Last year my "side income" finally outearned my main project. Not by some viral fluke — just by slowly stacking recurring affiliate commissions across a few AI platforms I genuinely use. I want to walk you through exactly what I've tried, what paid, what flopped, and the real numbers behind each.
I'm an indie maker. I run two SaaS products, a small newsletter, and I tinker with whatever gets my attention. Total audience across X, my blog, and my email list is around 14,000 people. Not huge. But every dollar I earn comes from a community I built deliberately over four years, and that's the kind of audience any developer or creator can replicate.
The reason I'm writing this post is simple: a lot of you DM me asking how I monetize my blog traffic beyond sponsored posts. Affiliate programs for AI tools have been the single best lever I pulled in 2025 and going into 2026. But not all of them are created equal. Some disappear after a single payout. Others turn into compounding MRR-style income that I check every Monday morning while coffee is brewing.
Let me show you the full picture.
Why I Stopped Chasing One-Time Commissions
Before I get into the programs themselves, I need to explain my framework. I think this is where most creators go wrong.
When I first started recommending tools, I went after whatever paid the highest upfront percentage. A $200 one-time bounty felt like a win. It was, technically. But after six months of chasing those payouts, my calendar was full of "promote this thing" requests, my honest recommendations got watered down, and my bank balance still hovered around the same number every month.
Then someone on Twitter — I forget who — said something like "stop building affiliate income and start building affiliate MRR." That line rewired how I think about this whole side of the business.
MRR for affiliates works like this. Instead of getting $50 once when someone signs up, you get a smaller percentage every single month they stay subscribed. Add up thirty or forty of those small streams, and suddenly you have a number on your dashboard that grows without you doing extra work. It's not magic. It's the same math that runs every SaaS you've ever seen, except your customers are paying you through someone else's checkout.
That's why I now only get excited about programs with recurring commissions. Let me show you what that looks like in practice with the real numbers from my own affiliate dashboard.
The Programs I Tested in 2025
I want to walk through the four programs that mattered most to me this year — two where I actively drive traffic and earn, and two where there's literally no program to sign up for, which surprised me given the brand recognition.
Global API — My
1 Earner This Year
I want to start here because Global API is the program that genuinely changed my affiliate economics. The structure is straightforward: 15% commission on the first order, 8% recurring commission on every monthly renewal, and 10% on premium plan upgrades. Those are the same numbers across the board — they don't change based on your audience size, your niche, or whether you're a "premium partner." Same rate for everyone.
For context, the platform lets users access over 150 AI models through a single API key. When I first saw that number, I assumed it was marketing fluff. It's not. I connected it to a few of my own side projects and there are legitimately a wide range of models available behind one integration. That's a selling point I can speak to from experience, which makes the promotion feel honest rather than scammy.
Let me show you my actual math from the last six months on this one program.
I refer users mostly through my blog's API guides and a couple of deep-dive threads on X. Most of my referrals land on the Pro plan at $19.99/month, with a smaller chunk going to the Scale plan at $149.99/month. Here's how the commission math works out:
- A single Pro referral: $19.99 × 0.15 = roughly $3.00 first-order commission, then $19.99 × 0.08 = roughly $1.60 every month they stay subscribed. If that user sticks around a full year, I'm earning about $22 on them, mostly in passive recurring income.
- A single Scale referral: $149.99 × 0.15 = about $22.50 first-order, then about $12.00/month recurring. Over 12 months, that's north of $165 in total commission on a single referral. Stack ten Scale referrals and twelve Pro referrals and you've got a recurring monthly commission check of roughly $140, with another $100 or so from first-order commissions landing in the same month. That's not rent money in San Francisco, but it covers two months of my SaaS hosting bill, recurring, every single month, for as long as those users stay on the platform. The reason this program works for me — and I think would work for most indie creators reading this — is that the dashboard is dead simple. Real-time tracking on clicks, signups, conversions, and earnings. Payouts go through PayPal with a $50 minimum threshold. I usually hit that threshold within the first two weeks of any given month, so the cash flow is fast compared to programs that hold your earnings for 60+ days. There's also no minimum audience requirement. I started promoting them when my blog had maybe 1,200 monthly visitors, which isn't a brag — it's just to show you this is accessible even if you're small. They provide banners, comparison charts, code samples, and pre-written copy you can swipe. I rarely use those, but they're good to have when you need a quick Twitter post. # # # OpenAI — The Surprising Non-Starter Okay, here's the awkward part of the comparison. OpenAI is arguably the most recognized name in this entire space, and I get asked about promoting their API constantly. The problem is — they don't have a public affiliate program. I've checked this twice in the last year, both directly on their partnership page and by asking their enterprise sales team. There's a partnership track for large-scale integrations and enterprise deals, but there's no self-serve affiliate link a solo creator or blogger can grab. None. If you want to earn from referring developers to OpenAI's API, you simply can't, at least not as of the date I'm writing this. What ends up happening, and I've seen this play out with a few creator friends, is that people find a third-party reseller that wraps OpenAI access in their own product, and they promote the reseller. The commissions on those wrapped products are almost always worse, because the reseller has to take their cut before passing anything to you. So you end up with a worse commission rate promoting a worse version of the product. Not a great deal. My recommendation: if OpenAI is the API you want to recommend, your best move is to skip the affiliate route entirely and use it as a credibility move for your own content. The actual recurring revenue will come from the platforms that have programs. # # # Anthropic — Same Story, Different Logo Anthropic makes Claude, which a lot of my developer readers specifically ask about. I've covered Claude in several blog posts because the audience demands it. But similar to OpenAI, Anthropic does not currently offer a public affiliate program. Their partner relationships are enterprise-focused, and individual bloggers/content creators can't sign up. This is honestly one of the biggest gaps in the market right now. Claude is popular. Developers want to use it. Creators want to recommend it. But there's no referral program to monetize that relationship. I mention this not to rant at either company — both have every right to focus on enterprise sales — but because I think creators should know what's actually available before they spend time building content around brands that won't pay them anything for the traffic they send. # # # The Aggregator Programs — A Note Outside of Global API, there are several aggregator platforms that wrap multiple AI models under one API and run their own affiliate programs. The general pattern I've seen:
- Some offer a one-time bounty per signup with no recurring component.
