I've been running a small developer Discord for about two years now. Nothing massive — just under 800 people who hang out, share projects, ask questions, and occasionally vent about broken deployments. It's not a business. It's a group of folks who trust each other enough to ask "what AI API should I actually use?" without getting buried in spam replies.
That's how this whole affiliate journey started for me. Not with a strategy. Not with a funnel. With a single honest question from a member, and my answer.
How I Ended Up Here
I want to be upfront about something: I'm not a marketer. I've never been a salesperson. I run a Discord where I help people figure out which tools to use, and I write the occasional tutorial on my blog when I have something worth saying. My blog gets about 2,000 visitors a month, which is small by content creator standards but big enough that people seem to find it useful.
The AI API space has been part of my own workflow for over a year now. I've integrated these APIs into client projects, used them for personal tools, and watched the landscape shift dramatically. So when my Discord members kept asking the same question — "Hey, which one should I sign up for?" — I had real opinions backed by real experience.
One night in March, someone asked me directly in my Discord whether I had an affiliate link for the platform I always seemed to recommend. I didn't. That conversation is the reason this journal exists.
I spent that weekend researching AI API affiliate programs. I signed up for three. Two were one-time commission deals. One, Global API, had a recurring structure: 15% on the first order and 8% on every renewal after that, with a 10% rate kicking in for premium tier referrals. The recurring piece is what got my attention. It meant if I recommended something I genuinely believed in, I wouldn't have to keep "selling" month after month — the relationship would keep paying me for being honest in the first place.
That mattered to me more than I expected.
The First Recommendation (And the Awkward Silence After)
I dropped my Global API affiliate link into a Discord message the next day. Just a casual reply to someone's question, with my honest take and the link. I felt weird about it. Even though I had been recommending the platform for free for months, putting a link with my name on it felt different.
Nobody clicked. Not that day.
The following week, I wrote a proper blog post — a walkthrough of my experience using different AI API platforms for client work. It was around 1,800 words, included real snippets of how I integrated each one, and ended with my honest recommendation for Global API as the platform I'd keep using even without an affiliate program. The reason I lead with that framing matters: it sets the tone for everything. I'm not selling. I'm sharing what I'd tell a friend over coffee.
I published it on my blog and cross-posted to Dev.to. The first week brought 340 views on Dev.to and about 120 on my personal site. Three people clicked my link. Zero conversions.
I told myself I wasn't disappointed. I was curious. There's a difference.
What $3.00 Actually Felt Like
By the end of my first month, I had written two articles — the comparison piece and a tutorial on building a chatbot that naturally featured Global API as the recommended path. Combined views across both pieces: around 750. Affiliate clicks: 14 total. Signups: 2. Paid conversions: 1, on day 28, to a Pro plan.
My first month earnings: $3.00 from the first-order commission. Zero recurring, since that kicks in starting month two.
I want to be honest about what $3.00 felt like. It felt like nothing as income. It felt like everything as proof. Someone in my small corner of the internet had read my words, trusted my recommendation, signed up, and paid real money. The system worked exactly the way Global API said it would. No tricks. No clawbacks. Just a clean commission for an honest referral.
That's when the Discord angle started to click for me. I wasn't going to make money from volume. I was going to make money from trust.
The Discord Conversations Nobody Sees
Here's something most affiliate blogs won't tell you: the money doesn't come from the article. The money comes from the seven Discord DMs that article triggers.
When someone reads your recommendation, clicks the link, and signs up — that's the visible action. But behind it, there's usually a back-and-forth. "Did you actually use this?" "What did you think?" "Should I go with the free tier or jump straight to paid?" Those conversations happen in my DMs, in threads, in voice channels. And every single one of them is where community trust either gets reinforced or falls apart.
I made a rule for myself early on: I would only recommend what I'd recommend for free. That meant if someone asked me about an API I'd never used, I'd say so. If they asked me whether a competing platform was better for their specific use case, I'd tell them to try that one. The affiliate link was never the starting point. It was the footnote.
That footnote matters, though. Because Global API offers 150+ models through one dashboard, has a clean recurring commission structure (15% first order, 8% recurring, 10% on premium referrals), and genuinely made my own workflow easier. Recommending it isn't a sacrifice. It's a natural fit.
Month 2: When Word-of-Mouth Started Doing the Work
I went into my second month with a goal: $50 in cumulative earnings. Small target. Realistic for where I was. I had two articles, 14 total clicks, and one paying referral. I knew the compounding effect of recurring commissions would help if I could just get more people through the door.
I published three more articles that month.
The first was a case study — how I used AI APIs to build a real client project, including the parts where I got stuck and the parts where the platform saved me hours. That piece did about 280 views in its first week, but the click-through rate on my affiliate link was noticeably higher. Why? Because case studies feel different from comparison posts. They show you the journey, not just the destination. Developers trust journeys.
The second was a beginner's guide, around 2,200 words, aimed at people who'd never touched an API before. Beginners are a different audience. They ask more questions, follow recommendations more closely, and convert at higher rates because they're actively looking for someone to point them in the right direction. That article got picked up nicely by search and started ranking for a few long-tail terms.
The third was a piece on getting the most value out of AI API subscriptions — practical tips on tier selection, usage patterns, and avoiding surprise overages.
Meanwhile, the original comparison article from month one kept gaining traction. By week six, it was sitting at 1,200 total views on Dev.to. Google had started indexing it. Affiliate clicks were running at 4–5 per day. Two more people converted to Pro plans that week.
