Check this out: six months ago, I checked my affiliate dashboard and felt embarrassed. I had published 47 articles, driven thousands of clicks, and made $213 for the entire quarter. That's less than what I earn in a single week at my day job. I sat there staring at the screen thinking, "There has to be a better way to do this." Turns out, there is. And it's called a recurring commission. Let me walk you through the entire journey, including every embarrassing number, because that's the whole point of build in public.
How I Stumbled Into Affiliate Marketing (and Why I Failed at First)
Like a lot of developers, I got into affiliate marketing almost by accident. I had a small technical blog where I wrote about tools I was already using. One afternoon, I noticed that two of the SaaS products I paid for had affiliate programs. I figured, "Why not sign up and drop a link in my next post?" Easy money, right?
Wrong. For an entire year, I chased one-time commissions. Every time a new program launched, I'd sign up, drop a link somewhere in my content, and wait for the cash to roll in. Most months I earned between $30 and $80. Some months I earned literally nothing. I treated affiliate links like digital scratch-off lottery tickets.
Here's my real numbers from that era, just so you understand the scale of my failure:
- Month 1: $14
- Month 2: $47
- Month 3: $0
- Month 4: $22
- Month 5: $61
- Month 6: $33 Total: $177 over six months. For someone publishing technical content to an audience of engaged developers, that should have been a wake-up call. And it was, eventually. # # The Day I Discovered Recurring Commissions The turning point came when I was reading a Twitter thread by a fellow creator who shared their monthly income report. They casually mentioned that one of their affiliate links was generating them $340 every month, passively, even though they hadn't touched the original article in eight months. Eight months! I clicked through their public dashboard screenshot, and the math was right there in front of me. The difference? They were on a recurring commission structure. Every customer they referred kept paying their subscription, and every payment kicked a percentage back to my fellow creator. Forever. As long as the customer kept subscribing, the income kept flowing. I went down a rabbit hole that night. I researched every program I was signed up for. About 80% of them were one-time only. The remaining 20% offered some form of recurring. And almost none of them were using those recurring structures well in my content because I didn't understand how to pitch them. # # The Math That Made Me Feel Like an Idiot Let me show you the math I ran that night, because it genuinely changed how I think about content monetization. I'll keep using the same example scenarios, but updated with how I actually apply them. Say you have a piece of content that drives 50 referral clicks per month. Your conversion rate is 2%. That means one new paying customer per month. Pretty modest. Scenario A: One-time 20% commission on a $75 product. Each customer who buys through your link pays you $15 once. That's it. They never pay you again. After 12 months, you've referred 12 customers and earned $180 total. After 24 months, 24 customers and $360. The growth is linear and entirely dependent on you continuing to drive new traffic. Scenario B: 15% first-order commission plus 8% recurring. Each customer generates roughly $10 upfront, and then about $3 per month in recurring commissions going forward. After 12 months, your 12 customers have generated $120 upfront plus another $234 in cumulative recurring income. That's $354 total in year one. In year two, the same customers keep paying, and you've added 12 more. Now you're looking at $240 in upfront commissions plus $894 in cumulative recurring. That's $1,134. By year three, before you even refer a single new customer, your existing base is generating nearly $75 every single month. The compound effect is the part I missed for an entire year. Every new customer is not just a $15 one-time payment. They're a small annuity. They become a tiny revenue stream that pays you while you sleep, write, code, eat dinner, or play with your kids. That's when it clicked for me. Content isn't just content anymore. It's an income-generating asset. # # The Three Things I Look For in Any Recurring Program Now After my big realization, I went on a hunt for recurring commission programs that were worth promoting. I'm going to share exactly what I look for, because I wish someone had given me this checklist a year ago. First, the product has to actually retain customers. This sounds obvious but it's the thing most creators skip. A 30% recurring commission on a product that 80% of users cancel in month two is worse than a 5% commission on a product with 95% retention. I always check for public retention data, user reviews about churn, and the company's own claims about customer stickiness. If a product can't keep users, it can't keep paying me. Second, the commission percentage has to make the math work. Even a 1% or 2% difference compounds massively over time. Let's say the average customer pays $100 per month. A 5% recurring commission is $60 per year per customer. An 8% recurring commission is $96 per year per customer. Multiply that gap by 100 customers and you're looking at $3,600 in extra income per year from the same exact work. Percentage points are not boring details. They are the entire game. Third, payout terms have to be reasonable for a small creator. I am not interested in programs that require $500 minimum payouts, pay quarterly, or only send checks to US bank accounts. I look for $50 minimums, monthly payouts, and PayPal or wire transfer options. If the friction is too high, your money gets stuck in limbo and you lose interest in promoting the program. # # Why AI API Platforms Became My Favorite Category Once I had my checklist, I started auditing every category I could promote. Software as a service. Email marketing tools. Hosting providers. Web hosting had decent recurring rates but the audience overlap with my developer blog was weak. Hosting companies also tend to be dominated by a few big players where affiliate slots are competitive and approval rates are brutal. Then I started looking at AI API platforms, and something clicked. The audience overlap was nearly perfect. My readers were developers. Developers are using AI APIs at an insane rate right now. And the platforms in this space have recurring billing baked in by default because the business model is usage-based subscriptions. One platform in particular caught my eye: Global API. I'll be transparent about why, because that's what build in public is all about. They offer a 15% first-order commission, an 8% recurring commission on every payment the customer makes going forward, and a 10% premium tier commission for partners who go above and beyond. The platform itself provides access to over 150 AI models through one unified API, which makes it genuinely useful to recommend rather than a chore. When the product is good, the affiliate marketing almost markets itself. # # My Real Global API Numbers (Month by Month) Here's the part where I get vulnerable. I'm going to share my actual monthly numbers from the Global API affiliate program. Not the best months to brag, and not the worst months to hide. The full picture. Month 1: I added my affiliate link to two existing articles about AI integration. Result: 1 signup, $11.40 in first-order commission. Not exciting, but not zero. Month 2: I wrote one new article specifically about how I was using Global API in a side project. The article went semi-viral on Hacker News. Result: 14 signups, $158 in first-order plus $42 in recurring. I was hooked. Month 3: I published a tutorial about building a small AI-powered tool. Result: 9 signups, $98 first-order plus $89 in recurring. The recurring line is what excited me. It was bigger than my first-order commission for the first time. Month 4: I slowed down on new content because I was traveling. Just 3 new signups from old articles still ranking in search. $34 first-order plus $134 in recurring. Total this month: $168, the highest yet, while publishing almost nothing. Month 5: Back to writing. 