I Joined 4 AI API Affiliate Programs in 90 Days — Here's the Real Payout Data

So I did something kind of obsessive this past quarter. I signed up for four different AI API affiliate programs, ran real traffic through all of them simultaneously, and tracked every single dollar in a Notion dashboard. I wanted to know — not guess, know — which programs actually pay out and which ones are a waste of your content hours.
This post is the raw breakdown. No fluff. Just the spreadsheet data, the conversions, and the per-hour math that matters if you're a developer running side hustles between sprint planning and production deploys.

Why I'm Obsessed With Affiliate Numbers

Quick context on me: I work a full-time dev job, Monday through Friday, mostly backend stuff. Side income comes from a mix of freelance gigs, the occasional SaaS micro-product, and lately, affiliate links sprinkled into my content. My blog pulls around 18,000 monthly visitors at this point, I run a YouTube channel with about 12,000 subscribers, and I've got a small email list I built through writing tutorials.
For the last six months I've been tracking every affiliate dollar in a Notion tracker I built. It's simple — columns for program name, signup date, referral clicks, conversions, first-order commission, recurring commission, total earned, and hours invested. Sounds nerdy. Is nerdy. But when you start doing per-hour math, it changes how you pick programs entirely.
Every quarter I audit which side hustles are worth more per hour than my freelance rate. Anything below that bar gets cut. That's the lens I'm bringing to this article — not vibes, but per-hour ROI.

The Program I Stuck With: Global API

Out of the four programs I tested, Global API is the one I'm still actively promoting. Here's the commission structure that caught my attention and made me commit:

