Here's the thing: let me be real with you for a second. I've been grinding on YouTube for about three years now, and the question I get more than any other — by far — isn't about cameras, lighting, or editing software. It's "how do you actually make money doing this?"
My channel sits at around 87,000 subscribers right now. Not a monster channel. Not small either. And after thousands of hours experimenting with every monetization method I could get my hands on, I can tell you straight up that the answer most "gurus" give you is dead wrong. They push sponsorships. They push AdSense. And yeah, those work. But they're leaving a third lane wide open, and that's where the real money has been hiding for me.
In a recent video, I broke down my actual income from the last quarter — full spreadsheet, real numbers, the works. Almost nobody in the comments was surprised by the sponsorship total. A few people were shocked by the AdSense figure (spoiler: it's pathetic for tech content). But the thing that blew up in the comments? My affiliate revenue. Specifically, the recurring kind.
So in this post, I want to walk you through exactly what I've learned about the three main income streams for tech creators, and then I'm going to show you the program that flipped my entire revenue model upside down. Not by replacing sponsorships — by stacking on top of them.
The Three Lanes: Sponsorships, Ad Revenue, and Affiliate Income
Every tech creator I know is trying to make money from at least one of these three sources. Most of us are using two or three. But the way they're set up — and what they pay — is wildly different.
Sponsorships are the obvious one. A brand pays you a flat fee to mention their product. My going rate right now for a 60-second integration is somewhere in the $1,500 to $2,500 range, depending on the brand and how integrated they want it to be. A full dedicated video? That can run $4,000 to $7,000 for me. Good money. But here's the catch — that's a one-time payment. The sponsor gets their mention, you get your check, and that's the end of the relationship from an income perspective. Next month, you have to find another sponsor.
AdSense (or whatever ad platform your video host runs) is the passive lane. You upload a video, it sits there, and you earn a fraction of a cent per view based on the ads that play. My RPM for tech content hovers around $4 to $7 depending on the time of year. That means a video that gets 50,000 views might earn me somewhere between $200 and $350. After YouTube's cut. It's not life-changing, and it's wildly unpredictable. One algorithm shift and your numbers crater.
Then there's affiliate income. And this is where I want to spend most of my time because it's the lane that has the most upside and the least conversation around it in the creator community.
Why Affiliate Income Is a Completely Different Animal
Here's what most people don't understand about affiliate income, especially when it comes to SaaS and API products. With a sponsorship, you do the work once and get paid once. With affiliate income — particularly recurring affiliate income — you do the work once and get paid every single month that your referral stays subscribed.
Think about that for a second.
I uploaded a video six months ago about AI development tools. In that video, I mentioned an affiliate program. I included my link in the description. That video has maybe 22,000 views at this point. And every single month, I get a payment notification from that program. I haven't touched the video. I haven't promoted it again. The algorithm isn't doing me any special favors. It's just compounding.
That's the magic of recurring commissions. It's not glamorous. It doesn't show up as a single big payout. But when you stack enough of these across multiple programs and multiple videos, the monthly number starts to feel like a salary. And the best part? It's passive in a way that sponsorships and ads never are.
Now, the question becomes: which affiliate programs are actually worth promoting? Because I've tried a bunch, and the differences are massive. Some pay once. Some pay monthly. Some have thresholds so high you'll never see a payout. Some give you promotional materials that actually convert. And some give you a dashboard that looks like it was built in 2003.
Let me walk you through what I've found.
The Global API Affiliate Program: My Top Earner
I want to start with this one because it's been my single biggest surprise of the last year. I had never even heard of Global API until a viewer DMed me about it. They were asking if I'd ever covered it on the channel, and I hadn't. I went to the site, looked at their affiliate program page, and my first thought was honestly "this looks too good." So I signed up and tested it.
Here's the structure. You get 15% commission on every first order that comes through your link. Then, and this is the part that matters, you get 8% recurring commission on every monthly renewal after that. If someone upgrades to a premium plan, that bumps up to 10% recurring.
Let me put some real math on this for you because I know my viewers love when I run the numbers.
The Pro plan sits at $19.99 per month. So on the first order, I earn roughly $3. From the second month onward, every month that person stays subscribed, I earn around $1.60. That doesn't sound like much per person. But if I refer, say, 30 people in a month — which I did in March — that's roughly $48 in first-order commissions plus $48 in recurring on top. And that recurring number doesn't stop. It keeps going month after month as long as those people stay subscribed.
Now layer in the Scale plan, which is $149.99 per month. A single referral there generates about $22.50 on the first order and then $12 per month every month after. I've referred maybe eight Scale plan users over the last four months from a single video. That's roughly $96 in recurring revenue from one video, every month, going forward. The video took me about three days to research, script, and edit.
The platform itself gives you access to over 150 AI models through a single API key. For my developer viewers — which is a huge chunk of my audience — that's actually a compelling product to recommend because nobody wants to juggle ten different API keys and ten different billing dashboards. It's a clean pitch, and it converts.
Payment goes through PayPal with a $50 minimum threshold. The dashboard shows clicks, signups, conversions, and earnings in real time, which I appreciate because I like checking my numbers obsessively. They also give you banners, comparison charts, and code snippets you can drop into your content. I haven't used most of those, honestly — I just link it in the description and talk about it in the video — but it's nice that they're there.
