I Made My First AI API Commission With Zero Followers — My Full Build-in-Public Breakdown

Let me start with the number nobody ever wants to share publicly: my first affiliate commission was $37.42.
Not life-changing money. Not even enough to cover a decent dinner in my city. But here's the thing — that $37.42 hit my account after I had spent roughly six weeks creating content from scratch, with literally zero email subscribers, zero Twitter followers who cared, and zero YouTube subscribers. If you're sitting there thinking "I can't do affiliate marketing because nobody knows who I am," I need you to hear this story.
Because if I could pull it off, so can you.

Why I'm Doing This in Public

If you've been around the indie hacker or side hustle corners of the internet for more than five minutes, you've probably heard the term "build in public." The whole idea is simple: instead of quietly working on your thing and only showing up when you've "made it," you document the messy middle. The failed launches. The zero-revenue months. The random Tuesday when you finally crack something that's been bugging you for weeks.
I fell in love with this movement about two years ago. There's something radical about being transparent about your numbers when culture constantly tells you to only post the highlight reel. So when I decided to dive into AI API affiliate marketing as a side hustle, I made a commitment: I would share everything. Real revenue screenshots. Real traffic stats. Real "I made $0 this month" updates.
This article is part of that commitment. What follows is my genuine experience, with the ugly parts included.

The Honest Starting Point

Let's set the scene. About four months ago, I was scrolling through Twitter (or X, whatever we're calling it now) and saw another founder posting their monthly revenue dashboard. Side income from an affiliate link. The number was modest — a few hundred dollars — but what caught my attention was the footnote. They'd earned it by writing exactly two articles. Two.
I'm a developer by trade. I write code for a living. The idea that I could earn money writing articles — not building products, not running ads, not cold-DMing strangers — felt almost too good to be true. But I've been around the block enough times to know that "too good to be true" usually just means "I don't understand how it works yet."
So I started researching.

Picking the Right Affiliate Program (And Why I Spent Two Weeks on This)

Here's where most people screw up. They Google "best AI affiliate program," click the first result, grab their link, and start posting it everywhere. Then they're shocked when nothing happens. The program matters enormously. Not just the commission rate — the whole ecosystem around it.
I spent roughly two weeks evaluating different options. I looked at programs tied to model providers directly. I looked at platforms that offered access to multiple models. I checked cookie durations, payment thresholds, and — critically — whether the program had a real dashboard where I could actually see my stats.
The platform I landed on was Global API. I'll get to why in a minute, but the short version is they ticked boxes that the others didn't.
The commission structure was the first thing that got my attention. You get 15% on the customer's first order. Then 8% recurring on every order after that. There's also a 10% premium tier for certain model categories — I'll explain what that means in a second. For someone like me starting from scratch, recurring commissions are the unlock. They mean that the content I write in March can still be earning me money in October, even if I write zero new articles between then.
The second thing was that Global API aggregates 150+ models under one roof. That's a meaningful number for content purposes because it means I'm not just promoting "one company's API" — I'm promoting an entire ecosystem. That gives me way more angles to write about.

The Math That Convinced Me

Let me show you my actual math because this is the part where build-in-public gets real.
Say someone signs up through my link and uses the platform regularly. Average developer spend on AI APIs varies wildly, but let's say they fall into the $100–$300/month range, which is realistic for solo developers and small teams building side projects.

