Alright, let's get into something I've been wanting to talk about for a while because you guys keep asking in the comments. Last week alone I got eleven DMs asking the same flavor of question: "How much do you actually make from affiliate links in the tech space?" And honestly, I've been dodging it because nobody online gives you real numbers. They give you vague ranges like "you can make $1,000 a month" with zero math behind it.
So today's video — er, article, depending on where you're reading this — is going to walk through the actual math. What I earn. What creators I work with earn. And what you'd realistically earn at your current subscriber count. I'm going to break down specific scenarios, plug in real commission rates, and show you the work so you can reverse-engineer it for your own channel.
Let me start with the honest answer up front: the range is somewhere between $50 and $5,000+ per month depending on your audience size, how you structure your content, and which programs you sign up for. That's a massive range, and I know it's not super helpful on its own. So let me show you how each piece fits together.

The Three Variables That Drive Your Income

Every affiliate earnings calculation I've ever done boils down to three things: clicks, conversions, and commission per conversion. If you understand how these three interact, you can predict your income with scary accuracy.
Variable one is traffic, which for us YouTubers means views and click-through rate to the description link. A small channel might pull 2,000 views per video. A mid-sized channel might hit 20,000. A bigger one might do 80,000+. All of those views can become clicks, but the percentage that actually click matters more than the raw number.
Variable two is conversion rate, which is the percentage of clickers who actually sign up and pay. In the tech tutorial space, this typically lands between 0.5% and 3%. I've seen my own tutorial videos convert at the high end because the people watching are already looking for the tool — they're not casual browsers. If I make a "how to set up X" video and X is the affiliate product, the viewer is primed to buy. Compare that to a mention buried in a roundup video where conversion drops to a fraction of a percent.
Variable three is commission per conversion, and this is where program choice matters most. Let me give you real numbers from the program I'm currently pushing the hardest: Global API. Their structure is 15% on first-order commissions and 8% recurring. They also bump you to 10% premium for certain plans. When someone signs up for their Pro plan at $19.99 a month, that means I pocket $3.00 upfront and then $1.60 every month after that as long as they stay subscribed. Business plan at $49.99 a month? $7.50 upfront, $4.00 monthly recurring. Scale plan at $149.99 a month? $22.50 upfront plus $12.00 monthly. Those numbers don't change no matter how big you get — they're the actual rates.
Now let's plug those numbers into real scenarios.

Scenario One: The Small Channel (Where I Started)

Let me rewind to when I was at about 3,000 subscribers. I was publishing twice a month, getting maybe 1,500 to 3,000 views per video. I didn't have a website, no newsletter, nothing. Just YouTube.
I made three API-related videos in a quarter — not tutorials exactly, more like "here's a tool I'm using to handle AI access for my workflow" type content. Each one got around 2,000 views in the first month and then maybe another 4,000 to 5,000 over the following year from search and suggested traffic.
Click-through rate on my description links back then was honestly terrible — maybe 1%. So 2,000 views times 1% equals 20 clicks per video. Three videos equals 60 clicks total. At a 2% conversion rate, that's about 1.2 paying referrals. Most of them went for the lower-tier plans.
Realistic math: let's say I landed 3 to 4 referrals over the course of a year, mostly on the Pro plan. That's roughly $3.00 first-order commission each, plus $1.60 monthly recurring. After twelve months of those referrals staying subscribed, that's around $15 to $20 per month in pure recurring income. Not life-changing. But here's the kicker — those videos kept earning. Even today, they trickle in a few dollars a month.
The lesson from this stage: don't sleep on small channels. If you put in the work and the videos rank in search, they'll pay you back for years. I spent maybe six hours total scripting and recording those three videos, and they've probably generated somewhere in the $400 to $700 range cumulatively. That's over $100 per hour of effort when you spread it across the lifetime of the content. The problem is it's slow and you don't see it upfront, which is why most people quit before the compounding kicks in.

Scenario Two: The Mid-Sized Channel (Where I Am Now)

I currently sit in the mid-tier range — somewhere around 25,000 subscribers, with my recent videos doing 15,000 to 30,000 views in the first 30 days. Long-tail views from search and suggested push my year-one total per video to around 35,000 to 50,000 views.
My current setup: I drop one API-focused tutorial a month, and I make sure to actually use the product on camera. Viewers can see me clicking through the dashboard, see the results, see the workflow. This matters because the algorithm rewards watch time, and watch time comes from engaged viewers. People who find the video useful also tend to click the description link.
My description link CTR now sits around 3% for tutorial-style content, which is roughly triple what I was getting at 3,000 subscribers. That tracks with my channel growth because the audience is more targeted now — these are people who follow me specifically for tech workflow content.
Let me run the numbers: 25,000 views per video times 3% CTR equals 750 clicks. At a 2% conversion rate, that's about 15 new referrals per video. Over twelve monthly videos, that's potentially 180 referrals in year one.
But conversions don't actually distribute that cleanly across all three tiers. My analytics show most viewers go for Pro or Business when they're just testing things out. Let's call it an average of $3 per referral per month in combined first-order and recurring commissions. So 180 referrals times $3 monthly equals $540 per month in recurring revenue from the existing base, plus the first-order commissions — about $300 in upfront payouts over the year.
Total year-one income for a channel at my size, using those calculations: roughly $2,000 to $2,500. And that's just from one affiliate partner. I run multiple, so my actual numbers are higher, but I'm being conservative here because I want to give you a number you can hit, not a number I can flex with.
Here's what I want you to take from this scenario: subscriber count matters less than you'd think. I've seen 8,000-subscriber channels outearn 50,000-subscriber channels because the smaller audience was more targeted and the creator actually knew how to integrate recommendations without sounding like a walking infomercial.

