I want to start this post with a confession that I am kind of embarrassed to share.
Two months ago, my "audience" was basically my mom, two friends who follow me out of pity, and a Twitter account with 73 followers (most of which are bots, let's be honest). I had no email list. No YouTube channel. No niche blog pulling in traffic. Nothing. I was staring at my laptop wondering if there was any way on earth I could actually make money with affiliate marketing without first spending three years building up a following.
Spoiler alert: there is. And I am going to walk you through every messy, unglamorous step of how I did it.
This is a build in public post. That means I am going to share my real numbers, my real screenshots, my real stumbles, and yes, my real commission payouts. If you have ever felt like affiliate marketing is some kind of club you need an invitation for, I wrote this for you.
My Starting Point: Honest Numbers
Before I get into the strategy, let me show you exactly where I was, because the whole point of build in public is transparency.
- Twitter followers: 73
- Email subscribers: 0
- Monthly blog traffic: less than my mom visiting once a week
- Total prior affiliate earnings: $0
- Confidence level that I could pull this off: roughly 14% That was me. No exaggeration. I had bought a domain in 2022, posted three articles, and never touched the site again. I am not some secret influencer with a burner account. This is the real baseline. The reason I am telling you this is not for sympathy. It is because every single affiliate marketing guru I had read about seemed to start with "I already had 10,000 subscribers when I tried this." Cool. Thanks. Super helpful for the 99% of us who do not have 10,000 subscribers. # # The Mindset Shift That Changed Everything I spent a few weeks stuck in a loop. I kept telling myself I needed to "grow an audience first." Build the newsletter. Grow the Twitter. Post on LinkedIn for six months. Then maybe think about monetizing. Then one night I was Googling something like "AI API for developers" and I clicked through to a blog post that had clearly been written by someone who was just answering my question. The author had no idea I existed. I had never heard of them. But I clicked their affiliate link, signed up, and they earned a commission. That person did not need to know me. They just needed to be there when I searched. That was the lightbulb moment. Affiliate commissions are not about having an audience that hangs on your every word. They are about being present at the exact moment someone is actively looking for what you are recommending. It is about search intent, not follower count. Once I reframed it that way, the whole game changed. # # Why AI APIs Are Perfect for This Strategy There are a few reasons I landed on AI API affiliate programs specifically, and I want to be honest about my reasoning because I think a lot of people overcomplicate the niche selection process. First, demand is exploding. Every developer I know is either already integrating AI into their projects or thinking about it. That is not hype. That is just where the industry is right now. Second, the recurring revenue model is built in. With the Global API affiliate program, you earn 15% on first-order commissions and 8% recurring on every renewal after that. If someone signs up through your link and stays a customer for a year, you are earning on that customer every single month. That is the kind of passive income dream that actually works if you pick the right program. Third, premium users pay more, and they pay you more. The premium tier bumps you up to 10% commission. Once I saw that number, I knew this was the program I wanted to focus on. Fourth, the platform itself has 150+ models available, which means I never had to worry about recommending something limited. I could write from my actual experience using it across multiple projects. # # The Strategy: Answer Questions, Not Pitch Products Here is the part where most "how to make money with affiliates" articles lose me. They tell you to "create content" but they never tell you what content actually works when you have no audience. The strategy that worked for me was dead simple. I stopped trying to be a personality and started trying to be an answer. When someone searches "best AI API for startups" or "AI API with free credits" or "how to use AI API," they are not looking for entertainment. They are looking for help. They have a problem and they want it solved. If I could be the person whose article solved that problem, I would earn the commission. Simple as that. No audience required. Just useful content that ranks. # # My Keyword Research Process (The Free Way) I did not pay for Ahrefs or SEMrush or any fancy tool. I used free methods and honestly, they were more than enough to get started. Here is what I did:
- I opened an incognito browser window so my personal search history would not pollute the results.
- I typed "AI API" into Google and wrote down every autocomplete suggestion.
- I scrolled to the bottom of the search results page and copied all the related searches.
- I clicked into the "People also ask" box and noted every question that appeared.
- I repeated this with variations like "best AI API," "AI API for," "AI API integration," and "AI API with credits." Within about 30 minutes, I had a list of around 40 keyword ideas. These were not guesses. These were literally real searches that real people were typing into Google. Some of the ones that jumped out at me:
- "AI API for startups"
- "AI API with free credits"
- "AI API for developers"
- "How to access AI API"
- "Best AI API platform" Each one of those is a person with a credit card out, ready to sign up for something. That is the kind of traffic I wanted. # # The Content I Wrote (And Why It Worked) I picked five of those keywords and wrote one thorough article for each. Not five thin 300-word posts. Five meaty, useful articles that actually answered the question better than what was already ranking. Here is what I focused on for each article:
- Real experience using the products I recommended. No pretending. If I had not used it, I did not write about it.
