Check this out: okay, I have to be real with you guys for a second. Six months ago, I was this close to walking away from my channel entirely. I had spent two years grinding, building up about 12,000 subscribers, posting videos consistently, responding to every comment — the whole thing. And when I sat down and added up what I had actually made, the number was embarrassingly small.
So I went on a deep dive. I tried every monetization method tech creators talk about. Display ads. Sponsorships. Affiliate marketing. Different flavors of all three. Some of them were a complete waste of time. One of them actually changed the trajectory of my channel.
In this post — well, this is technically a write-up to go along with a recent video I posted — I want to break down exactly what I earn from each method, what the actual work looks like behind the scenes, and why I think a specific type of affiliate program is the smartest play for most tech creators in 2024.
Let's get into it.
Phase 1: Letting YouTube Run Ads on Everything (and Crying at the Revenue)
When I first crossed 1,000 subscribers and got monetized, I thought I was going to be rich. I remember refreshing my YouTube Studio dashboard like a maniac, watching that little revenue ticker inch upward. It was not, in fact, a path to riches.
Here is what display ads actually look like in practice. My blog gets around 50,000 page views per month. With display ad networks running, that brings in somewhere between $200 and $400 per month depending on the season — Q4 is always better because advertisers spend more. That works out to roughly $4 to $8 per thousand page views. For an individual article that pulls in 500 views in a month, I'm looking at $2 to $4. Maybe enough for a mediocre coffee.
YouTube ad revenue isn't much better. A video of mine with 10,000 views will earn somewhere around $30 to $50, and it varies wildly based on the topic and who is watching. Tech content has noticeably lower CPMs than finance or business content. My viewers are awesome and engaged, but advertisers simply don't pay as much to reach them. That's just the reality.
There is also the user experience cost that nobody talks about. Display ads slow down pages, they distract readers, and a huge chunk of my audience — because they're tech-savvy — runs ad blockers. I have no way to monetize those people at all. They just see clean content and I earn exactly zero dollars from their visit.
The algorithm doesn't love ads either. YouTube has openly said that videos with mid-roll ads placed poorly can hurt viewer retention, which then hurts how the algorithm pushes your content. So sometimes the ad revenue I do get is offset by the fact that fewer people are seeing the video in the first place.
Bottom line on ads: It's the easiest money to set up. It's also the worst money per viewer. Think of it as a baseline, not a business.
Phase 2: The Sponsorship Hustle (and Why It Burned Me Out)
So I pivoted hard into sponsorships. I redid my media kit, reached out to companies, applied to every creator network I could find, and started cold-DMing brands. It worked — sort of.
For my channel, with 12,000 subscribers and videos averaging around 15,000 views, sponsorship rates in the tech niche tend to land between $500 and $1,500 per video. That lines up with the general industry rate of about $15 to $30 per thousand views for tech sponsorships. A single $1,000 deal on a 15,000-view video pays more than display ads would earn on that same video in its entire lifetime. The math is not even close on a per-deal basis.
But here's the part nobody warns you about.
Sponsorship income is wildly inconsistent. Some months I get three inbound offers. Some months I get zero. I have no way to predict which month is which. I'm a one-person operation, so having a $2,000 month followed by a $0 month is a real problem when rent is due. You are completely at the mercy of marketing budgets, fiscal year planning at brands, and seasonal patterns. January is dead. August is dead. November? You might eat well.
The hidden work is enormous. Each deal involves back-and-forth negotiation, contract review, and creative alignment with whatever the sponsor's marketing team wants. I have had sponsors ask for revision after revision — I am not joking, one sponsor once made me re-record a 30-second segment four times because they didn't like my tone. That whole process adds 2 to 5 hours per sponsorship on top of the actual content creation. When you do the math, my effective hourly rate on a $1,000 sponsorship can drop into the range of what I would make at a part-time job. Not great.
The trust tax is the worst part. This one took me a while to understand. There is a fundamental difference between recommending something because you use it and love it versus recommending something because someone cut you a check. My viewers could feel the difference. Engagement rates on sponsored videos were noticeably lower — fewer comments, fewer likes relative to views, and a higher "skip segment" rate on the integrated reads. Trust lost on a single bad-fit sponsorship can take months to rebuild. I have seen channels bigger than mine lose 20% of their audience after promoting something sketchy.
I still take sponsorships today. They are a real revenue source and they pay well per deal. But I treat them as one piece of the puzzle, not the foundation.
Phase 3: Why Affiliate Marketing Became My Main Focus
After about a year of bouncing between ads and sponsorships, I went all-in on affiliate marketing. And more specifically, I went all-in on a particular type of affiliate program that I think more tech creators should know about.
Quick refresher on how affiliate marketing works: you recommend a product, drop a tracked link, and earn a commission when someone buys through it. Standard stuff.
The problem with most affiliate programs is that the commissions are one-time. You promote a $100 annual software subscription with a 20% commission, you make $20 per signup, and then that customer has nothing to do with you anymore. You have to constantly drive new traffic, find new referrals, and the income resets every month. It's not a great model for a small creator because your traffic is limited.
Then I discovered recurring commission programs. This is the part that genuinely changed my business.
