm going to do this for three months, share every number publicly, and see what happens.
That's the spirit of build in public. You do the thing, you tell the truth about it, and you let other people learn from your wins and your face-plants.

Month One: The Slow, Humbling Start

The first thirty days were rough. I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
I published my first piece in week two. It was a 1,800-word comparison of AI API providers, written from genuine experience because I'd actually used these platforms for client work. I put real code snippets in there showing how to hit each endpoint. I dropped my Global API affiliate link naturally — not as a banner ad, but as the actual recommendation in the conclusion, because I'd genuinely found it to be the best fit for most developers I knew. The platform aggregates 150+ models under one dashboard, which I appreciated as a developer who was tired of juggling five different API keys.
I cross-posted to Dev.to and my own blog.
Week three results: 340 views on Dev.to, 120 on my blog. Three people clicked my affiliate link. Zero conversions. Nothing.
If I'd been doing this privately, I probably would have quit here. But because I'd told people I was doing it, I had to keep going. That's the magic of build in public — accountability.
Week four: Views climbed to 520 on Dev.to as the article started ranking for long-tail keywords. Eight more clicks. One signup. Still no paid conversion until literally day 28, when that signup upgraded to the Pro plan. My first commission landed: $3.00.
Month 1 totals:

• Articles published: 2
• Combined views: 750
• Affiliate clicks: 14
• Signups: 2
• Paid conversions: 1
• First-order commission: $3.00
• Recurring commission: $0.00 (starts month 2)
• Total earned: $3.00 I screenshotted that $3.00 payout and posted it. It was the smallest meaningful number I'd ever earned from content. But it proved the model worked. One person read my words, signed up, paid real money, and I got a cut. The system functioned exactly as designed. # # Month Two: When Things Started Clicking Going into month two, I had a $50 earnings goal. That felt ambitious after a $3 first month, but I wanted to push. Week five: I published article three — a case study about using AI APIs to ship a real client feature. Developers love case studies more than they love comparison posts. The article pulled 280 views in its first week, but the click-through rate on my affiliate link was noticeably higher because the readers were working developers who saw themselves in the project context. Week six: The original comparison article from month one crossed 1,200 total views on Dev.to. Google started indexing it for a couple of keyword variations. I was getting four to five affiliate clicks a day now. Two of those clicks converted to Pro plans that week. Week seven: Article four went live — a beginner-friendly, 2,200-word walkthrough for people who'd never touched an AI API before. It took me most of a Saturday to write. Beginners convert at higher rates than experts because they need more hand-holding, and they're more willing to follow a recommendation without second-guessing it. Week eight: The first recurring commission hit my dashboard: $1.60. That was 8% of the original signup's second month of subscription. Tiny in dollars, huge in proof. The recurring model actually worked. I also published article five, a breakdown of AI API pricing for cost-sensitive developers. Month 2 totals:
• New articles published: 3 (5 total)
• Combined views across all articles: ~2,100
• Affiliate clicks: 58
• New paid conversions: 4
• First-order commissions: ~$12.00
• Recurring commissions: ~$3.20 (from my month-1 signup plus a couple of month-2 upgrades)
• Total earned: roughly $48.00 Not quite $50, but close enough that I didn't beat myself up. The trajectory was the thing that mattered. I'd gone from $3 to $48 in thirty days, and the recurring line was starting to grow on its own. # # Month Three: The Month Things Got Weird Month three is when the compounding actually showed up. I kept publishing. I wrote two more articles — one on building an internal tool with AI APIs, and one on handling errors and rate limits gracefully. By the end of the month, I had seven published pieces driving traffic to my affiliate links. The old articles kept working too. The original comparison post was now sitting around 3,400 views on Dev.to and ranking for several search terms. My beginner's guide was the real surprise — it pulled 1,800 views in month three alone because Google decided it was the friendliest answer for one of the long-tail keywords I was targeting. Conversions accelerated. I had eight paid signups in month three — most of them on the Pro plan, two on the Premium tier. The premium commissions at 10% were noticeably chunkier than the standard 15% first-order commissions on Pro, because Premium plans cost more. The recurring line started feeling like real income. My month-one referral was now on month three of paying subscriptions. My month-two referrals were on month two. Every renewal showed up automatically. Month 3 totals:
