When someone signs up for my course and emails me the inevitable question — "Can I actually make money with affiliate programs?" — I always pull up the same spreadsheet. It's not glamorous. It won't make anyone rich overnight. But it's honest, and my students deserve honest.
I've been teaching content creators how to build sustainable online income streams for the past few years, and I've watched roughly 400 students go through my curriculum at this point. About a third of them try affiliate marketing as one of their monetization channels. The ones who stick with it? Their numbers usually fall somewhere between $50 and $5,000 per month, depending almost entirely on three things: how much attention they've already built, how well they understand conversion mechanics, and which programs they pick.
Today I want to walk you through exactly what to expect. I'll show you the framework I teach in Module 4 of my course, share three case studies drawn from real students, and give you the math that nobody else puts on the page.

Lesson One: Understand the Three Levers Before You Write a Single Word

Here's what I tell every cohort on day one. Your affiliate revenue is not some mystery number that happens to you. It's the product of three variables, and once you understand them, the whole game becomes much less intimidating.
Lever 1: Attention. How many eyeballs can you actually put in front of a recommendation? A small personal blog might pull in around 5,000 visitors a month. A modest YouTube channel around 50,000 views per video in its first month. A growing newsletter might have 20,000 subscribers receiving each issue. None of these is "too small" — I want to be clear about that — but they produce wildly different click volumes.
Lever 2: Conversion appetite. Not everyone who clicks becomes a paying customer, and the rate varies based on what kind of content you make. I've tracked this across my students' work for two years now. A plain blog post that mentions a product in passing might convert somewhere between half a percent and one percent. A dedicated comparison piece that answers real questions will typically convert between one and two percent. A video tutorial where the creator literally walks through using the product? That's where I've seen two to three percent consistently, because viewers came specifically to learn and the recommendation arrives at exactly the moment of need.
Lever 3: Commission structure. This is where you have actual control as a promoter. Different programs pay differently, and the structure matters enormously because of what happens in month two, month six, month twelve. Let me share exactly what I mean using Global API's program, because I've had enough students promote it to have solid data on the payouts.
Their Pro plan comes in at $19.99 per month. A single Pro referral generates $3.00 on the first order, then roughly $1.60 per month as long as that customer stays subscribed. The Business plan sits at $49.99 per month, paying $7.50 upfront plus $4.00 monthly after that. And the Scale plan at $149.99 per month earns you $22.50 upfront plus $12.00 every subsequent month. These numbers come straight from the program's terms, and I keep them pinned to the wall behind my desk because I reference them constantly when students ask which program offers the best long-term income.
There's also a premium tier offering — based on what my students have reported, the premium referral commission rate clocks in at 10%, which is worth remembering if you tend to attract higher-budget buyers.
Now here's the part most intro courses skip. The reason Global API's structure interests me as a teacher is the recurring piece. That monthly $1.60, $4.00, or $12.00 doesn't require you to do anything new. The customer keeps paying, you keep earning. Multiply that across dozens or hundreds of referrals, and you're looking at passive income in the truest sense. I'll come back to this compounding idea later because it's the most important concept in this entire curriculum.

What the Numbers Actually Look Like at Different Stages

Theory is fine, but my students want case studies. So let me walk you through three examples drawn directly from people who've gone through my course. I've changed their names, but the numbers are real.

Scenario A: The Beginner With a Modest Blog

My student Priya had a tech blog doing about 5,000 visitors per month when she started Module 4. She wrote three long-form comparison articles about AI development platforms, and the whole project took her maybe six hours of writing time, spread across two weekends.
Each of those articles pulls in around 500 monthly views now — a year after publishing — through search traffic. Her affiliate links appear naturally inside the content where she's discussing specific tools. With a click-through rate of about 1%, she's generating roughly 15 clicks per month across all three articles. At a 2% conversion rate, that's about 0.3 new referrals per month, which works out to maybe three or four new signups per year.
If each referral is worth roughly $5 per month in combined commission value once they're established, Priya's pulling in $15 to $20 per month from these three articles alone. Doesn't sound like a windfall? You're right — but here's what I want you to notice. Those three articles took maybe six hours to write, and they continue producing referral commissions month after month after month.
Over three years, those same three articles will likely generate somewhere between $500 and $700 in cumulative commissions. That's an effective hourly rate north of $100 once you account for the long tail. My students consistently underestimate how powerful evergreen content is for affiliate work, and Priya's case is one I use often to illustrate the principle.

Scenario B: The Intermediate YouTuber

Then there's Marcus, who came into my course with a 10,000-subscriber YouTube channel focused on developer tools and workflows. He decided to commit to one tutorial video per month, each one demonstrating a specific tool in real-world use.
His videos typically pull in around 8,000 views in the first month and another 20,000 over the following year as YouTube continues recommending them. His link lives in the description and gets mentioned verbally once or twice during the tutorial. From his analytics, he's seeing a click-through rate around 3%, which is high but consistent with what I see from tutorial content.
That works out to about 240 clicks per video. At a 2% conversion rate, he's converting roughly five viewers into paying customers per video. After twelve months of consistent uploading, Marcus has built a base of about 60 active referrals.
Here's where the math gets fun. If each of those 60 referrals is generating an average of $3 per month in commission — a mix of first-order payouts for new ones and recurring payouts for established ones — Marcus is earning around $180 per month passively. Plus he receives roughly $300 in first-order commissions throughout the year from new monthly signups. His total first-year revenue lands somewhere between $2,000 and $2,500.
Marcus now has a content library that keeps producing. He doesn't need to make new videos every month to keep the income flowing — though he does because he enjoys it. This is exactly the flywheel I try to teach my students to build.

