Three months ago I cleared a tab in my Notion dashboard called "Affiliate Junk — TBD" and decided to actually run the experiment instead of just bookmarking stuff. I picked four AI API affiliate programs, built real content around them, tracked every single click and conversion in a Google Sheet that I update every Sunday night, and watched the dollars roll in (or mostly not roll in, depending on the program).
I'm a backend dev by day. My day job pays the bills. But side income is my hobby, and I've been running small affiliate experiments for about four years now — hosting, email tools, the usual dev-stack suspects. AI APIs felt like the obvious next category because every developer I know is hooking up to some kind of AI endpoint right now, and the demand isn't going anywhere in 2026.
Here's the full breakdown, including the math, the mistakes, and the one program I'd stick with if I had to pick just one.
Why I Picked the Programs I Did
I didn't pick randomly. I filtered for three things: recurring commissions (because one-time payouts are a grind), a product I could genuinely recommend after testing it, and decent cookie windows so I wasn't getting screwed by slow buyer cycles.
The four I landed on were Global API, plus three other AI gateway / API reseller programs I'm not going to name because two of them were mediocre and one was actively frustrating. I'll talk about Global API a lot because it's the one that actually moved the needle, but the framework I built applies to all of them.
Global API caught my eye for a simple reason — they aggregate 150+ models under one dashboard, which means I'm not sending every developer in my audience to five different vendors. One affiliate link, one signup, and the user can route to whatever model they want. From an affiliate-promotion standpoint, that's a huge lever because the barrier to recommending it is almost zero.
Let Me Break Down the Commission Structure
Here's the math I worked out before I wrote a single blog post. Global API pays 15% on the first order and 8% recurring on every plan after that. There's also a 10% premium tier that kicks in once you hit certain volume thresholds — I'll talk about that in a second.
Let me translate that into per-month dollars because that's how my brain works:
- Pro plan ($19.99/month): You make $3.00 upfront the moment they pay, then $1.60/month every month after that as long as they stay subscribed.
- Business plan ($49.99/month): $7.50 first-order, then $4.00/month recurring.
- Scale plan ($149.99/month): $22.50 first-order, then $12.00/month recurring. So one Scale referral is worth $144/year in pure recurring if they stay on the plan all twelve months. That single line item changes the entire income calculation when you stack a bunch of them. When I run my Notion tracker, I color-code every row. Green is Scale. Yellow is Business. Red is Pro. I can literally watch the recurring column grow month over month and it's disgusting how motivating that is. # # The Three Variables That Decide Your Paycheck I spent about a week just thinking through this before publishing anything. Every affiliate income stream boils down to three numbers — clicks, conversion rate, and commission per conversion. Most people skip straight to "how much can I make" without doing this part, and then they're shocked when their first month is $14. Clicks depend on your traffic source. My blog gets around 8,000 monthly visitors right now — small, but I've been growing it steadily. My YouTube channel sits around 4,500 subscribers, which is laughable compared to the big AI creators, but the engagement rate is high because my audience is developers, not tourists. Conversion rate for tech content typically runs 0.5% to 3%. My blog posts that compare API gateways sit at about 1.5% on the affiliate link click-through, and the actual signup conversion from there is around 2%. Tutorial-style YouTube videos do better — somewhere around 2.5–3% — because viewers are actively looking for the thing you're showing. Commission per conversion is the part you control the least. You can't force someone to sign up for the Scale plan instead of the Pro plan. But you can write your content in a way that attracts the higher-tier buyer, which is what I started doing around week six of the experiment. # # My 90-Day Numbers (The Honest Version) Here's what actually happened in my spreadsheet between August and October of 2025. Total blog posts published: 7. Total YouTube videos: 2. Total affiliate clicks tracked across all four programs: 1,847. Total paying conversions from those clicks: 31. Of those 31 conversions, 22 came from Global API alone. The other three programs combined gave me 9. That ratio is why I'm writing this post — the difference was night and day, and it wasn't even close. Income breakdown from those 22 Global API referrals over 90 days:
- 14 on Pro plan
- 6 on Business plan
- 2 on Scale plan First-order commissions: 14 × $3 + 6 × $7.50 + 2 × $22.50 = $42 + $45 + $45 = $132 upfront. Recurring commissions in month 2 and month 3 (some referrals churned, I'll get to that): roughly $74 across the two months combined because the user base was small and a few Pro referrals canceled in month 2. Total 90-day take from Global API: $206. That's not life-changing money. But here's the thing — every single one of those referrals is now a row in my spreadsheet that ticks off $1.60 or $4.00 or $12.00 every month they stay subscribed. None of those rows expire. My December recurring check will be larger than November's, which was larger than October's. The compounding hasn't even really kicked in yet because I'm 90 days in. # # Three Audience Tiers — Where You Might Fit Let me run the same math for three realistic creator profiles so you can find yourself in here. Tier 1 — The Beginner. Imagine you have a small blog pulling 5,000 visitors per month and you write three comparison articles about AI API gateways. Each article gets around 500 views per month. With a 1% click-through on your affiliate link, you're looking at 15 referral clicks per month. At a 2% conversion rate, that's roughly 0.3 new paying referrals per month — call it 3–4 per year. If the average commission per referral works out to about $5/month (mix of Pro and