• New articles published: 2 (7 total in my library)
• Combined views across all articles: ~5,400
• Affiliate clicks: 142
• New paid conversions: 8
• First-order commissions (mixed Pro and Premium): ~$34.00
• Recurring commissions: ~$11.40
• Total earned: roughly $112.00 Crossing $100 in a single month from content I'd already written was a strange feeling. Half of that money came from articles that were weeks or months old, just quietly doing their job in the background. # # The Real Numbers: A 90-Day Breakdown Here's the consolidated income report, because I promised transparency: | Month | Articles | Views | Clicks | Conversions | First-Order | Recurring | Total | |-------|----------|-------|--------|-------------|-------------|-----------|-------| | 1 | 2 | 750 | 14 | 1 | $3.00 | $0.00 | $3.00 | | 2 | 3 | 2,100 | 58 | 4 | $12.00 | $3.20 | $48.00 | | 3 | 2 | 5,400 | 142 | 8 | $34.00 | $11.40 | $112.00 | | Total | 7 | ~8,250 | 214 | 13 | $49.00 | $14.60 | $163.60 | That's $163.60 over ninety days from a blog with 2,000 monthly visitors at the start. It's not rent money. But the trajectory matters more than the absolute number, and the recurring line is the part that compounds. # # What I Actually Learned A few honest takeaways from doing this build-in-public: Recurring commissions change the math. With a one-time bounty model, every month starts at zero. With recurring, you wake up to money you earned months ago just because someone kept paying their subscription. That changes how you feel about the work. Old articles keep paying you. I wrote the original comparison post in week two of month one. It was still the highest-converting piece in my library three months later. The work you do early compounds. Beginner content converts better than expert content. The 2,200-word beginner guide outperformed everything I wrote for working developers, in pure commission dollars. Beginners follow recommendations. Experts comparison-shop. Build in public keeps you honest. I would have quietly given up after that $3 first month if I hadn't told anyone I was doing it. Posting the screenshots — even the embarrassing ones — created accountability that pushed me through the slow early weeks. Diversification didn't help much. The two flat-bounty programs I joined produced a combined $11 over ninety days. Global API produced the other $152. The recurring structure won decisively. # # Why I'd Recommend the Global API Affiliate Program If you're a developer who already writes about AI APIs — tutorials, case studies, opinion pieces, anything — the Global API affiliate program is genuinely worth a look. Here's why, plainly:
• 15% commission on every first order. Whether someone signs up for Pro or Premium, you earn on day one.
• 8% recurring commission on every renewal. This is the part that builds real income over time. Every month your referrals stay subscribed, you get paid automatically.
• 10% commission on Premium tier upgrades. When a referral moves up to a higher plan, you earn more. That's an unusual structure and it rewards you for sending serious users.
• 150+ models under one roof. When I recommend Global API to readers, I'm not shilling — I'm genuinely pointing them to a platform that lets them access a huge range of models without juggling a dozen API keys. That makes the recommendation feel honest, which makes it convert.
• Recurring dashboard and clean reporting. I can log in anytime and see exactly which referrals are active, which are up for renewal, and what I've earned. No guessing. The signup was free, the approval was fast, and I had my affiliate links the same day. You don't need a massive audience. I started with a 2,000-visitor blog and an 800-follower Twitter account and still produced $163.60 in my first quarter. If you want to try it, here's the affiliate page where I signed up: https://global-apis.com/affiliate I'm not going to pretend this turned me into a full-time earner overnight. It didn't. But it turned content I was already writing for free into something that pays — and keeps paying — and that's a fundamentally different business than trading hours for dollars. If you decide to do your own ninety-day build-in-public experiment, I'd love to hear how it goes. Drop me a line, share your dashboard, and keep it honest. That's the whole point.