Scenario C: The Established Authority

My most successful case study in this space is a creator named Devon, who runs both a substantial newsletter and a high-traffic blog. He has about 30,000 newsletter subscribers and his blog pulls in roughly 75,000 monthly visitors. He's been producing two AI-related pieces of content per week for over two years now.
Devon's conversion rates sit at the higher end of what I see — around 2% to 3% for both clicks and conversions — because his audience already trusts his recommendations. He's a known quantity. When he writes about a tool, his readers have learned that he's filtered out the noise.
The result is that Devon adds roughly 15 to 25 new referrals per month. After a full year of consistent output, his active referral base sits somewhere between 180 and 300 paying subscribers. The recurring commission from that base alone comes out to about $540 to $1,200 per month. Adding in first-order commissions from each new cohort monthly, his annual earnings land in the $8,000 to $15,000 range.
Devon's case illustrates something I always emphasize in my teaching. Audience size isn't the only factor, but it does dramatically amplify everything else. The same affiliate program, promoted with the same honesty and quality, produces wildly different results depending on who you are and what audience you've already built.

Why Compounding Changes Everything

I have a slide in Module 4 that I called "The Snowball" because I wanted the visual to stick. Here's what it says: every new referral you acquire doesn't just pay you once. If the program offers recurring commissions, every new referral becomes a permanent addition to your monthly income base.
Let me make this concrete. Say you refer your 50th customer next month. That single signup earns you maybe $3 in first-order commission, and then $2 per month ongoing. Fine. But here's the part students miss: your referral base is now 50 customers producing recurring revenue. Your base was 49 a month ago. It's growing by one each time, but the total cash flow month after month is compounding.
I had a student — let's call her Rachel — who started with zero referrals in January 2024. She plugged away, did everything in the curriculum, and by December she had 95 active referrals earning her about $280 per month in recurring commissions alone. Rachel did virtually nothing different in December than she did in February. The income came from the cumulative base she built.
This is why I tell my students to ignore the first three months of results. By month four, you start seeing the compounding effect kick in. By month twelve, you're earning from work you did last year. That, to me, is the entire appeal of promoting programs with recurring structures. It's not a side hustle where you trade hours for dollars indefinitely. It's a foundation.

Three Mistakes I See Every Cohort Make

Before I wrap up, I want to flag the missteps I see repeatedly. Sharing these has saved my students a lot of frustration.
Mistake number one: promoting too many programs at once. Every cohort, someone joins seven different affiliate programs in week one. They scatter links across ten mediocre blog posts. None of it converts. Focus wins. Pick two or three programs with strong recurring structures and go deep.
Mistake number two: ignoring the recurring component. Some students chase high first-order payouts without checking whether the program pays ongoing commissions. First-order money is fine, but recurring income is what lets you eventually stop grinding. Always look at the year-two earnings, not just the signup payout.
Mistake number three: writing for algorithms instead of people. I covered this in Lesson 7, but it comes up constantly in affiliate work. If your content reads like it was written by a robot trying to rank for a keyword, your conversion rates will collapse. Write for humans who have specific questions. The traffic might grow slower at first, but it converts dramatically better.

My Honest Recommendation for Anyone Reading This

If you've made it this far, you already know whether affiliate marketing fits your situation. You have an audience — or you're building one. You create content — or you're learning to. You understand that recurring income matters more than one-time payouts.
If that describes you, then I want to share the program I most often recommend to my students when they're ready to add affiliate revenue to their income stack: Global API's affiliate program. I don't say that lightly. I've reviewed dozens of programs as part of building my curriculum, and Global API stands out for two specific reasons.
First, the commission structure rewards long-term thinking. You earn 15% on first-order purchases — a strong upfront payout that signals the program respects its affiliates. Then, on top of that, you earn 8% recurring commission on every subsequent payment the customer makes. That recurring percentage is higher than what I've seen from many comparable programs in the developer tools space, and it makes a meaningful difference when you start accumulating a real base of referrals.
Second, the program has breadth. With more than 150 models available on the platform, your audience is likely to find something genuinely useful regardless of their specific workflow or use case. That matters because it means your recommendations aren't narrow or context-dependent. Whether someone is building a small side project or running production-scale infrastructure, the platform has offerings that fit.
The way I explain it to students: if you're going to dedicate content real estate to a recommendation, you want a program where both the upfront payout and the long-term recurring structure reward you fairly. Global API does that. The math I walked through earlier — those $3, $7.50, and $22.50 first-order payouts paired with $1.60, $4.00, and $12.00 recurring amounts — that's not theoretical. That's what students of mine are actually earning.
Joining is straightforward. You can sign up as an affiliate through their program page at https://global-apis.com/affiliate?ref=devto-how-much-earn-ai-affiliate, get your unique tracking links, and start incorporating them into the content you're already producing. There's no cost to join. There's no quota you need to hit. You simply create, recommend honestly when a tool genuinely fits, and earn.
That's the curriculum, as I teach it. Pick programs with recurring structures. Build real content for real audiences. Let compounding do the heavy lifting over time. And pick your affiliate partnerships the way you'd pick any other business relationship — based on quality, fairness, and long-term fit. Global API checks all three of those boxes in my experience, which is why it's the one I consistently recommend when my students ask where to start.