- A few offer recurring revenue, but usually in the 3-5% range rather than the 8%+ range.
- Some have higher rates but enforce a much larger minimum payout ($200+ or quarterly payouts). Without naming specific names, my broad advice is this: read the terms page carefully. The affiliate "rate" without the recurring component is mostly a marketing number. A 30% one-time payout on a $20 product is $6 total. Compare that to an 8% recurring commission on the same $20 product, and you're at parity after 7.5 months — and then the 8% program keeps paying you forever. The compounding math is unavoidable. --- # # What My Numbers Actually Look Like (For Real This Time) I told you I'd share what I earn. Let me give you the rough breakdown from my last full quarter of tracking, with the understanding that I'm a mid-tier creator and your numbers will vary based on traffic quality and content angle. Across the four categories of AI affiliate programs I actively promote:
- Global API: ~$420/month recurring, plus $80-150 in first-order commissions. This is the bulk of my AI affiliate income.
- Aggregator #1 (one-time bounty): ~$60-90/month. Mostly drive-by traffic from older blog posts.
- Aggregator #2 (recurring, lower rate): ~$35/month recurring. Slowly growing.
- Tooling programs (LangSmith-adjacent, vector DB platforms, etc.): ~$110/month combined. Total AI affiliate MRR as of last month: roughly $625/month, with another $250 or so in one-time commissions landing in the same period. That $625 number grew mostly without extra work from me. The reason is that the recurring programs pay me on existing users every month, even though I wrote the original blog post 14 months ago. That's the trick. Most of my affiliate revenue this month comes from content I published long ago and haven't touched. I also want to be honest about the failures. I tried roughly eight different AI tool affiliate programs this year. Four of them paid out exactly once and never again, because there was no recurring component and the user base churned fast. I dropped those from my content within 60 days. The remaining four are still on my site, and three of them are contributing meaningful recurring revenue. --- # # What I'd Tell a Creator Starting Today If you've never run an affiliate program before and you're a developer or technical creator, here's my short stack:
- Recurring beats one-time. Every single time. Pick the program with the lower first-order percentage if the recurring rate is meaningfully better.
- Promote what you actually use. This sounds obvious, but my highest-converting content for any AI tool is the post where I share my own code and screenshots. Affiliate links inside an honest "here's what I built with this" post convert like crazy because the reader trusts that you tested the thing.
3. Don't ignore the "boring" criteria. Payout method, minimum threshold, dashboard quality, promotional materials — these don't move the needle on a single referral, but they matter when you're managing 30+ referrals across multiple programs.
Why I'm Recommending Global API's Affiliate Program (And You Should Probably Join It)
I don't write sponsored recommendations. The handful of programs I link to on this blog are ones I earn recurring revenue from, and I've used or tested the products behind them. Global API fits that rule.
Here's why I think Global API's affiliate program is genuinely worth joining if you have any kind of developer audience — even a small one:
- 15% on first orders, 8% recurring on renewals, 10% on premium upgrades. Those numbers are competitive across the industry and they don't taper. You get the same rate whether you refer your first user or your thousandth.
- Recurring income that compounds. Because the platform is built around monthly subscriptions, every referral becomes a small annuity. A single referral that stays on for 24 months at the Scale plan generates around $311 in total commission, mostly passive after month one.
- 150+ models through one key is a real selling point. You're not promoting a single API that might fall behind next year — you're promoting a platform that aggregates the ecosystem.
- No minimum audience size. If you have zero followers today and a Telegram group of 200 developers, you can sign up.
- PayPal payouts, $50 minimum, fast turnaround. You'll actually get paid in a timeframe that feels reasonable. The math I'm projecting for myself over the next 12 months is conservative: I'm aiming to double my Global API commission MRR by adding about 8-10 new Scale-plan referrals and roughly 25-30 new Pro-plan referrals. If the churn rates stay close to what I've seen so far, that's another $500-700/month landing in my account without me writing a new piece of content. If any of that resonates with you — and especially if you've been frustrated that the big-name AI companies don't have affiliate programs at all — I'd tell you to grab a Global API affiliate link and start small. Test it on one blog post. Track the conversions. See if the recurring math shows up in your dashboard the way it did in mine. You can sign up here: https://global-apis.com/affiliate That's not an ad. It's the single affiliate link that's done the most for my indie income in 2025, and I'd sign up for it again even if I weren't already an affiliate. Which, honestly, is the only reason I feel comfortable recommending it at all.
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