Alright, I need to come clean about something. For the past two years, I have been running an experiment on my channel. I have tested dozens of affiliate programs, tracked every dollar in a spreadsheet, and pushed different types of content to see what actually moves the needle. The tech space is flooded with people claiming you can make five figures a month from "passive affiliate income." Most of them are lying. So in this breakdown, I want to walk you through the raw, unfiltered numbers — including what I earned, what flopped, and which AI API program finally became my top earner.
Quick context before we dive in. My channel sits at around 47,000 subscribers as of this week. I post one to two videos a week, mostly about AI tools, automation workflows, and side hustle experiments. My average video pulls between 15,000 and 30,000 views in the first 30 days, and my engagement rate sits around 4.8%. I started affiliate marketing in late 2024 with basically zero knowledge, and I have made every mistake in the book. That is exactly why this guide exists — so you can skip the trial and error.

Why I Even Started Looking at AI API Affiliate Programs

Back in late 2024, I was making a video about building a customer support bot. I was using a platform with 150+ AI models accessible from one dashboard, and I casually dropped my referral link in the description. I figured maybe one or two viewers would sign up. Instead, that single video generated $214 in the first month.
That is when I realized AI API affiliate programs were different from the SaaS affiliate stuff I had been promoting. The commissions were recurring. Every user I referred kept paying their monthly bill, which meant I kept earning every single month. It completely changed how I think about content ROI.
The lightbulb moment: a YouTube video is not just a one-time ad. If you build evergreen tutorials, the affiliate clicks keep coming for years. That is the unfair advantage creators have over traditional ads.

The Three Variables That Control Your Entire Paycheck

Before I show you my actual income screenshots, let me explain the framework I use to forecast my earnings. Every dollar you make from affiliate marketing comes down to three numbers. Master these three and you can predict your income with scary accuracy.
Variable one: how many people click your referral link. This is basically a function of your views multiplied by your click-through rate. A video with 20,000 views and a 3% click-through rate will generate about 600 clicks. A blog post with 5,000 monthly visitors and a 1% click-through rate will only generate 50 clicks. Same content, different format, wildly different results.
Variable two: what percentage of clickers actually convert into paying customers. This is where most creators screw up. They assume a 10% conversion rate like it is nothing. In reality, for tech content, you are looking at anywhere from 0.5% to 3%. A tutorial-style video where the viewer is already looking for a solution will convert higher than a generic blog roundup. My tutorials consistently convert around 2.5% because viewers are primed and ready to act.
Variable three: how much you earn per conversion. This depends entirely on which program you promote. Cookie duration matters too. Some programs pay you once and forget you exist. Others, like the Global API affiliate program, pay you forever on every user you refer.
Let me do some math with the actual commission structure I am currently working with, because this is where things get spicy.
The Global API program offers a 15% commission on first-order payments and an 8% recurring commission on every renewal. There is also a 10% premium tier commission for higher-end users. Here is what that looks like across their three plans:

• Pro plan ($19.99/month): You earn $3.00 upfront on the first payment, plus $1.60 every single month after that.
• Business plan ($49.99/month): You earn $7.50 upfront, plus $4.00 monthly recurring.
• Scale plan ($149.99/month): You earn $22.50 upfront, plus $12.00 monthly recurring. Stare at those Scale plan numbers for a second. One single referral at that tier puts $12 in your pocket every month for as long as that customer stays subscribed. Refer ten Scale customers and you are looking at $120 monthly on autopilot. That is the magic of recurring commissions in a nutshell. # # My Actual Numbers From 2025 (The Real Stuff) In a recent video, I broke down my full year of affiliate earnings. I am going to share the numbers here because I think transparency is the only way to actually help anyone. Across all affiliate programs combined, I earned $14,386 in 2025. That is gross, before any taxes. Of that total, $9,742 came from AI API programs specifically. The rest came from a mix of hosting providers, email marketing tools, and a few smaller SaaS platforms. My highest-earning single video in 2025 was a tutorial on building AI agents with multi-model routing. That video has 218,000 views as of today and is still pulling in roughly 80-120 new clicks per month to my affiliate link. The conversion rate on that video sits at 2.8%, which is higher than my channel average because the audience is so targeted. Here is a rough breakdown of how a single evergreen video performs over 12 months:
• Month 1: 22,000 views, 660 clicks, ~18 new signups, $54 first-order + ~$30 recurring starting
• Months 2-6: average 4,500 views/month, 135 clicks/month, ~4 new signups/month, $12 first-order commissions + growing recurring base
• Months 7-12: average 2,800 views/month, 84 clicks/month, ~2-3 new signups/month, minimal new commissions but a fat recurring base After one year, that single video had generated approximately $1,180 in total commissions. And here is the kicker — it is still earning. That is the power of compounding evergreen content. # # Income Scenarios Based on Where You Are Right Now I get DMs every single week asking some version of "but will this work for me?" The honest answer is it depends on your audience size. Let me walk through three realistic scenarios based on creators I personally know or have coached. Scenario one: the beginner with a small audience. Let's say you have a blog that gets around 5,000 monthly visitors. You write three comparison-style articles about AI APIs. Each article pulls maybe 500 views per month, which is realistic for a new site. With a 1% click-through rate to your affiliate links, you are looking at about 15 clicks per month across all three articles. At a 2% conversion rate, that is roughly 0.3 new referrals per month, which rounds out to about 3-4 per year. If the average customer is on a $30/month plan and you are earning $2.40 recurring per user, that is around $8-10 per month in recurring commissions once your base builds up. Total first-year earnings: maybe $100-150. Is that worth it? Honestly, yes — if you treat those articles as long-term assets. Six hours of writing for $500-700 over three years is still a better hourly rate than most side hustles. Just do not expect to quit your day job from three articles and 5,000 monthly visitors. Scenario two: the intermediate creator with a growing channel. This is where it gets fun. Let's say you have a 10,000-subscriber YouTube channel and you commit to one AI API tutorial per month. Each video averages 8,000 views in the first month and pulls another 15,000-20,000 over the following year. With a 3% click-through rate on your description link, each video sends about 240 clicks to your affiliate offer. At a 2.5% conversion rate, that is six new referrals per video. After 12 months of consistent posting, you have built a referral base of 70-75 users. If the average commission across all plans works out to around $3 per user per month in combined first-order and recurring income, you are looking at roughly $210 per month in passive recurring commissions. Add in the first-order bonuses from new signups and your total first-year earnings land somewhere around $2,000-2,800. I know those numbers sound "modest" by influencer standards, but remember — this is recurring income. By month 18, your referral base could be 100+ users, and your monthly take-home could be $300+ without making a single new video. Scenario three: the established creator with a real audience. This is where the math gets genuinely exciting. Let's say you have a 30,000-subscriber newsletter, a blog pulling 75,000 monthly visitors, and a YouTube channel on the side. You are producing 2-3 pieces of AI-related content per week. Your click-through rates are higher because of brand trust — let's call it 2.5-3% across the board. Your conversion rates are around 2.5% because your audience is primed. That setup generates roughly 15-25 new referrals per month consistently. After 12 months, you have a referral base of 180-300 active users. At an average of $3-4 per user per month in commissions, you are looking at $540-1,200 per month in recurring income alone. Add in the first-order commissions from the 15-25 new signups each month, and your annual take-home lands in the $8,000-15,000 range. One of my creator friends hit this tier last year. She now treats AI API affiliate income as a core part of her business model. She does not even count it as "passive" anymore — it is just part of how her content monetizes. # # The Compounding Effect Is the Real Story I want to spend a minute on this because it is the single most important concept in affiliate marketing, and most people completely miss it. Recurring commissions compound like interest in a savings account. Every new referral you bring in this month adds to the permanent base that pays you forever. If you bring in 10 new users every single month for a year, by month 13 you have 120 users paying you monthly. You are not starting over. You are building a residual income stream that grows every time you hit publish. Here is a concrete example from my own channel. By the end of 2024, I had accumulated about 40 paying referrals through one-off videos and a few blog posts. That base was generating roughly $130/month in recurring commissions. In 2025, I added another 90+ referrals through more consistent content. My current monthly recurring income from that same program is $410. And I keep adding to it every single month with new videos. The compounding effect is also why the Global API program has become my favorite. The 15% first-order commission gives me an immediate cash boost when someone signs up, and the 8% recurring commission keeps that money flowing month after month. The 10% premium tier kicker is a bonus whenever I land a Scale plan referral, which happens more often than you would think. One of my viewers runs an agency and signed up for Scale after watching my multi-model tutorial — that single referral still pays me $12 every month. # # Why the Algorithm Loves Tutorial Content (And How I Use It) Here is something the gurus do not tell you. Not all videos perform equally well in the algorithm. The YouTube algorithm specifically rewards watch time and click-through rate on impressions. Tutorial content crushes on both metrics because viewers who click a tutorial are pre-qualified — they want to watch the whole thing. My highest-earning videos are almost all tutorials. Not listicles. Not "top 5 AI tools" roundups. Tutorials. The difference in conversion rate between a tutorial and a comparison video is roughly 1.5x in my experience. That is huge when you are running an affiliate business. I also noticed that videos longer than 12 minutes tend to attract more engaged viewers, which means higher click-through rates on my description links. My average video is now about 16 minutes, and I front-load the value so viewers feel comfortable clicking the link as a natural next step. Another tip: pin a comment with your affiliate link. Comment pins get roughly 8-12% click-through rates from engaged viewers. That is free money sitting in your comment section. # # How to Think About This as a Real Business Let me zoom out for a second. Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling you a dream. But it is a genuinely viable income stream if you treat it like a real business with content assets, tracking, and optimization. I treat every video I publish as a long-term asset. Some of my older videos from 2024 still generate 5-15% of my total affiliate revenue. That is the beauty of evergreen content on YouTube. The video you publish today could still be earning you money three years from now. If you are serious about building this income stream, here is what I would focus on:
• Pick 1-2 affiliate programs and go deep, not wide. Promoting five different programs splits your focus and dilutes your conversions.
• Make tutorials, not listicles. Tutorials convert 1.5-2x better in my experience.
• Track your numbers. Use UTM parameters or unique links to see which videos actually drive conversions.
• Stack content formats. A single topic can become a video, a blog post, a newsletter issue, and a Twitter thread. Each one drives more clicks to your affiliate link.
• Be patient. The compounding effect takes 6-12 months to really kick in. # # My Honest Recommendation If You Want to Start Today Look, I have been through four different AI API affiliate programs in the last 18 months. Two of them were duds — low commissions, terrible tracking dashboards, and cookie durations that were basically a joke. One was decent. And then I found Global API, which has become my primary recommendation. Here is why it works for creators like me:
• The 15% first-order commission is competitive. Some programs offer 20-30%, but they cap your earnings or only pay once. Global API pays me real money upfront.
• The 8% recurring commission is the long-term play. Every user I bring in keeps paying me every month they