Here's the thing: i'm writing this from a café in Lisbon at 6:47 AM, laptop open, staring at a Stripe dashboard that has changed my life in ways I genuinely did not expect. Eight months ago, I was a mid-level backend dev pulling €58,000 a year, miserable, and scrolling Twitter at 2 AM looking for an escape hatch. Today, my side hustle brings in more than my old salary, and I haven't had a real "boss" in seven months.
This is a build-in-public post. That means I'm showing you everything — the wins, the losses, the months I nearly quit, the month I made $47 and almost rage-deleted the whole project. If you want a glossy "passive income" fantasy, close this tab. If you want the messy truth about reselling AI APIs as a solo founder, grab a coffee.
Here's how it started, where I'm at right now, and the exact playbook I wish someone had handed me on day one.
The 2 AM Tweet That Changed Everything
It was a Tuesday in March. I was doom-scrolling when I saw a builder I follow post a screenshot of a Stripe payout — $3,800 for the month, all from affiliate commissions on an AI API platform. No SaaS. No ads. No funnel. Just a link in his bio and a Notion page he wrote in an afternoon.
I clicked through. The platform was Global API, and the deal was simple: send someone to sign up, you get 15% on their first order. If they stick around, you get 8% recurring on every renewal. On premium tier plans, that bumps to 10%. There are 150+ models accessible through a single API key, which meant I could offer my customers a buffet of options without juggling ten different provider relationships.
I closed the tab. I opened it again. I closed it. I opened it a third time and made a cup of tea. By 3 AM I had signed up for the affiliate program at global-apis.com/affiliate and started outlining a landing page in a Google Doc.
That was the moment. Not glamorous. Not strategic. Just a tired developer who finally said "let me try."
Month 1: The Delusion Phase
I want to be honest about my first month because the build-in-public movement only works if we're actually transparent.
My first mistake: I built a generic landing page. "Access 150+ AI models through one API. Simple pricing. Fast support." It looked like every other reseller page on the internet. I spent 40 hours on it. I made $0. Not a single signup.
I was convinced the platform was the issue. I was convinced the commission was too low. I was convinced the market was saturated. I was wrong about all of it. The real problem was that I was selling to everyone, which means I was selling to no one.
I almost quit in week three. I'm glad I didn't.
The Ugly Math: What I Actually Earned
Here's my real numbers, pulled from my notes app where I log everything (transparency, people — that's the whole point of build-in-public):
- Month 1: $47 total. One signup. I almost cried.
- Month 2: $312. I figured out Reddit.
- Month 3: $891. First "real" month. Felt rich.
- Month 4: $1,604. I started charging for setup help.
- Month 5: $2,210. Hired a VA to handle support tickets.
- Month 6: $3,480. I gave my two weeks' notice at my day job.
- Month 7: $2,940. Hit a churn problem. Almost panicked.
- Month 8 (so far): $4,215 and counting. So lifetime revenue from this side hustle: roughly $15,700 over eight months. Not life-changing on paper. But here's the part the screenshots don't show: month 8 is mostly recurring. That 8% recurring commission on customers who stick around is doing the heavy lifting. I now wake up to Stripe notifications for sales I made months ago. That's the magic of recurring affiliate revenue, and it's the reason this model works. If you're brand new, don't anchor to my month 8. Anchor to my month 1. I had to crawl through that to get here. # # Why I Picked Global API (and Why I Stuck With It) I'm going to be upfront: I tested three platforms before settling on the one I use. I won't name the other two because this isn't a comparison post and the build-in-public rule is to share your story, not trash competitors. But I will tell you what made me stay. The first thing was the model selection. With 150+ models available through a single API, I'm not locked into one provider's roadmap. If a customer comes to me asking for a specific model for translation, or summarization, or image generation, I can almost always say yes. That flexibility is what lets me serve niche audiences without rebuilding my stack every quarter. The second thing was the commission structure. Let me break it down because the math is what made this viable:
- 15% on every customer's first order. This is your "acquisition bonus." It's what pays for the time you spent finding that customer in the first place.
- 8% recurring on every renewal. This is your retirement plan. Every customer who stays is a small monthly annuity.