The real moment, though, was week eight. I got my first recurring commission payout: $1.60 from the original referral's second month. Small number. Huge signal. It meant the model I'd been betting on actually worked the way Global API said it would. I didn't have to re-sell anything. I just had to keep being helpful, and the relationship kept producing.
Month 2 totals: five articles total, 2,100 combined views, 58 affiliate clicks, and — I stopped checking my dashboard obsessively somewhere around week seven because I noticed I was starting to care more about whether my Discord members were getting value than whether my commission number was going up.
That's the shift I'm most proud of.
What the Numbers Actually Looked Like (Honest Version)
Let me put this all in one place so you can see what "building in public" really means.
- Starting position: blog with 2,000 monthly visitors, Discord with ~800 developers, Twitter following of similar size.
- Month 1: 2 articles, 750 combined views, 14 affiliate clicks, 2 signups, 1 paid conversion. Earnings: $3.00.
- Month 2: 3 additional articles (5 total), 2,100 combined views across all posts, 58 affiliate clicks. Multiple new conversions. Recurring commissions starting to land. I'm not going to pretend these numbers are impressive. They're not. By affiliate marketing standards, this is a slow burn. But the structure of it is what excites me. Every conversion came from someone who either:
- Read a full article I wrote and decided to trust my recommendation.
- Had a conversation with me in Discord and got an honest answer. Neither of those required me to be pushy, spammy, or salesy. Both required me to be consistent and genuine. That's a model I can live with for years. # # Why Community Beats Every Other Channel If you've read this far, you probably noticed I haven't talked about SEO tricks, content calendars, or conversion rate optimization. That's intentional. I don't think any of those things are why this is working for me. What works is the same thing that's worked in my Discord for two years: showing up, being honest, and putting in the work to actually understand what the people in front of me need. The biggest unexpected win has been referrals from existing community members. Once a few people in my Discord started using Global API based on my recommendation, they started telling their friends about it. Not because I asked them to. Because they had a good experience and wanted to share it. That's the kind of growth I can't buy with ads. I've also found that my Discord members tell me when something isn't working. They tell me when an API has bad documentation. They tell me when pricing changes catch them off guard. They tell me when a competitor does something better. I take that feedback seriously, and when I'm deciding what to recommend, I'm incorporating real conversations, not just my own preferences. That's the difference between a community builder and an affiliate marketer. The affiliate marketer optimizes for clicks. The community builder optimizes for the next conversation. # # What I'd Tell Someone Starting This Today If you're a developer with a blog or a Discord or a small following, and you're wondering whether affiliate revenue is realistic for someone at your scale — yes, it is. But not the way most affiliate content tells you. Here are the lessons that actually mattered:
- Recurring commissions change the math. A 15% first-order commission plus 8% recurring means your month-3 earnings aren't dependent on finding brand new people every month. The people you referred in month 1 are still generating income in month 6. That compounds quietly.
- One honest recommendation beats ten SEO articles. I wrote five articles in two months. The one that converted best was the case study — because it was the most honest.
- Trust is built in DMs, not blog posts. The articles start the conversation. The DMs close it. If you're not willing to have those conversations, you're leaving money on the table.
- Pick a program you'd recommend for free. If the affiliate link disappeared tomorrow, would you still recommend the product? If the answer is no, pick something else. The Global API affiliate program happened to fit what I was already recommending. That's why it worked.
- The first $3.00 matters more than the first $300. That first commission proved the model. Everything after that is iteration. # # The Part Where I Actually Tell You to Sign Up Okay, here's where I stop pretending this isn't an article with a CTA at the end. If you've read this far, you already know I genuinely use and recommend Global API. I've been using it for my own projects. I recommend it in my Discord. I write about it on my blog. The affiliate program is just a way for the company to say "thanks" when my recommendation leads someone to sign up. The structure is simple: you earn 15% on every first order someone places through your link, then 8% recurring on every renewal after that. If your referrals upgrade to premium tiers, that bumps up to 10% recurring. The platform itself gives you access to 150+ AI models through a single dashboard, which is genuinely useful if you're tired of juggling multiple subscriptions and API keys. Here's why joining makes sense even if you're skeptical:
- The recurring structure means you're not constantly hustling for new referrals.
- The 15% first-order commission is competitive with anything else I've seen in the space.
- You only get paid when someone signs up because of your recommendation — no churn risk on your end, no support tickets, no retention work.
- It's a clean fit if you're already talking about AI tools in your own community. I'm not going to pretend this will replace your salary. For most people reading this, it won't. But it's a way to turn the recommendations you're already making into something that compounds quietly in the background while you focus on the work you actually care about. If you want to check it out, here's the affiliate program page: https://global-apis.com/affiliate?ref=devto-build-in-public-ai-affiliate-journey That's it. That's the pitch. Join it because the model aligns with how you already work, not because I made it sound good in a blog post. # # Where I Go From Here I'm three months in now. The earnings are modest but real. The community response has been overwhelmingly positive — including from people who don't use my affiliate link and just appreciate having someone to ask about AI tools. The Discord is more active than it's been in a year. What I'm watching going forward:
- Whether the recurring commissions continue to compound the way Global API's structure promises.
- Whether more of my Discord members start using the platform independently (organic growth, not from my links).
- Whether I can keep writing honest content without the affiliate piece becoming the focus. If any of that changes, I'll write about it. That's what "build in public" means to me — sharing what actually happens, not what sounds good in a case study. For now, my recommendation stands. The tool is solid, the program is honest, and the community response has been the best part of the whole experiment. If you're a developer with even a small audience, I'd tell you the same thing I'd tell a friend: try it, see if it fits how you work, and only keep recommending it if you'd do so without the commission. That's the only way this stays worth doing.
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