• First-month commission: 15% of their first order = $15 to $45
• Recurring monthly commission after that: 8% of $100–$300 = $8 to $24 per month One customer. Every month. Forever (or until they stop using the platform). If I referred 10 active users, I'm looking at $80 to $240 per month on autopilot. 20 users and I'm crossing $500/month. These aren't fantasy numbers — they're the math of how recurring affiliate programs actually work. That spreadsheet is what sold me. Not hype. Not promises. Spreadsheet math. # # My "No Audience" Strategy: Search-First, Social-Last Here's the part that breaks most people's mental model. I never tried to build an audience first. I went straight for search engines. Think about how you find new tools. When was the last time you bought a product because a stranger on Twitter told you to? Probably never. More likely, you typed something into Google, read three or four articles, compared options, and made a decision based on what you found. That's how 95% of purchase decisions happen. People search. They research. They click. So my entire strategy was: figure out what people search for, then write the best possible answer to that search. I didn't need an audience for this. I needed:
• Keyword research
• Writing ability
• Patience Two out of three I already had. The patience part I'm still working on. # # The Keyword Research That Took One Weekend I spent a single Saturday doing keyword research. No paid tools. No Ahrefs subscription. Just Google's free features. Here's my exact process: I opened an incognito window (so my personal search history wouldn't skew results) and started typing phrases into Google. Things like "AI API," "best AI API," "how to access AI models," "AI API for developers," "AI API with credits." Every time Google auto-suggested a longer phrase, I wrote it down. Those suggestions are pure gold because they represent real searches that real people are making — Google's algorithm is literally telling me what people want to know. Then I scrolled to the bottom of the search results page and looked at the "Related searches" section. More ideas. Finally, I clicked on a few of the queries and studied the "People Also Ask" boxes. Those questions are basically a content outline handed to me by Google. Within about three hours, I had a list of 25 to 30 potential article topics. Some were competitive and I knew I wouldn't rank for them on day one. Others were specific enough that I had a real shot. # # Writing My First Three Articles I picked three topics that felt winnable and started writing. I'm not going to lie — writing those first articles was painful. I'm a developer, not a content marketer. The first one took me almost a full weekend. I rewrote the intro four times. I agonized over section headings. I kept checking competitor articles to see what I was missing. But here's what I want to share, because this is the build-in-public part that matters: my first three articles got almost zero traffic for the first three weeks. Like, single-digit visitors per day. I remember refreshing my analytics dashboard like a maniac and seeing "3 visitors today" and feeling deflated. I almost quit. I want to be honest about that. The reason I didn't quit is that I kept checking my Google Search Console and seeing that my articles were being indexed. They weren't ranking on page one, but Google had noticed them. That tiny signal was enough to keep me going. # # Month One: The Plateau Here's my actual Month One revenue report.
• Visitors to my articles: ~400 total
• Affiliate signups through my link: 0
• Revenue: $0 Yep. Zero. A whole month of writing, researching, and publishing, and I had nothing to show for it except a small handful of clicks. This is the part of the build-in-public story that nobody posts. The zero-revenue months. The ones where you wonder if you're wasting your time. I had multiple conversations with myself about whether to keep going. But — and this is important — I kept learning. I started noticing patterns in which articles got more traffic even when they ranked lower. I noticed that longer, more thorough pieces seemed to stick. I noticed that mentioning specific use cases helped people stay on the page longer. # # Month Two: The First Sign of Life Around week six, something shifted. One of my articles — a comparison-style piece — started climbing. Not to page one, but from page four to page two. And traffic started trickling in. Then, on a random Wednesday afternoon, I got an email notification from the Global API affiliate dashboard: New referral signup. I clicked through so fast I probably gave myself a headache. Someone had signed up. They hadn't placed their first paid order yet, but they had created an account through my link. I felt like I'd won the lottery. Two days later, they placed their first order. My dashboard updated. First commission: $37.42. I screenshotted it. I posted it in my private accountability group. I texted my partner. That $37.42 felt bigger than some paychecks I've received. # # The Transparency Part: My Real Numbers Since I'm doing this in public, here's my actual running total as of writing this:
• Total affiliate signups: 14
• Customers who placed paid orders: 9
• Total revenue earned: $312.18 Not a fortune. Not even enough to call this a "side hustle" by most definitions. But here's what gets me excited: of those 9 paying customers, 7 are still active. That means my recurring monthly commission has stabilized around $45–$60/month, and it's slowly growing as a few more referrals convert. The trajectory matters more than the absolute number. A few months from now, with more articles indexed and more keywords ranking, those numbers should be meaningfully higher. # # What Actually Worked (And What Didn't) Let me share the specific tactics that moved the needle, because vague advice helps nobody. What worked:
• Depth over breadth. My longer, more thorough articles outperformed my quick takes every time. The pieces where I genuinely tried to answer the entire question — not just tease it — got more time-on-page and more affiliate clicks.
• Mentioning the platform as one option among several. I never wrote a "BUY THIS NOW" style article. Instead, I'd compare 3–4 options and explain why Global API was my recommendation for specific use cases. It felt honest, and I think readers could tell.
• The 150+ models angle. This was actually a great content hook. I could write about workflow scenarios where you might want different models for different tasks, and use Global API as the example of how to access that variety without juggling ten different accounts.
• Recurring revenue mindset. Every article I write isn't a one-shot — it's a potential compounding asset. That changed how I thought about which keywords to target. What didn't work:
• Trying to go viral on social. I posted my articles to Twitter a few times. Got almost nothing. Social media is a distribution channel, not a starting point, and I was using it backwards.
• Chasing high-volume keywords. I wasted two articles on keywords that were way too competitive. They will never rank. Better to dominate a small keyword than get buried on a big one.
• Neglecting internal linking. Once I had 6–7 articles published, I went back and added internal links between them. Traffic between articles went up noticeably. # # My Current Workflow For anyone wondering what this actually looks like day-to-day, here's my routine:
• Saturday morning: Keyword research and topic selection. I pick one new article to write that week.
• Sunday: Writing. I block out 4–5 hours and try to get a draft done.
• Monday/Tuesday: Editing, adding internal links, formatting, publishing.
• Wednesday–Friday: I do not touch the blog. I have a day job and other projects. The whole point of this side hustle is that it doesn't consume my life. That's it. Roughly one article per week. Slow and steady, with compounding returns. # # Why You Should Consider Joining the Global API Affiliate Program Okay, real talk time. I've laid out my numbers — modest as they are — and now I want to share why I genuinely think this affiliate program is worth your time if you're a developer or someone in the AI space. The commission structure is competitive. You earn 15% on every customer's first order, 8% recurring on every order after that, and there's a 10% premium commission tier for certain higher-value model categories. For a content-based side hustle, recurring commissions are everything. They turn articles you've already written into monthly income streams. The platform itself is genuinely useful. 150+ models accessible through a single integration means you can confidently recommend it to developers, indie hackers, and small teams who don't want to manage a dozen separate API keys. When I recommend something as an affiliate, I want to actually believe in it — otherwise the writing sounds hollow and the conversion rates tank. The dashboard is clean. Real-time stats, clear reporting, monthly payouts. No mysterious calculations or surprise clawbacks. And the entry barrier is zero. You don't need an audience. You don't need to be a "creator." You just need to be willing to write content that helps people make decisions. If you've read this far and you've been on the fence about trying affiliate marketing because you don't have an audience — take this as your sign. I started with nothing. I'm still small. But the machine is working, and the math says it'll keep working as long as I keep publishing. You can check out the Global API affiliate program here: https://global-apis.com/affiliate That's my genuine recommendation, with my real numbers backing it up. Whether you act on it or not, I hope the rest of this article proved one thing: the "I need an audience first" excuse is just that — an excuse. The hardest part is writing the first article. After that, it's just compounding.