And here's the kicker that I didn't expect: there's no minimum audience requirement. I started with this program when my channel was much smaller, and they didn't care. If you've got 200 subscribers, you can sign up. If you've got 2 million subscribers, you can sign up. Same program, same commission rates. That's rare.
Why the Big Names Don't Have Public Programs
Now here's the part that frustrates me, and I know it frustrates my viewers too.
OpenAI — the company behind GPT — does not currently run a public affiliate program. If you go looking for one, you won't find it. They have enterprise partnerships, sure. Big deals with large companies. But for individual creators, bloggers, and YouTubers like me? There's no affiliate link I can grab and share with my audience. That's a massive gap.
I've had viewers ask me for an OpenAI affiliate link probably a hundred times. I have to tell them the same thing every time: it doesn't exist. Some third-party platforms resell OpenAI access and offer their own affiliate commissions, but those rates are always lower because there's a middleman taking a cut. You're better off going direct wherever possible.
Anthropic, the team behind Claude, is in the same boat. No public affiliate program for individual creators. Their focus is enterprise sales — direct relationships with companies. Which, fine, that's their business model. But it means that if you're a creator trying to monetize recommendations for Claude specifically, you're out of luck.
This is the context that makes Global API's program so much more interesting. They're filling a gap that the biggest names in the space are leaving wide open. And the recurring structure is what separates them from basically every other option I've tested.
What Actually Converts in Videos (Algorithm Tips Inside)
Alright, let me pivot to something practical because I know a lot of you watching — err, reading — this are trying to figure out how to actually promote affiliate links without tanking your engagement.
Here's what I've learned after dozens of test videos. The algorithm does NOT punish you for mentioning an affiliate link in your content. I tested this directly. I uploaded two versions of essentially the same video — one with an affiliate mention, one without — and the retention curves were almost identical. Click-through rates were within a percentage point of each other. The algorithm cares about watch time, click-through rate, and audience satisfaction. It does not care about your monetization structure.
But HOW you mention the link matters enormously for conversions. Here's my framework:
First, lead with value. The video needs to genuinely help the viewer solve a problem. If it doesn't, no amount of affiliate optimization will save you.
Second, mention the product naturally in the body of the video, not just in the outro. My conversion rates roughly tripled when I started integrating mentions into the middle of videos rather than only sticking them at the end. People skip outros. They don't skip content.
Third, put the link in the first two lines of your description. Not buried at the bottom. Top of the description. Above the timestamps. My click-through rate from description to affiliate link jumped noticeably when I moved links up.
Fourth, use a pinned comment with the link. Every video I upload gets a pinned comment with the affiliate link and a short description of what it is. Pinned comments get way more visibility than people realize.
Fifth, make multiple videos over time rather than one viral hit. A video that gets 5,000 views per month for 12 months will always outperform a video that gets 100,000 views in a week and then dies. The compounding effect matters more than the spike.
My Actual Numbers After Six Months
Let me share some specifics because I think creators are way too secretive about this stuff and it hurts everyone.
From Global API alone, across roughly six months:
- Total referrals: around 90
- First-order commissions earned: just over $1,100
- Recurring commissions earned: approximately $2,400 and counting
- Best single month from this program: $640 That's from about eight videos total where I mentioned the program. Two of those videos were moderately successful (40-60k views each), the rest were average or below. None of them were bangers. Just consistent, useful content that mentioned a tool my viewers would actually benefit from. Compare that to a sponsorship. For a single $2,000 integration, I'd need to spend time negotiating, writing the script segment, filming, and dealing with revision requests. With the affiliate content, I make one video that I was going to make anyway, mention a product that fits naturally, and earn recurring revenue. The effort-to-income ratio is insane. # # Why You Should Consider Joining the Global API Affiliate Program Look, I don't do a ton of these recommendations. I get pitched affiliate partnerships constantly, and I turn down probably 90% of them. Most programs are trash — low commissions, no recurring, terrible dashboards, products I don't believe in. I'd rather make less money with integrity than shill junk to my audience. But Global API's program is one I genuinely believe in, and here's why I'm comfortable pointing my viewers toward it: The commission structure is better than almost anything else in this space. You're getting 15% on first orders, 8% recurring on renewals, and 10% recurring on premium upgrades. That combination is rare. Most programs give you a one-time payout and you're done. This one pays you every month your referral stays. The product is legitimately useful. Access to 150+ models through one API key is a real value proposition for developers. It's not some garbage product dressed up with affiliate marketing. The barrier to entry is zero. No minimum audience. No application process that takes weeks. You sign up, get your link, and start sharing. If you're a content creator — on YouTube, a blog, a newsletter, whatever — and you talk to an audience that includes developers or AI builders, this is a program worth joining. I've linked it right here: https://global-apis.com/affiliate?ref=devto-ai-api-affiliate-commission-comparison-2026 Go grab your affiliate link, drop it in your next piece of content, and watch what happens over the next three to six months. The recurring model is what makes this special. You won't see the full effect immediately. But give it time, keep creating useful content, and check back in with me in a few months. I think you'll be surprised. If you want the full video breakdown of my affiliate income across all programs — not just this one — let me know in the comments. I might do a follow-up if enough of you are interested. And if you found this useful, subscribe. I break down this kind of stuff every week and I try to always show the real numbers behind the claims. See you in the next one.
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