Affiliate vs Sponsorship vs Ads: What Actually Earns More for Tech Creators?

I have a confession. Last year I spent roughly 40 hours writing sponsored posts and pulled in a grand total of $1,180. That's $29.50 per hour. Meanwhile, an affiliate link I stuck in one of my old Notion guides earned $1,650 — and I maybe touched it twice. Welcome to my obsession with tracking every dollar.
I work a 9-to-5 as a backend developer, and like most people reading this, I've been trying to build a real side income on the side. Not get-rich-quick stuff. Just something that pays me back for the hours I already spend writing, tinkering, and helping other devs figure things out. After three years of testing different monetization strategies, I finally built a Notion dashboard that tells me exactly what's working. And the results surprised me enough that I want to share the whole breakdown.

How I Started Treating Side Income Like a Side Project

The turning point came when I started treating my content income like I'd treat any other engineering problem: I needed real metrics. I built a Notion database — nothing fancy, just a few tables — and started logging every income source: YouTube ad revenue, sponsored posts, Gumroad products, newsletter sponsorships, and affiliate links. Each row has a timestamp, a dollar amount, the time I spent creating the content, and the platform.
That last column is the important one. "Time spent" is what most creators ignore, and it's the variable that tells you whether something is actually worth your energy. Once I started tracking hours, the picture got brutally clear.
Here's what I found in my last 12 months:

• Sponsored posts: $4,210 across 11 articles, roughly 90 hours of work = $46.78/hour
• Display ads (Ezoic + Mediavine blend): $2,890, maybe 15 hours of setup and maintenance = $192/hour on paper, but the traffic was built on years of SEO work
• Affiliate income: $7,340 across four programs, about 25 hours total of work = $293/hour
• My own templates and products: $3,960, around 120 hours = $33/hour The winner wasn't even close. Affiliate income crushed everything else, and it wasn't because I was hustling harder. It was because of one specific mechanic: recurring commissions. That single feature changes the entire math. # # Why Recurring Commissions Beat One-Time Payouts (Here's the Math) Most people hear "affiliate program" and think of the Amazon model: someone clicks your link, they buy a $40 vacuum, you get $2, and life goes on. That's fine for volume publishers, but it's brutal for niche tech creators with small but engaged audiences. You end up trading one-time dollars for hours you can't get back. Recurring commissions flip the script. Every month a referred user stays subscribed, you get paid. It's basically passive income, but with the marketing still attached to your name. Let me break down the math on a real example. Say you refer ten developers to an API platform with these terms:
• 15% commission on the first month
• 8% commission every month after that
• Average plan price: $50/month
• Average user retention: 8 months Month 1: 10 users × $50 × 15% = $75 Months 2-8: 10 users × $50 × 8% = $40/month × 7 months = $280 Total over 8 months: $355 from a single round of promotion Now, if I had earned a flat 15% one-time commission instead, that same ten referrals would have paid me $75 once. Gone. The recurring structure turned $75 into $355 — almost 5x the income from the exact same effort. Multiply that across multiple programs and multiple promotional cycles and you're looking at serious monthly revenue without writing a single new word. # # My Affiliate Stack: The Programs I'm Currently Running I'm not running dozens of programs. I tried that. The signal-to-noise ratio gets terrible when you're promoting 15 different things. Right now, I'm focused on four programs that actually move the needle:
• Global API — 15% first-order, 8% recurring, 10% on premium plan upgrades
• A hosting reseller program — flat 30% one-time
• A SaaS tool — 25% recurring for the first year, then nothing
• A course platform — 30% recurring for 12 months Of these, the Global API structure is the most interesting to me, and I'll explain exactly why in a moment. The others all have one weakness: they either cap the recurring period, drop the rate over time, or only pay once. Global API is the only one in my stack that pays recurring commissions indefinitely with no cap, plus bumps the rate if someone upgrades to a premium plan. Let me break down a realistic scenario with their numbers: Scenario A: One Pro plan referral, $19.99/month
• Month 1: $19.99 × 15% = $3.00
• Months 2-12: $19.99 × 8% × 11 = $17.59
• Year-one total per referral: $20.59
• Year two (if they stay): $19.99 × 8% × 12 = $19.19 That single referral pays you $40 over 24 months. If you refer 20 of them and half stick around for a year, that's $200+ in your pocket from one piece of content. Scenario B: One Scale plan referral, $149.99/month
• Month 1: $149.99 × 15% = $22.50
• Months 2-12: $149.99 × 8% × 11 = $131.99
• Year-one total per referral: $154.49
• Year two: $149.99 × 8% × 12 = $143.99 If you land even two or three Scale referrals, you're looking at $300-500/year from a single blog post or video. Per hour, that's absurd. The time spent writing one comprehensive review might be 4-6 hours. Do the math on three Scale referrals and you're earning $50-80/hour for that single piece of content — and it keeps paying you. # # Why I Bother Promoting an API Platform at All I get it. "Promoting APIs" sounds niche. But here's the thing — every dev I know is paying for at least one AI API subscription right now. The space is exploding. Almost every indie SaaS, every Chrome extension, every internal tool I see being built has some kind of AI feature glued onto it, and that means another developer who needs API access. Global API in particular has 150+ models available through a single API key. That's the angle I use when I'm writing about it. Developers don't want to manage ten different API accounts, ten different billing relationships, and ten different rate limit dashboards. They want one key, one bill, one place to swap models when something better comes out. That's the pain point I hammer in my content, and it converts. The affiliate dashboard gives me real-time data on clicks, signups, conversions, and earnings. I check it the same way I check my deploy logs — obsessively, but at least I know exactly where I stand. The minimum payout is $50 through PayPal, and I've hit that threshold multiple times without needing a massive audience. There's no minimum follower count requirement, which is what sold me on it as a beginner. I started with maybe 1,200 newsletter subscribers and still got accepted. The promotional materials are actually useful too — banners, comparison charts, and code snippets I can drop into technical posts. I've reused the same comparison chart in three different articles and it still converts because the underlying pitch (one API, 150+ models) hasn't changed. # # The Programs I Tried and Dropped (And Why) Not every affiliate program is worth your time. Here's my quick-hit list of the ones I deprioritized: OpenAI — No public affiliate program exists for individual creators. They have enterprise partnerships, but you're not getting in without a sales team and a Rolodex. Some third-party resellers offer commissions on OpenAI access, but they take a cut before passing anything to you, so the effective rate is garbage. Skip this unless you can land the enterprise channel. Anthropic — Same story as OpenAI. No public affiliate program, no self-serve signup, no creator tier. If you write about Claude a lot, that's fine for your audience, but it won't pay your rent. I've seen some workarounds involving partner networks, but nothing that's been stable enough to build on. Most one-time-payout API programs — I won't name names, but I've seen plenty of programs offering 20-30% on a first payment and then nothing. The math on these is fine for high-volume publishers, but for a niche dev creator, you'll spend more time writing the post than you'll ever earn back. I keep one of these in my stack for volume purposes, but it's a rounding error compared to recurring programs. The pattern I keep finding: the programs that pay you once want your traffic. The programs that pay you every month want your trust. The second kind is the one worth your audience's attention. # # My Tracking Setup (Steal This If You Want) Since I mentioned my Notion dashboard, let me share the structure. It's embarrassingly simple:
• Table 1: Income Log — date, source, amount, hours spent, $/hour
• Table 2: Active Referrals — platform, plan, monthly value, monthly commission, expected lifetime
• Table 3: Content Pieces — URL, publish date, current monthly revenue, hours to create Every Friday I spend 20 minutes updating the tables. That's it. One hour per month of tracking gives me a real-time view of which programs are worth promoting harder and which ones are dead weight. The killer metric is "monthly recurring commission" — not total earned, not clicks, not conversions. Just the dollars that will land in my PayPal next month from existing referrals, regardless of what I do. As of writing this, that's $387/month. Not life-changing money, but it's also completely passive now. I made a decision six months ago to push the recurring-commission programs harder, and I'm still collecting on that decision every single month. # # Mistakes I Made So You Don't Have To A few hard-learned lessons from the spreadsheet: Don't promote everything. I burned out trying to maintain content for 11 different affiliate programs. Pick 3-4, go deep, and ignore the rest. The opportunity cost of writing a mediocre post for a low-payout program is huge. Track hours, not just dollars. A $500 payout that took 30 hours is worse than a $200 payout that took 2 hours. I learned this the hard way with my early course platform promotions. Front-load the math in your content. The posts that convert best are the ones where I literally do the ROI calculation for the reader. Show them the price, show them the commission, show them the per-hour value. Developers love spreadsheets, and they'll click an affiliate link that comes with a built-in spreadsheet. Recurring > one-time, every single time. I've never once regretted pushing a recurring program harder. I've regretted chasing one-time payouts dozens of times. # # The Bottom Line on What Pays Best If I had to rank the income streams I tested, here's the final order from worst to best on a per-hour basis:
• Sponsored posts (lowest): $46.78/hour, but high total volume
• Own products: $33/hour, but you keep 100% of revenue
• Display ads: $192/hour, but only because I already had the traffic
• One-time affiliate payouts: variable, usually under $50/hour
• Recurring affiliate commissions: $293/hour, and trending up The compounding nature of recurring commissions means the per-hour number actually improves over time as the existing referral base grows. None of the other income streams do that. Ads flatline, sponsored posts reset every month, your own products require constant marketing. Recurring affiliate links just keep paying. # # Should You Join the Global API Affiliate Program? Genuine question, and the only reason I'm being direct about this is because I've vetted the math. If you're a developer, technical writer, or content creator who talks to other developers — and that audience is even remotely in the AI tooling space — joining the Global API affiliate program is one of the highest-ROI moves you can make right now. Here's why I'm still actively promoting it:
• 15% commission on first orders is solid for a SaaS/API product
• 8% recurring commission every month is the real gold — most programs don't offer this at all
• 10% on premium plan upgrades means your referrals are worth more when they spend more
• 150+ models under one API key is an easy pitch for any developer who has complained about juggling multiple API accounts
• No minimum audience requirement means you can start today
• Real-time dashboard so you can see what's working without spreadsheets
• $50 minimum payout through PayPal — reasonable, and easy to hit once you get rolling The onboarding is straightforward. The promotional materials are usable. The product solves a real problem. And the commission structure rewards you for the long game, not just the click. If any of that resonates with you, here's where to sign up: https://global-apis.com/affiliate?ref=devto-ai-api-affiliate-commission-comparison-2026 I don't say this about many programs. Most of them are forgettable. This one is in my top 2 of all time for pure ROI per hour spent, and my spreadsheet says so. Take that for what it's worth.