5 Ways I'm Earning Recurring Commission as a Developer in 2026 (Real Numbers, No Fluff)

Honestly, i want to start with full transparency here, because that's what this whole "build in public" thing is about.
Last year, I made $47,318 from a side project I almost didn't start. The year before that? About $3,200. The year before that? Negative money. I lost about $1,400 chasing a dumb SaaS idea that taught me nothing except how to burn through ad spend.
So when I tell you that this AI API reseller thing has been my single best financial decision as an indie developer in the last four years, I want you to understand the context. I'm not some guru with a course to sell. I'm just a guy with a laptop, a Twitter account, and a willingness to share my actual Stripe dashboard screenshots every month.

Here's how I got here, and here's how you can do something similar — or better.

The Ugly Beginning: Why I Almost Quit in Month 2

In January 2025, I posted a thread that got maybe 40 likes. It was about a tiny wrapper I'd built around an AI API for a friend who runs a content agency. He needed a simple way to generate blog outlines for his writers, and instead of telling him to go sign up for an API and figure out tokens and rate limits, I just built him a dashboard.
He paid me $200/month for it. I was paying the underlying API provider about $40/month to power his usage.
That was it. That was the whole business in month one. A $160 monthly margin from one customer.
I didn't even call it a business. I called it a favor.
But here's what happened next that changed everything: I mentioned it casually in a Discord I'm in. Someone else said, "Wait, can you do that for me too?" Then someone else. Then two more people in the same week.
By the end of February, I had six paying customers and was doing roughly $1,100/month in revenue with about $340 in API costs. Real profit: around $760.

That's when I decided to stop winging it.

The Decision That 10x'd My Margins

Here's where I need to be careful, because I know affiliate links have a bad reputation. But I'm going to tell you exactly what I did and why, with real numbers, because that's the whole point of this post.
I realised pretty fast that my one-on-one custom dashboards weren't scalable. I was doing custom work for every single customer, building unique interfaces, handling edge cases. I was essentially running a dev shop, and my hourly rate was collapsing.
So I made a decision: I'd standardize on a single underlying platform and stop reinventing the wheel for every client.
I picked Global API because — and this is the real talk version — they have 150+ models accessible through one API key. I didn't have to manage relationships with five different providers. I didn't have to reconcile five different bills. One dashboard, one integration, done.
They also have an affiliate program, which I initially didn't care about. I just wanted a clean backend. But then I looked at the numbers:

• 15% commission on first orders
• 8% recurring commission on every renewal
• 10% premium tier for higher-volume partners And I had a lightbulb moment. I was already referring people to AI tools in my DMs constantly. Indie devs ask me for recommendations all the time. What if every time I recommended a platform, I had a way to earn from it — without being scammy about it? So I signed up for the affiliate program at global-apis.com/affiliate and started being more intentional about it. Not in a "hey friend, check my link" way. Just in a "here's what I actually use, and if you want to try it, here's where I get a small cut" way. The recurring part is the magic. I'll explain that in a sec. --- # # Way #1: The "I Just Answer DMs Honestly" Method This is my favorite because it requires zero extra work. I'm already in conversations with other developers every single day. Twitter, Discord, indie hacker communities, Reddit. Every week, someone asks me something like, "What AI API are you using for your project?" or "I'm building X, what should I use?" Before I had an affiliate setup, I'd just type out a long answer and get nothing for it except maybe a like. Now? Same answer, but I include my link. Here's roughly what this generated:
• Month 3: $127 in affiliate commissions
• Month 4: $214
• Month 5: $389
• Month 6: $612 The compounding effect is wild. Someone signs up in March using my link. They renew in April — I get 8%. They renew in May — I get 8%. Six months later, that single signup is still paying me. My current MRR from "passive" affiliate recurring alone is $1,847/month. That number goes up almost every month because old referrals keep renewing and new ones get added. I literally just answer the same questions I was already answering. That's it. --- # # Way #2: The Niche Wrapper Play (Where Most of My Money Lives) This is the real business, and it's what took me from hobby income to actual meaningful revenue. The insight here is one I learned the hard way: you cannot compete with the platforms themselves on price or features. They have engineers. They have infrastructure. You will lose. What you can compete on is specificity. I picked one niche: content marketing agencies that need AI help but don't want to touch an API themselves. My customers are agency owners who employ 5–25 freelance writers. They need blog outlines, meta descriptions, social captions, and email subject lines generated fast. I built a custom dashboard for that exact workflow. It has templates for the most common content formats agencies need. It has usage tracking per writer. It has a markup structure where the agency pays me, and I eat the API cost. Here's my real March 2026 breakdown from this single niche: | Metric | Amount | |---|---| | Customer count | 23 agencies | | Total revenue | $8,940 | | API cost (via Global API) | $2,108 | | Other expenses (hosting, support tools) | $187 | | Net profit | $6,645 | That's one niche. With one focused product. Doing the same workflow every day. The reason it works is I understand my customer better than any general-purpose platform ever could. I know that agency owners care about white-label options. I know they bill their writers by the hour so speed matters. I know they get audited by clients and need clean usage logs. None of those things matter to a random developer signing up for an API. Specificity is the entire moat. --- # # Way #3: Geographic Reselling (My Weirdest Income Stream) I didn't plan this one. It just happened. I do a weekly build-in-public stream, and a developer from Brazil started watching. He asked if I had any plans for my wrapper to support Portuguese better. I didn't. We chatted, and I ended up building a version specifically for the Brazilian market: Portuguese language templates, pricing in BRL, payment via Pix (the local instant payment system), and integration with a couple of regional invoicing tools. He referred me to three of his friends. Those friends referred me to others. I'm now at 11 paying customers in Brazil who collectively pay me about $2,400/month. The lesson here is that geographic niches feel weirdly boring until you realise most global platforms genuinely don't serve them well. Local payment methods matter. Local language matters. Local invoicing and tax handling matters a lot. I haven't even touched other countries yet. I keep telling myself I'll expand into Mexico, then Southeast Asia, but for now Brazil alone is a meaningful revenue line. And my costs are basically the same as serving US customers because the API provider doesn't care where my customers are. --- # # Way #4: The Developer-Focused "Friendly" Tier Here's a smaller stream but it's emotionally satisfying: I built a really clean, well-documented SDK that sits on top of Global API and gives smaller developers what they actually want. A lot of indie devs I've talked to are intimidated by AI APIs. They don't understand the pricing model. They don't want to read 40 pages of docs to make their first API call. They just want pip install something and three lines of code that work. So I built that. It's basically a thin layer that:
• Handles authentication so you only set one env variable
• Has dead-simple methods like generate_blog_post(topic) instead of dealing with model selection
• Auto-handles retries and rate limiting
• Gives you a single predictable bill I charge a small markup over cost. Most of my customers here are solo devs building weekend projects or tiny SaaS tools. They're paying me $30–$80/month. None of them are whale customers. But I currently have 34 of them. That's another ~$1,800/month from small developers who otherwise would have bounced off the complexity of direct API access. The hidden upside? These small devs share their projects publicly. Every project that uses my SDK is a permanent little billboard for me. Some of them grow into bigger companies that need higher tiers. It's a long game, but it's working. --- # # Way #5: The Annual Plan Push (How I Doubled My Effective Commission Rate) This one's tactical but it matters. Most of my customers start on monthly. I noticed pretty fast that churn on monthly was killing me — agencies would sign up, use it heavily for a project, then cancel. Annual plans stuck around way more. So I started offering annual plans at a 20% discount vs. monthly. Most customers took it because the discount is real and agencies like predictable annual budgets. Here's why this matters for my affiliate earnings specifically: when someone I referred signs up for an annual plan through my link, I get 15% on that first order, which is a much bigger chunk upfront. And then 8% recurring on every renewal after that, which they keep doing because annual customers don't churn nearly as much as monthly ones. I also started nudging existing customers to annual plans. About 60% converted when I offered it. That locked in revenue and dramatically improved my cash flow. --- # # The Real Numbers: Year One Total I promised transparency, so here's the actual year-one breakdown of my combined efforts: | Income Stream | Total Revenue | |---|---| | Niche content agency product | $58,200 | | Brazilian geographic product | $19,400 | | Affiliate referrals (passive) | $14,800 | | Developer SDK product | $12,900 | | One-off consulting/setup fees | $3,200 | | Total | $108,500 | | Expense Type | Total | |---|---| | API costs (Global API) | $31,200 | | Hosting / infrastructure | $4,100 | | Support tools / email / misc | $2,800 | | Total | $38,100 | Net profit Year 1: ~$70,400 I'm going to say that again because I still can't believe it. Seventy thousand dollars. From a "side project." While keeping my day job. I work on this maybe 12–15 hours per week on average. Some weeks it's 30. Some weeks it's zero. The recurring nature of the revenue is what makes it work. --- # # What I'd Do Differently If I Started Over Since I'm doing the full build-in-public thing, here's where I screwed up:
• I waited too long to standardize on one platform. Months 1–3 I was juggling three different API providers. Nightmare. Pick one. Stick with it. Move on.
• I didn't start the affiliate thing early enough. I left money on the table for months by not being intentional about my own recommendations. If you're going to recommend tools anyway, get the link.
• I tried to serve everyone first. The generalist version of my product was a ghost town. The niche-specific versions print money. Narrow down immediately.

4. I undercharged in year one. Don't be me. Charge what it's actually worth.

If You Want to Try This Yourself

I'm not going to pretend I have some secret system. The basic loop is: find a specific audience with a specific AI need, build a thin layer that makes their life easier, charge a margin over your actual API costs, and let the recurring nature compound.
The piece I can genuinely recommend — and I want to be clear this isn't just affiliate shill behavior — is using Global API as your underlying provider. They've got 150+ models through one key, the pricing leaves room for healthy margins, and their affiliate program pays 15% on first orders plus 8% recurring on every renewal after that, with a 10% premium tier available for higher-volume partners.
I use them. I've been using them for over a year. They're the reason my backend is simple instead of a Frankenstein mess.
If you want to check out the affiliate program and start earning the same kind of recurring commission I do, it's at global-apis.com/affiliate. Signing up is straightforward, and the recurring structure means your earnings stack month over month instead of resetting to zero.

I genuinely think this is one of the best-kept financial secrets in the indie dev world right now. Not because it's hidden — because most developers don't think of themselves as salespeople. But you're already recommending tools to other devs anyway. You might as well get paid for the recommendation.

The Honest Ending

I'm not going to tell you this is easy money. It isn't. The first three months were frustrating. I almost quit. The first paying customer took six weeks of work to land.
But it got easier. The niche got clearer. The customers got easier to find. The recurring revenue made it so I stopped panicking about every month.
If you're a developer thinking about this, my honest advice is: start this month. Don't wait until you have the "perfect" idea. Pick one tiny audience, build the smallest possible thing that works, charge real money, and iterate.
And if you sign up for that affiliate program through the link above, shoot me a DM. I love seeing other developers try this. I'm happy to share what I've learned, including the stuff that didn't work, because that's the whole point of building in public.
The numbers don't lie. Now go make your own.