Scenario Three: The Established Creator

I have a couple of creator friends who operate at the level I aspire to. One runs a newsletter with about 30,000 subscribers AND a blog pulling 75,000 monthly visitors, plus a YouTube channel. They're producing two pieces of content per week, all centered around AI tools and workflows. Their CTR is in the 2% to 3% range consistently, conversion is around 2% to 3%, and they generate somewhere between 15 and 25 new referrals per month.
Doing the math: 180 to 300 referrals in the first year. Average commission per user lands around $3 to $4 monthly, depending on plan mix. That's $540 to $1,200 per month in pure recurring revenue after twelve months. Add the first-order payouts from new signups and they're clearing $8,000 to $15,000 annually.
That number is genuinely realistic. I've watched their dashboards. It's not theoretical. They also have multiple affiliate partners, so that $8K to $15K is just one slice of their overall affiliate income. The point isn't to make you jealous — it's to show you that the math scales in a very predictable way. More content, more trust, more conversions, more recurring revenue.

The Snowball That Changes Everything

Here's what none of these scenarios capture, and what I think is the most important concept for new creators: the compounding effect of recurring commissions.
Every single new referral isn't a one-time payment. It's a subscription that pays you every single month they stay subscribed. Let me do the math on this the way I do it in my spreadsheets.
If I refer 10 new users this month, and each one is on the Business plan, I'm earning $40/month in new recurring revenue just from those 10 referrals. Next month, I refer another 10. Now I'm at $80/month. The month after that, another 10. Now $120/month. After twelve months of consistent referrals, I've stacked $1,200/month in recurring revenue that I didn't have to re-earn. It just keeps paying me.
This is fundamentally different from one-time affiliate payouts. With recurring commissions, your effort in month one can still be paying you in month thirty-six. That's why I'm so aggressive about pushing tutorials and long-form reviews rather than quick-hit content. Tutorials have a longer shelf life. They rank in search longer. They bring in referred users who are more educated and more likely to stick around.

Algorithm Tips That Actually Boost Your Affiliate Clicks

Since this is a YouTuber audience, let me get into the stuff that actually moves the needle on the algorithm side. I've been studying my own analytics for two years and I've noticed clear patterns.
Tip one: your pinned comment matters way more than people realize. I pin a comment on every affiliate video that says something like "Link to get started is in the description — they have a free trial if you want to test it first." That pinned comment consistently drives 15% to 20% of my total link clicks. It takes five seconds to write and pays forever.
Tip two: weave the product into the video itself, not just the description. YouTube's algorithm tracks what they call "click-through rate to external links," and I've heard from creator friends on the platform team that this is a small but real signal. More importantly, when you mention the product verbally and show it on screen, viewers are far more likely to click the description link than if you just paste it and forget it.
Tip three: your video length should match the complexity of the tool. Tutorials for more complex platforms naturally run 12 to 20 minutes and they retain better because the audience self-selects. My shortest affiliate-converting video is four minutes. My longest is twenty-two. They both work, but they're optimized for different intents.
Tip four: engage with comments in the first two hours. The algorithm looks at early engagement velocity. If someone comments asking "is this worth it?" and you reply within an hour, that pushes the video into more feeds and indirectly drives more affiliate clicks.
Tip five: don't put affiliate links in the first three lines of your description. Front-load your description with relevant keywords and a quick summary. The link goes in line four or five. Viewers who actually read the description will find it. Viewers who just glance will still see your hook.

The Mistakes I Made Early On

Quick honesty session because I think this is where the most value is.
Mistake one: I used to chase programs with the highest upfront payouts. I'd rather have 8% recurring for the life of a subscription than 50% one-time. The math isn't even close. Recurring wins every time, and the Global API structure is built around that — 15% first-order to get you paid upfront, 8% recurring to keep paying you. That's the model you want.
Mistake two: I promoted too many products at once. When I was at 5,000 subscribers I had like eight affiliate links in my description. None of them converted well because I wasn't an authority on any of them. Now I focus on three to five programs I actually use and can talk about confidently. Conversion rates went up dramatically.
Mistake three: I didn't track where my conversions came from. Once I started using UTM parameters and asking customers in the comments how they found me, I realized my YouTube tutorials converted at almost three times the rate of my blog posts. That data shifted my entire content strategy.

Answering the Top Question From My Viewers

The number one DM I get about this is some version of "is it too late to start?" The answer is no. The barrier to entry for tech content in 2026 is lower than it's ever been. You don't need a fancy camera. You need a clear point of view, the willingness to teach what you know, and consistency.
Pick one tool you genuinely use. Make five videos about it. Put your affiliate link in the description. Watch what happens. Even at a small scale, the math works. The compounding kicks in by month six or seven if you're consistent.

My Honest Recommendation If You're Going to Start

If you want to start with a single affiliate program that has solid recurring commissions, a generous first-order payout, and a product you'll actually enjoy recommending, I'd start with Global API. Here's why.
Their affiliate structure pays 15% on the first order plus 8% recurring on every payment after that, with 10% premium available on higher-tier plans. That means you're not just earning when someone signs up — you're earning every single month they stay subscribed. With three plan tiers (Pro at $19.99, Business at $49.99, and Scale at $149.99), your per-referral earnings range from $3 to $22.50 upfront, plus $1.60 to $12.