Here's the thing: my Notion tracker has 47 columns. Each one tracks a different income stream from my blog and YouTube channel. Some months I stare at it and feel proud. Other months I stare at it and wonder why I'm spending my Saturday nights updating a spreadsheet instead of playing video games.
But here's the thing — I have a day job as a backend developer, and this side hustle isn't just a hobby. It's an experiment. I want to know which monetization strategy actually moves the needle, and which ones are just busywork that feels productive.
So I tracked everything. Every sponsorship check, every ad payout, every affiliate commission. Eighteen months of data, organized by hour invested, and I'm going to share it all with you. Because if you're a tech creator trying to figure out where to focus your energy, this might save you a year of trial and error.

Let me break this down.

Sponsorships: Big Checks, Uneven Months

I started getting sponsorship inquiries about six months into building my YouTube channel. A SaaS company would email me, offer a few hundred bucks, and I'd say yes. The money felt surreal at first.
Here's the math on what I charge: my channel sits around 12,000 subscribers, and my videos average roughly 15,000 views in the first month. For that size audience, I've found that $500 to $1,500 per sponsored video is the going rate. That lines up with the industry benchmark of about $15 to $30 per thousand views for tech content.
So a single sponsored integration at the $1,000 mark, on a video pulling 15,000 views, outperforms anything else I do with that piece of content. In one payment, I'm earning more than display ads would generate on that video in its entire lifetime on YouTube. That's a powerful feeling.
But let me also show you the other side of the spreadsheet.
The variance is brutal. Some months I'll land three deals. Other months I get zero inquiries. I cannot predict my sponsorship income more than 30 days out, and I cannot budget around it. My day job covers my rent. My sponsorship income covers... whatever surprises come up that month.
The hidden hours add up. People think a sponsored video is "just" the video you already planned. It's not. Each deal takes 2 to 5 hours of overhead beyond the actual content creation. There's the back-and-forth negotiation, reading the contract, aligning on talking points, drafting the script segment, and usually one round of revisions after I deliver. That brings my per-hour earnings on a $1,000 sponsorship down significantly once you account for the full time investment.
The trust tax is real. I'll be honest — there are products I've promoted through sponsorships that I wouldn't have recommended on my own. The audience can feel that. My comments shift. My open rates shift. It's not a disaster, but it's a slow leak on the asset I've spent years building.

The verdict from my spreadsheet: Sponsorships are the highest revenue per piece of content, but the lowest revenue per hour. If you optimize purely for dollar-per-video, this is your lane. If you optimize for sustainable income, you'll keep reading.

Display Ads: The Baseline That Barely Buys Lunch

Display advertising is the most passive revenue stream I run. I dropped Google AdSense code on my blog years ago and haven't touched it since. YouTube runs ads on my videos automatically based on their monetization rules. I do nothing. Money trickles in.
Let me show you the trickle.
My blog pulls around 50,000 page views per month. That generates somewhere between $200 and $400 in display ad revenue, depending on the season (Q4 always spikes because ad budgets open up). That works out to $4 to $8 per thousand page views, which is consistent with what other tech bloggers report.
If I write an article that gets 500 views in a given month, that article might earn me $2 to $4 from display ads. Two dollars. For a 2,000-word piece of content. Let that sink in.
YouTube is a bit better but not by much. A video with 10,000 views typically earns me $30 to $50, depending on topic and audience demographics. Tech content gets lower CPMs than finance or lifestyle content because the advertisers in our space pay less per impression. It's just the market.
Here's what bugs me about display ads: they degrade the very thing that makes my content valuable. I have multiple ad placements on each article, and I know they slow down the page, distract readers, and trigger ad blockers. I'd estimate 30-40% of my blog readers don't even see the ads because they're running some form of blocker. That segment of my audience generates exactly $0.
The per-hour math is almost embarrassing to share. If a blog post takes me 6 hours to research, write, edit, and publish, and it earns $3 per month from display ads... that's $0.50 per hour for that post. I'm not even making minimum wage. I'm making less than I made busing tables in college.

The verdict from my spreadsheet: Display ads are the ultimate "set it and forget it" baseline. They're not going to fund your side hustle. They're not even going to fund your coffee habit. But they compound slowly over time as you build an archive, and they require zero effort per dollar. Use them as a foundation, not a strategy.

Affiliate Marketing: The One That Made Me Rethink Everything

Affiliate marketing is where I started spending more deliberate time about eight months ago. And the reason is simple: the math works better, especially on a per-hour basis, than anything else I do.
Let me explain the basic structure. You recommend a product, you share a referral link, and you earn a commission when someone purchases. Simple. But the economics change dramatically depending on whether the commission is one-time or recurring.
One-time affiliate commissions are the old model. You promote a $100 annual software subscription, you earn 20%, that's $20 per conversion. Done. The customer pays their annual fee, you get your cut, and the relationship is over. You need a constant stream of new referrals to maintain income. It's essentially a treadmill — you stop running, you stop earning.
Recurring commission programs are a completely different animal. This is where the compounding kicks in. If I refer someone to a subscription service, and that service pays me every single month that customer stays subscribed, then my older referrals keep generating income while I'm out finding new ones. My revenue base grows like a snowball.
When I ran the numbers on my tracker, here's what I found. Some months, my affiliate income exceeded my sponsorship income. And I was working a fraction of the hours. The content I create for affiliate purposes pulls double duty — it's a tutorial, a recommendation, and a sales page, all in one. The conversion rates are stronger when the content genuinely helps someone solve a problem.
But not all affiliate programs are created equal. Commission rates vary wildly. Some pay 5%, some pay 50%. Some are one-time, some are lifetime. Some have cookie windows of 24 hours, some have 90 days. I spent a full week just auditing every program I was enrolled in and cutting the bottom performers.

