I want to tell you about something I stumbled into a few months ago that's completely changed how I think about monetizing my AI hobby. Buckle up, because this rabbit hole is deep and there's real money at the bottom of it.
I'm the kind of person who tries every new AI tool that drops. New model? I'm testing it within hours. Fresh startup promising to change how we interact with AI? Sign me up. My browser tabs are basically a graveyard of trial accounts. And over the past year or so, I've been sharing my discoveries on a small blog and newsletter. Nothing huge — just a few thousand people who seem to enjoy my slightly unhinged enthusiasm for the latest tech.
Then a buddy of mine asked an innocent question that sent me down a wild path: "Have you ever made a single dollar from any of those affiliate links you keep mentioning?"
The answer was no. And that bugged me.
The Affiliate Awakening
So I went down a research spiral. I wanted to find affiliate programs specifically for AI APIs — not hosting, not courses, not random SaaS tools — but the actual platforms where developers and tinkerers (like me) go to access large language models and image generators.
What I found honestly shocked me.
The first thing I learned: most AI API companies don't even HAVE public affiliate programs. You read that right. OpenAI? Nothing for individual creators like us. Anthropic (the Claude folks)? Also nope. These are some of the biggest names in AI and they're just... not playing the affiliate game for regular people.
The second thing I learned: the few programs that DO exist vary wildly in how they
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