- 10% on premium tier plans. When customers upgrade, your commission rate goes up too. This is the part nobody talks about, and it's the reason I now actively pitch the premium tier to anyone who'll listen. The third thing was less sexy but more important: the platform has been stable. My customers don't complain about outages. My dashboards don't randomly break. When something does go wrong, the support team actually responds. If you're going to put your reputation behind a reseller brand, you need to be able to sleep at night. I sleep fine. The affiliate dashboard itself is clean. I can see clicks, signups, conversion rates, monthly recurring revenue, and projected payouts. I take a screenshot of it on the first of every month and post it to my Twitter. People love that. It's the kind of transparency that builds trust with an audience, and trust is what makes affiliate links convert. # # The Niche Mistake (and How I Fixed It) Month 1, I sold to "developers." That was a mistake. Developers are the hardest people in the world to sell to because they will reverse-engineer your margins, find your supplier, and sign up directly the next day. I lost about a dozen potential customers to exactly this. Month 3, I niched down to small e-commerce brands in the EU. Specifically, founders doing $10K–$100K MRR who needed AI for product descriptions, customer support replies, and ad copy. These were people who didn't want to touch an API. They didn't want to read documentation. They wanted someone to hand them a working solution and a Slack channel to ping when something broke. That pivot was the unlock. Once I positioned myself as the person who handles the technical side so they can focus on running their store, the math started to work. I charge a one-time setup fee (which I keep — this isn't affiliate revenue, this is service revenue) plus the customer pays for their API usage through my link, which generates the recurring commission. This is the part I want to scream from the rooftops: the recurring commission is what turns this from a hustle into a real business. If you can sign up 30–50 customers per month who stick around for six months, you're looking at thousands in passive income that compounds. My current book of business generates roughly $1,400/month in pure recurring commission, and I do almost nothing to maintain it. The customers just keep paying their API bills and I keep getting my 8%. # # What Nobody Tells You About Reselling AI APIs Let me save you some pain by sharing the stuff I learned the hard way. Customer support is a full-time job. When someone's chatbot breaks at 11 PM, they don't care that you're a one-person operation. They want a response in 10 minutes or they want a refund. I now have a VA in the Philippines who handles tier-1 support for $6/hour. Best money I spend all month. Churn is the silent killer. Month 7 I lost about $700 in monthly recurring commission because a batch of customers decided AI wasn't working for their use case and canceled. I had no warning. The only defense is constantly signing up new customers to backfill the ones who leave. My VA does outbound every Friday — 50 personalized DMs to potential customers in my niche. You will have a "platform risk" moment. About four months in, one of the platforms I was considering (not the one I use) suddenly changed their commission structure and slashed recurring rates in half. I watched Twitter threads from affiliates losing thousands overnight. This is why I picked a platform with a clear, public, stable affiliate structure and a track record of paying on time. The 15% / 8% / 10% rates on Global API have been consistent since I joined, and that stability is worth more than a slightly higher rate somewhere else. You need to build an audience, even a small one. I have 4,200 Twitter followers. I post income reports monthly. I share the dashboard screenshots, the wins, the losses, the customer support horror stories. That audience is what drives the 200–400 clicks my affiliate link gets every month. Without the audience, the link is dead. Build-in-public isn't a vanity exercise — it's a distribution strategy. # # My Monthly Income Report Template Since I share these publicly, here's roughly what I post each month on the first:
- Total revenue (recurring + new)
- New customers signed up
- Churned customers + reason
- Top-performing content (which tweet / post drove the most clicks)
- One lesson learned
- Goal for next month This format has been the single biggest growth driver for my affiliate income. People forward these reports to friends. Other developers DM me asking how to start. Half my best customers came from people who read my income report, clicked through, and signed up. The compounding effect of consistent transparency is real. # # What I'd Tell Past-Me If I could send a message back to March-me, sitting at his kitchen table at 3 AM, here's what I'd say:
- Don't try to sell to developers. Pick a non-technical niche and own it completely.
- The 8% recurring is more important than the 15% first-order. Optimize for lifetime value, not quick wins.
- Start posting your numbers publicly from day one. Even when they're embarrassing. Especially when they're embarrassing.
- Hire a VA sooner than you think. You'll spend the first three months doing support yourself and you'll burn out.
- Don't compare your month 3 to someone else's month 18. Linear growth is a lie. It's always lumpy. # # Should You Try This? My Honest Answer I'm not going to pretend this is for everyone. You need to be comfortable with sales, support, and the emotional rollercoaster of self-employment. You need to be okay with months where the dashboard shows $400 and your brain tells you to quit. You need to be willing to post your real numbers publicly, including the bad ones. But if you can do those things, the math actually works. The barrier to entry is the lowest of any online business I've ever looked at. You don't need to ship a product. You don't need to raise funding. You don't need a co-founder. You need a niche, a landing page, an audience, and an affiliate link. The reason I'm comfortable recommending the Global API affiliate program specifically is that the commission structure is genuinely strong: 15% on first orders, 8% recurring on renewals, and 10% on premium plans, paid out on a platform with 150+ models that has been consistently reliable. That combination — high first-order bonus, meaningful recurring, premium tier boost, and a wide model catalog — is what made it the right home for my business. The link is here: https://global-apis.com/affiliate I'm not saying it because I have to. I'm saying it because eight months ago, clicking that link was the cheapest decision I ever made, and I want you to have the same shot I had. Now stop reading and go build something. I'll be posting my month 9 income report on the first, win or lose. You'll see my real numbers there too. That's the deal.
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