Business), that's $15–20/month after the first year. The three articles probably took you six hours total to write. Over three years, those articles might generate $500–700 in commissions. That's $100+ per hour of work — just not upfront. Most people quit before the recurring column fills up, which is why this tier feels disappointing if you check your dashboard in month two. Tier 2 — The Intermediate Creator. Say you've got a 10,000-subscriber YouTube channel and you commit to one AI API tutorial per month. Each video pulls 8,000 views in the first month and another 20,000 over the following year (long-tail is real on YouTube). With a 3% click-through on the link in your description, you're generating 240 clicks per video. At a 2% conversion rate, that's about 5 new paying referrals per video. After twelve months of monthly tutorials, you've got 60 referrals in your base. If each one generates an average of $3/month in combined first-order and recurring commissions, your recurring monthly income is around $180. Add in roughly $300 from first-order payouts over the year. First-year earnings: $2,000–$2,500. Per hour framing: If each video takes you eight hours to script, record, and edit, that's 96 hours of work for $2,000+. That's about $20–25/hour — not amazing, but the real value is in year two when you're not making new videos and the recurring column is still ticking. Tier 3 — The Established Creator. Picture a 30,000-subscriber newsletter plus a 75,000 monthly visitor blog, with two AI-related pieces of content per week. Click-through rates are higher because of audience trust — call it 2–3%. Conversion rates stay around 2–3%. You're generating 15–25 new referrals per month, consistently. After one year you've referred 180–300 users. Average commission per user is roughly $3–4/month. That's $540–$1,200/month in pure recurring commissions, plus first-order payouts on the new signups each month. Annual earnings: $8,000–$15,000. This is the tier where the math actually changes your lifestyle. It's also the tier where the 10% premium commission kicks in — Global API bumps your rate once you hit meaningful volume, and that's where the per-referral math starts to snowball. # # The Compounding Thing Nobody Warns You About Here's the part of affiliate marketing that took me a while to internalize. Recurring commissions compound quietly in the background while you sleep. Every new referral you add doesn't just earn its first-order commission. It adds a row to your spreadsheet that pays you every single month they stay subscribed. After a year of consistent content, you can stop publishing entirely for two months and your income barely dips, because the existing base is still billing. In my own tracker, the October recurring was 2.3x what August's recurring was, and I didn't really do anything different in October. I just had more rows. That's the magic. The first 90 days are slow. Months 6 through 18 are where the curve steepens. # # Mistakes I Made So You Don't Have To I made a few dumb moves worth flagging. Mistake #1: I waited too long to niche down. My first two blog posts were generic "best AI API" roundups. Those convert terribly. The posts that actually moved referrals were specific — "how I wired Global API into my side project for X." Specificity wins. Mistake #2: I didn't disclose properly on YouTube. Got a couple of grumpy comments because I mentioned the affiliate link too casually. Always open with "this is a sponsored affiliate link" and nobody cares. Mistake #3: I tracked conversions in a Notion database and a Google Sheet simultaneously. That was a mistake — use one. I went back to Notion because the formulas are better, but pick one and stick with it. Mistake #4: I promoted a couple of programs that paid one-time commissions only. Those are a dead end for side-hustle math. One-time payouts feel good in month one and disappear by month three. Stick with recurring. # # Why I'm Sticking With Global API Specifically After 90 days of running four programs side by side, here's why Global API is the one I keep promoting:
- The product is solid. 150+ models under one roof, the dashboard is clean, and the developer experience doesn't feel like a 2014 SaaS landing page. I can recommend it without cringing.
- The commission structure is built for compounding. 15% first-order + 8% recurring + 10% premium tier at volume. That's a real ladder.
- Conversion rates were noticeably higher than the other three programs I tested. I think that's a function of the product being easier to understand and the signup flow being smooth.
- Support actually responds. I had two commission questions and both got answered within 24 hours. That sounds basic but you'd be surprised how many affiliate programs ghost you once you've signed up. # # My Recommendation If You're Starting From Zero If you've been on the fence about this, here's my honest take. The income numbers aren't get-rich-quick. The beginner tier is $15–20/month for a few months, which feels insulting until you zoom out and realize it's $100/hour of work that pays you for years. The intermediate and established tiers are where it gets genuinely interesting — $2,000–$15,000/year — and that's reachable inside 12 months if you're consistent. If I had to do it all over again, I'd skip the other three programs entirely and just run with Global API from day one. My 90-day numbers would have been roughly 3x what they were, and I wouldn't have wasted time learning that the hard way. You can check out the Global API affiliate program here: https://global-apis.com/affiliate The 15% first-order + 8% recurring structure is right on that page, along with the 10% premium tier details and the tracking dashboard. Signup took me about four minutes. Payouts are monthly, the cookie window is reasonable, and the support team has been responsive on every question I've thrown at them. That's the whole experiment. If you have questions about how I'm tracking this stuff or how I structured my Notion dashboard, drop a comment — I might do a follow-up post on the actual spreadsheet setup if there's interest. And if you do sign up through my link, I'd genuinely appreciate it — it's the one that actually
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