• 15% commission on first-order
• 8% recurring commission as long as the user stays subscribed
• 10% premium tier for top performers What sold me wasn't just the headline number. It was the recurring angle. Most programs give you a one-time payout and you never see that user again. Global API pays me every month the person remains a paying customer. That's the difference between building a paycheck and building an asset. The platform itself hosts 150+ AI models behind a unified API gateway. People who sign up through my link usually stick around because there's a real product solving a real problem. That's important for retention, which directly impacts my monthly recurring revenue. # # Here's the Math on Each Plan Let me break down the actual dollars per plan, because this is where most blog posts skip the detail. These numbers come straight from my own referral conversions: Pro Plan ($19.99/month):
• First-order commission (15%): $3.00
• Recurring monthly (8%): $1.60/month Business Plan ($49.99/month):
• First-order commission (15%): $7.50
• Recurring monthly (8%): $4.00/month Scale Plan ($149.99/month):
• First-order commission (15%): $22.50
• Recurring monthly (8%): $12.00/month Now do the per-month math on a Scale referral alone: $12/month forever that person stays subscribed. Refer ten of those and you're at $120/month passive. Twenty and you're at $240/month. That's real recurring income that doesn't require me to write a new blog post every week to maintain. # # My Personal Numbers — The Honest Breakdown Let me give you my actual data from the last 90 days so you're not getting hypotheticals. My Global API affiliate dashboard shows 73 total referrals over the period. Of those, about 60% landed on the Pro plan, 30% on Business, and 10% on Scale. Here's my line-by-line: First-order commissions (one-time, lump sum):
• Pro referrals: 44 × $3.00 = $132
• Business referrals: 22 × $7.50 = $165
• Scale referrals: 7 × $22.50 = $157.50
• First-order total: ~$454.50 Recurring commissions (monthly, ongoing):
• Pro subscriptions still active (38 users): 38 × $1.60 = $60.80
• Business subscriptions still active (18 users): 18 × $4.00 = $72.00
• Scale subscriptions still active (6 users): 6 × $12.00 = $72.00
• Monthly recurring: ~$204.80/month Add it all up across my initial 90-day push: roughly $454.50 in first-order payouts plus $614.40 in recurring commissions (because some subscriptions started early in the period and have been paying for three months). Total: a little over $1,000. Hours invested? I wrote four blog posts, made two YouTube tutorials, and sent three newsletter mentions. That's roughly 25 hours of content work. Per-hour rate: ~$40/hour. Above my freelance floor, so it stays. # # Three Realistic Scenarios — Pick Yours Let me model this out for three creator archetypes so you can plug in your own numbers. # # # Scenario A: The Tiny Blog You've got a new blog, maybe 3,000-5,000 monthly visitors. You write two comparison posts about API platforms — those posts get maybe 600 views each per month, after they've been up a year.
• Monthly visitors to affiliate content: ~1,200
• Click-through rate (realistic for tech content): 1.5%
• Clicks per month: ~18
• Conversion rate (realistic for cold clicks): 2%
• New referrals per month: ~0.36, or roughly 4 per year If all four referrals land on the Business plan and stay subscribed:
• First-order (Year 1): 4 × $7.50 = $30
• Recurring after Year 1: 4 × $4.00 = $16/month Total Year 1 income: probably $80-100. After Year 1: around $192/year recurring from that cohort alone. Hours to write those two posts: probably 6-8 hours. Per-hour rate after Year 2: solid $30-40/hour and growing. Not life-changing, but it's passive income on evergreen content. That bar only rises as you publish more articles. # # # Scenario B: The Growing YouTube Channel You have 8,000-15,000 subscribers, decent engagement, and you publish tutorials monthly. Let me model a single video.
• First-month views: ~6,000
• 12-month cumulative views: ~22,000
• Description link click-through (video tutorials convert well): 3%
• Clicks per video: ~200 in month one, ~660 in year one
• Conversion rate (video audiences are warmer): 2.5%
• New referrals per video per year: ~16-17 Commission math (assuming 70% Pro, 25% Business, 5% Scale mix):
• First-order per video: roughly $135-150
• Recurring per video after 12 months: ~$28-35/month If you publish one tutorial monthly, after 12 months you've got 12 videos generating roughly $300-450/month in recurring commissions, plus you've accumulated maybe $1,500-1,800 in first-order bonuses throughout the year. First-year total: $2,000-2,800. Hours invested: maybe 40-50 hours of scripting, filming, and editing. Per-hour rate: $40-50/hour, and every video you publish from then on is a 100% margin asset. # # # Scenario C: The Newsletter + Blog Operation You're past 20,000 email subscribers and your blog pulls 60,000+ monthly visitors. You're producing content regularly and you have authority in your niche. With 2-3% click-through and 2-3% conversion rates (because authority compounds both metrics), you're generating 20-35 new referrals every single month. Let's average that at 25/month. After 12 months you have a referral base of approximately 250-300 active users. With a realistic mix favoring Business and Scale plans on the higher end:
• Recurring monthly commission: $700-1,300/month
• First-order commissions layered on top each month: another $200-400/month average
• Annual earnings: $10,000-18,000 This is where the affiliate game gets serious. At this tier you're either making this a full-time gig or it's a fantastic salary supplement on top of your dev job. # # The Compounding Math Nobody Talks About This is the part that gets me excited and that most articles skip past. Recurring commissions compound. Every single new user I refer increases my monthly baseline income. Let me show you what that actually looks like on my Notion tracker:
• Month 1 starting fresh: 0 referrals, $0/month recurring
• Month 3 (early traction phase): 30 referrals, ~$85/month recurring
• Month 6 (gaining momentum): 110 referrals, ~$310/month recurring
• Month 12 (if I keep producing content): 250+ referrals, $700+/month recurring And here's the thing — that Month 12 number keeps paying whether or not I publish anything new. The income is decoupled from my time. That's the whole point of recurring revenue. It's not sexy on month one. It's life-changing by month 18. My current dashboard shows about $205/month recurring. By mid-next year, if I keep publishing at my current cadence, I'll be looking at $400-600/month passive. That pays for a chunk of my mortgage. From blog posts I wrote in pajamas. # # My Tracking Setup (Steal This) Since you asked about my Notion dashboard earlier — here's the structure. Create one database with these properties:
• Date (referral signup date)
• Plan tier (Pro / Business / Scale)
• First-order commission (number)
• Monthly recurring (number)
• Status (Active / Cancelled)
• Source content (which blog post or video)
• Hours to produce (time invested)
• Lifetime value (formula: first-order + recurring × months active) Then create a second simple table that aggregates monthly recurring across all programs so you can see your passive income trend at a glance. Add a third section that calculates per-hour ROI per content piece. Every Sunday I spend 20 minutes updating the numbers. That's my entire "management overhead" for what is now a five-figure annual side revenue stream. # # The Day Job Angle I want to be transparent about something. My tech job gives me traffic advantages. I write about what I know, and I know backend systems, API integrations, and developer tooling. That means my content resonates with the exact people who would buy AI API access. If you're not a dev, you can still pull this off, but you'll need to position yourself differently. Focus on tutorials, no-code integrations, business use cases — the people in those lanes will still convert because AI APIs are no longer just dev tools. The bigger advantage of my day job is time arbitrage. I batch content on weekends and during slow sprint weeks. The 25 hours I've spent on Global API affiliate content this quarter were almost entirely evenings and one full Saturday. None of it touched my work output. # # What I'd Tell a Friend Considering This If you're on the fence about joining the Global API affiliate program, here's my real talk: The recurring component is what makes this different from every other affiliate offer you'll find. Most programs give you a 30% one-time payout and that's it. Global API gives you 15% upfront plus 8% every single month that user stays subscribed. That's the only math that matters if you're thinking long-term income rather than quick wins. The platform itself has 150+ models accessible through one unified API, which makes it genuinely useful — and that utility is exactly what drives retention for your referrals. When your referred users stick around, your recurring income sticks around. There's also the 10% premium tier that top affiliates unlock, which I haven't hit yet but is in my sights. That's a nice lever for people who go hard on this. If you want to stop guessing about which affiliate programs are worth your content hours and start tracking real numbers, the Global API affiliate program is where I'd start. The commission structure rewards you for playing the long game, the platform converts real users, and the recurring angle means every blog post or video you publish is essentially an annuity contract. You can sign up here and grab your referral link: https://global-apis.com/affiliate?ref=devto-how-much-earn-ai-affiliate Set up your Notion tracker the same day. Track everything from referral one. Run the experiment for 90 days and let the data — not the hype — tell you whether to keep going. That's how I picked Global API over the other three programs I tested. The numbers made the decision for me.