I want to start with a confession. When I first heard about affiliate marketing for AI APIs, I laughed. Not because the concept was bad, but because I was sure it wasn't for someone like me. I had a personal blog that maybe got 30 visitors a day. I had no email list. I had a Twitter account with 200 followers, most of them bots. I had no YouTube channel, no podcast, no TikTok. Nothing.
And yet, here I am, writing this with actual numbers to show you. Because I made my first commission promoting an AI API platform, and I did it before I had anything close to an "audience." This is the most transparent breakdown I can give. No gatekeeping. No "10 secrets" listicle. Just the real story of how I went from zero to a first payout, and what I'd do differently if I started over.
The Moment I Almost Gave Up Before I Started
I want to paint you a picture of my mindset going in, because I think a lot of people are sitting in the same boat right now.
I was scrolling through Twitter one night and saw someone post a screenshot of their affiliate dashboard. They were earning passive income from recommending AI tools, and the dashboard showed numbers I couldn't ignore. But the comments underneath were full of the same objections I've heard a hundred times:
"Easy when you already have an audience."
"Built-in advantage, nice flex."
"This works for creators, not normal people."
And honestly? I agreed with them. I really did. I had tried a few affiliate things before, and they went nowhere. I assumed I needed a brand, a list, a polished newsletter, maybe a YouTube channel. Something that gave me "permission" to recommend products to strangers.
That night I went down a rabbit hole. I started reading about how search engines actually work. I read posts from SEO folks who were quietly building small content sites that pulled in thousands of visitors a month — visitors they had never met, never emailed, never DM'd. The lightbulb went off. Affiliate marketing doesn't require an audience. It requires discoverability.
That's a completely different game. And it's a game I could play.
The Strategy: Build in Public Means Build in Search
If you've been following my journey, you know I'm obsessed with the build-in-public movement. I share my revenue dashboards, my mistakes, my monthly income reports — all of it. But there's a part of build in public that I think gets completely overlooked. The early phase, the part where nobody's watching, is lonely. And most people quit there.
I was determined not to quit. So I set a simple rule for myself: I would document the entire process, even if nobody was reading. I'd share my keyword research, my drafts, my traffic numbers, my earnings. Even if the only person who saw it was me.
This is the part
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