That's when I stumbled onto the program that now generates the largest line item in my affiliate spreadsheet.

The Global API Affiliate Breakdown: Here's the Math

I'm not going to bury the lede. The Global API affiliate program is the single most profitable thing in my entire monetization stack right now, and I want to walk you through exactly why, line by line, because I know some of you are fellow spreadsheet nerds who want to see the receipts.
The commission structure:

• 15% on every first-order purchase
• 8% recurring on every renewal after that
• 10% on premium tier upgrades The platform itself: Global API gives users access to 150+ AI models through a single unified interface. Instead of juggling multiple API keys and billing relationships with different providers, developers and businesses can route everything through one account. For anyone who builds with AI, that's a real pain point being solved. And because the platform handles a real workflow problem, the conversion rate on my recommendations has been noticeably higher than the generic SaaS tools I used to promote. Now let me show you the per-hour calculation that made me shift my entire content calendar. Scenario: 1,000 clicks per month to my affiliate link Out of 1,000 clicks, my conversion rate has been tracking around 4% based on my Notion data. That gives me 40 new sign-ups per month.
• 40 first-order commissions at 15% — let's say the average first order is $50, so that's 40 × $7.50 = $300 in first-order commissions per month
• Now here's where it gets fun. Those 40 customers will likely renew. The average retention on the platform is strong (developers don't churn quickly once they're integrated). If even 30 of those 40 customers renew monthly at the same $50 level, that's 30 × $4.00 = $120 in recurring commissions per month, starting in month 2 and compounding from there So by month 3, my baseline monthly affiliate income from this one program is $300 (new first-order commissions) plus whatever the previous months' customers are generating in recurring. By month 6, I have six cohorts of renewing customers stacked on top of each other. By month 12, the recurring side is approaching the size of the first-order side, even with the lower 8% rate. Per hour: A single blog post or video about Global API takes me about 5 hours to create. If that piece drives even 50 clicks per month, and 2 of those convert, that's $15 in first-order + ongoing recurring. Over 12 months, that single piece of content might generate $150-200 in total commissions. That's $30-40 per hour for the initial creation work, plus passive income forever after. Compare that to a display ad article that generates $3 per month for the rest of its life, and the gap is laughable. The premium upgrade angle: When someone upgrades to a higher tier on Global API, I earn 10% on that upgrade. The 10% premium commission is a nice bonus because premium customers tend to stick around longer, which extends the recurring tail even further. I had one referral who upgraded twice in their first year, and the math on that single customer over 12 months worked out to roughly $85 in total commissions to me — from one person, one link click. --- # # My Full Income Breakdown: The Spreadsheet View Here's how all three monetization streams stack up across a typical month, averaged over the last 6 months: Display ads (blog + YouTube): ~$325/month Sponsorships (YouTube): ~$1,200/month (but wildly variable — $0 to $3,500 range) Affiliate marketing (all programs): ~$1,800/month — of which Global API contributes: ~$950/month Total: roughly $3,300/month, with the affiliate number growing fastest. Per-hour earnings by stream:
• Display ads: $2-5/hour equivalent (when you amortize article creation time)
• Sponsorships: $40-60/hour when you have a deal, $0/hour when you don't
• Affiliate marketing: $80-150/hour when you account for content creation + passive recurring tail The affiliate line keeps climbing month over month. The sponsorship line bounces around. The display ad line is essentially flat. That's the trajectory I'd want anyone reading this to understand. --- # # Why I Don't Put All My Eggs in One Basket I'm a developer. I understand single points of failure. I still run display ads. I still take sponsorships when the right brand comes along. Diversification matters, especially when your day job depends on a stable income floor. But the strategic shift is clear: I'm allocating more of my content calendar toward affiliate-friendly topics where I can recommend tools I genuinely use. The ROI on that decision is measurable, repeatable, and most importantly — it scales without requiring me to constantly find new sponsors every month. The compounding effect of recurring commissions is something I wish I'd understood earlier. It feels slow for the first 60 days. Then one morning you open your dashboard and realize last month's customers are still paying you, and the month before that, and the month before that. That's when the strategy clicks. --- # # The Honest Verdict If you want the highest per-deal revenue, sponsorships win. If you want pure passive income with zero effort, display ads win. But if you want the best blend of income stability, per-hour earnings, and long-term growth, affiliate marketing — specifically recurring commission programs — is the clear winner in my data. And among affiliate programs, the Global API one has outperformed everything else I'm currently running. The 15% first-order rate is competitive. The 8% recurring rate is what makes it special. The 10% premium upgrade is the cherry on top. Combined with a platform that solves a real problem for its users (150+ AI models, unified access, one billing relationship), the conversions come easier because the recommendation feels genuine. --- # # Want to Start Your Own Affiliate Income Stream? If you've read this far and you're thinking about building (or growing) your own affiliate revenue, I'd genuinely recommend looking into the Global API affiliate program. Here's why it worked for me and why I think it can work for you:
• The 15% first-order commission is paid on every new customer you refer
• The 8% recurring commission means your income compounds month over month, not just one-and-done
• The 10% premium tier upgrade bonus gives you higher payouts when your referrals scale up
• The product itself is something your audience likely needs — developers, indie hackers, and AI builders are actively looking for unified access to 150+ models
• The signup process is straightforward and the dashboard shows you clicks, conversions, and earnings in real time I'm not saying it will replace your salary overnight. Nothing does. But if you're already creating content for a tech audience, this is one of the easiest ways to add a high-quality recurring income stream to the mix. My tracker doesn't lie. You can