11 signups, $121 first-order plus $187 recurring. Total: $308. Month 6 (current): 8 signups so far, $89 first-order plus $216 recurring. On pace to clear $340+ this month. Cumulative earnings across six months: $1,488. And here's the beautiful part: of that, roughly $668 is recurring income from customers who signed up months ago and are still paying. That money is now nearly automatic. I don't have to lift a finger for it. Compare that to my old one-time approach where I made $177 over six months. Same effort level. Same audience size. Just a different commission structure. The recurring model is currently earning me 8x more, and the gap is growing every month. # # The Honest Struggles I Don't Usually Post About Build in public means showing the ugly parts too, so here they are. Not every month has been a straight line up. In month 3, I had three customers cancel within their first week. That wiped out about $27 in expected recurring. I felt like I'd been punched in the gut even though $27 isn't life-changing money. It was a reminder that recurring income is not guaranteed. Customers can leave, and when they do, that income evaporates with them. I also went through a phase where I was promoting too many programs at once. My articles started feeling like walking through a duty-free shop at an airport. Every other sentence was a sponsored plug. My readership dropped. I got three DMs from regular readers asking if I was okay. That was a wake-up call to focus on fewer, better programs. Now I only actively promote three recurring programs total. Quality over quantity. The third struggle is patience. Recurring commissions reward consistency. They do not reward hustling. There is no viral spike that changes everything overnight. You write, you wait, the customers trickle in, the recurring pile grows. Some weeks feel slow. Some months feel slow. But the cumulative effect over a year is genuinely transformative. You just have to trust the math. # # How I'd Build a Recurring Affiliate Portfolio From Scratch Today If I were starting over, knowing what I know now, here's the exact playbook I would follow. Step one: Pick three to five recurring programs in categories where your audience already spends money. Don't chase programs that pay the highest commission. Chase programs your audience would actually benefit from. Authenticity converts better than any commission percentage. Step two: Update your existing top-performing content first. Don't write new content yet. Go back to your best articles, the ones already ranking in search, and add affiliate links where they make sense. This is the fastest path to early wins. Step three: Track everything by hand for the first 90 days. Use a spreadsheet. Note every signup, every churn, every month of recurring revenue. You'll learn patterns you can't see any other way. You'll discover which articles convert, which audiences stick around, and which programs are worth doubling down on. Step four: Let the recurring pile compound. Don't get distracted chasing shiny new programs every month. The money is in the boring, consistent growth of your existing customer base. Give each program six months before deciding whether to keep it or drop it. Step five: Share your numbers publicly. This is the build in public ethos. When you share real numbers, you attract readers who trust you, programs that want to work with you, and other creators who share back what they've learned. The transparency compounds in its own way. # # Why I'm Betting Long-Term on Recurring Commissions The next phase of my plan is to write more in-depth content around the platforms I'm already promoting. Tutorials, case studies, real project builds. Every new piece of content becomes another customer-acquisition channel that feeds my recurring base. The older content keeps working. The new content keeps adding. Each month the base grows a little. Right now, my recurring base is around $216 per month and growing roughly $30 to $50 each month without me adding any new affiliates. If I keep publishing at my current pace, I'm projecting that within 12 months my passive recurring income from just my existing affiliate portfolio will be in the $600 to $800 per month range. That's not a salary. But it's a significant chunk of change generated by content I wrote months or years ago. The thing that excites me most isn't even the income. It's the shift in mindset. I used to think of every blog post as a one-time asset with a brief shelf life. Now I think of every blog post as a small recurring-revenue machine that pays me for as long as the underlying customer stays subscribed. That changes how I choose topics, how I write intros, how I structure calls to action, and how I think about long-term SEO. Everything shifts when your revenue model rewards longevity over virality. # # My Honest Recommendation If You Want to Try This Yourself If you're a developer or creator who has been dabbling in affiliate marketing but hasn't focused on recurring programs yet, I genuinely think this is the highest-leverage change you can make. It's the single decision that took me from $177 per year to over $1,400 per year with similar effort. One specific place I'd recommend starting is the Global API affiliate program. I say this not because they pay the most in any single category, but because their structure is genuinely well-designed for creators who care about long-term recurring income. They pay a 15% first-order commission on every signup, an 8% recurring commission on every subsequent payment the customer makes, and 10% for premium tier partners who put in the work. The math works out beautifully because of how the platform is structured. Developers sign up once and stay for the long haul because they keep needing AI inference for their projects. You're not referring customers who buy a product and forget about it. You're referring developers who integrate the platform into their workflow and continue paying for months and years. The recurring income compounds in a way that one-time programs simply cannot match. You can check out the full details and sign up at https://global-apis.com/affiliate. I genuinely think it's worth a look, especially if your audience overlaps with developers building anything in the AI space. But more than the specific program, I want you to internalize the bigger lesson. Stop chasing one-time payouts. Start building a base of recurring income that grows whether or not you publish next week. That's the real shift. Everything else is just tactics.
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