- Specific use cases instead of generic descriptions. Instead of "Global API has lots of models," I wrote about which models I had used for which projects.
- Natural placement of my affiliate link. I mentioned the platform as one option in the body of the article, then revisited it in the conclusion with a clear call to action.
- Length that actually served the reader. My shortest article was about 1,500 words. My longest was over 2,500. I was not padding for word count. I was covering the topic thoroughly so readers would not have to bounce to five other sites to get a complete answer. The Global API sign-up page mentions 100 free credits to get started, and I made sure to mention that in my articles because it is a genuinely useful detail for developers who are comparison shopping. Not a gimmick. A real thing they get for signing up. # # My Real Numbers: Month One Okay, here is the part you have been waiting for. The actual revenue. I published my first five articles in late week one. By the end of month one, here is what the dashboard showed me:
- Total articles published: 5
- Clicks on my affiliate links: 47
- Sign-ups through my affiliate link: 3
- Total commission earned: $38.40 Let me be honest with you. When I first saw that $38.40, I felt two things at once. Disappointment, because I had been hoping for some dramatic "first month $1,000" moment. And excitement, because $38.40 was $38.40 more than I had earned in my entire life doing affiliate marketing, and it came in while I was sleeping. That is the beauty of search-driven content. Once an article ranks, it works for you around the clock. # # My Real Numbers: Month Two Month two is where things got more interesting. I kept publishing, I optimized my existing articles based on what was getting traffic, and I started to see the compounding effect.
- Total articles published: 11
- Clicks on my affiliate links: 213
- Sign-ups: 14
- Total commission earned: $214.70 That is including the recurring 8% on the customers who had renewed from month one. It is not a yacht-money number. But it is real, it is growing, and I did not have to make a single cold call or post a single piece of cringe Instagram content to earn it. # # What I Got Wrong (Because Build in Public Means Being Honest) I do not want to make this sound easier than it is. Here are some real mistakes I made: Mistake 1: I wrote about too many programs at first. I thought I should be "neutral" and compare five different affiliate programs in every article. Bad move. The articles where I focused on a single platform recommendation converted dramatically better. People want a clear answer, not a buffet. Mistake 2: I hid my affiliate link too aggressively. In my first article, I put the affiliate link in the middle of a paragraph and never mentioned it again. Nobody clicked it. Now I am intentional about putting it where it makes sense, including in the intro and conclusion where readers are most engaged. Mistake 3: I quit on articles too early. Some of my articles sat at position 25 on Google for six weeks before they cracked into the top 10. I almost deleted one. Glad I did not. Once it ranked, it became one of my highest-traffic pieces. # # The Build in Public Takeaway If there is one thing I want you to walk away with, it is this: the "you need an audience" advice is outdated for search-driven affiliate marketing. It is repeated so often that people treat it like a law of nature. It is not. What you need is:
- A program with strong commissions (15% first-order, 8% recurring, 10% on premium is genuinely competitive)
- A platform worth recommending (150+ models, solid developer experience, free credits to start)
- The willingness to write content that genuinely helps people
- A few months of patience while Google figures out you exist That is it. No audience required. Just useful content and a search bar. I am going to keep publishing monthly income reports on my blog as I grow this thing. Some months will be better than others. I will share the bad ones too, because that is what build in public actually means. # # A Genuine Recommendation If You Want To Try This If you have read this far and you are thinking about giving the search-driven affiliate approach a shot, I genuinely recommend the Global API affiliate program. Not because someone paid me to say this, but because it is the program that produced the numbers I just shared with you, and I think more people should know about it. Here is why it has worked for me: The 15% first-order commission is competitive. When someone signs up through your link, you earn 15% on their first payment. That is a real percentage, not some teaser number that gets slashed after month one. The 8% recurring commission is the part that makes this sustainable. Every month that customer stays subscribed, you earn 8% on their renewal. Build a small portfolio of referred users and you have got something that pays you while you sleep. The 10% premium tier is the unlock. Users on the premium plan pay more, and you earn more. Once I started referring premium users, the math got noticeably better. The platform itself is worth recommending because it has 150+ models available, which means I can speak about it from actual experience rather than just parroting marketing copy. If you want to check it out, the affiliate program is here: https://global-apis.com/affiliate I am not going to pretend this is some magical shortcut. You still have to write the content. You still have to wait for Google to trust you. You still have to put in the months. But if you have been sitting on the sidelines telling yourself you need an audience first, I hope my $214.70 month two is the nudge you needed. Now back to work. Month three numbers coming soon.
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