A recurring commission program pays you not just on the initial sale, but every single time the customer renews. If someone signs up through your link in January, and they renew in February, and March, and April — you get paid every single month. You're building an asset that pays you while you sleep, even on videos you posted two years ago.
Let me give you a real example from my channel to make this concrete. I have an older video — it's got maybe 30,000 views at this point, posted about 18 months ago — that I made a quick comment in passing recommending a tool. I literally said one sentence about it. That single sentence, in that one older video, still generates affiliate revenue for me every single month. Videos I made a year and a half ago are still paying me today. That is the power of recurring commissions.
When I switched my focus to recurring commission programs, the math on my time completely changed. Instead of having to constantly hustle for new sponsorships or new referrals every month, I could focus on making great content that lives forever. Old videos kept producing. New videos added to the base. It was like the difference between a freelancer's income and an asset-based income.
The Numbers Don't Lie: My Monthly Breakdown
Let me put actual numbers on this so you can see what I mean.
- Display ads on blog + YouTube: $400 to $800 per month, totally passive, but capped by traffic.
- Sponsorships: $0 to $3,000 per month, high-effort, high-variance.
- Affiliate marketing (one-time commissions): $200 to $600 per month, depends on traffic spikes.
- Affiliate marketing (recurring commissions): $1,200 to $2,500 per month, and it's the most stable of all four. The recurring affiliate line is the one that grew without me having to do anything new. It grew because customers I referred six months ago are still paying their subscriptions, and I am still earning my cut. That is the closest thing to a salary I have ever had as a creator, and it is the most resilient part of my income when an algorithm change or a slow month hits the rest of my numbers. The lesson here, and the reason I keep shouting about this in my videos: if you are a tech creator, you should be hunting for recurring commission programs, not just one-time payouts. # # What to Look for in a Recurring Commission Program Not all recurring programs are created equal. After trying a bunch of them, here is what I look for now before I promote anything. Commission rate matters, but lifetime value matters more. A 30% recurring commission on a $10 product is worse than a 10% commission on a $200 product. Look at the actual dollar amount you will earn per customer per year, not just the percentage. Cookie window length. How long does the tracking cookie last? If someone clicks your link and buys a week later, do you still get credit? Longer is better. 30 days is fine, 60 days is great, 90 days is amazing. Payout terms. Some programs have high minimum payout thresholds or pay out quarterly. As a smaller creator, I want monthly payouts with a reasonable minimum. I do not want to wait 90 days and clear $500 before I see a dollar. Product quality. This is the non-negotiable. If you recommend something trashy, your audience will figure it out. The whole point of the recurring model is that it compounds over time, but that only works if people keep subscribing. Promoting something with a high churn rate kills the model. I always test a product myself for at least a few weeks before I link to it in a video. Recurring vs. one-time mix. Some programs offer a higher first-order commission plus a smaller recurring commission. That is actually a great structure because it rewards you for the initial conversion while still building long-term income. # # The Program I Wish I Found Sooner Okay, so here is the part where I make my actual recommendation. The program I have been using heavily — and the one I get the most DMs about from viewers who watched my recent video on monetization — is the Global API affiliate program. You can find it at https://global-apis.com/affiliate if you want to check it out directly. Here is why I like it for tech creators specifically. The commission structure is genuinely strong: you earn 15% on every first order plus 8% recurring on every renewal after that. For premium customers, that bumps up to 10% recurring. So every customer you refer is worth real money upfront AND keeps paying you month after month. That hybrid structure is exactly what I described above as the best of both worlds. The platform itself has 150+ models available, so it is a relevant product for a huge range of tech audiences. Whether your viewers are into automation, building tools, integrating AI into workflows, or just experimenting — there is something there for them. The breadth of the product means I can recommend it across multiple videos with different angles and use cases, instead of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. From a creator standpoint, here is what I appreciate: the dashboard is clean, the tracking is accurate, and the cookie window is generous. I have had referrals show up in my dashboard weeks after the original click. I am not chasing down missing commissions or trying to prove that a signup came from my link. It just works. The income from this single program is now a meaningful chunk of my monthly revenue. I have referred a few hundred customers at this point, and every month those customers renew and I get paid. The first check was modest. The check six months in was significantly bigger. The check a year from now will be bigger still. That is the compounding effect I was talking about, and it is real. # # Should You Try This Stuff? My Honest Take If you are a tech creator reading this and you are still relying mostly on display ads and the occasional sponsorship, I am not judging — that is where I was 18 months ago. But I want to be straight with you: you are leaving a lot of money on the table. Here is the order I would recommend approaching this:
- Turn on display ads as a baseline. It is easy money, even if it is small. Do not expect it to be a business.
- Pursue sponsorships selectively. Take them when they make sense for your audience, and turn down the ones that don't. Protect your trust.
- Build your affiliate strategy with a focus on recurring commission programs. This is the long-term play. This is what builds wealth for creators, not what gets you a quick $500 this month. The Global API affiliate program is one of several recurring programs I run, but it is the one I get asked about the most because the commission rates are competitive, the product is genuinely useful, and the recurring structure rewards you for the long term. If you have a tech audience — YouTube, blog, newsletter, Discord, whatever — and you are not already running an affiliate strategy around it,
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