Hey, I'm an indie maker. I run three small SaaS products, a tiny newsletter, and I keep trying to layer new income streams on top without burning out. This is the unfiltered story of how I spent the last quarter building an affiliate revenue channel around AI APIs — what worked, what flopped, and what the actual numbers look like behind the scenes.
I want to be upfront about one thing right at the top: this isn't a "passive income" fantasy post. My first month earned me exactly three dollars. Three. That's not even enough for a decent lunch where I live. But by the end of month two, I was watching the first trickle of what would become real recurring revenue land in my account. And that's the part that excited me — not the size of the check, but the shape of it.
Let me back up and tell you where I started.
My Starting Stack
I've been shipping small software products for about four years now. None of them are huge. My biggest one does around $1,800 MRR, the second sits closer to $600, and the third is basically a hobby with maybe $50 a month. I'm fully bootstrapped. No investors, no cofounders, no team. Just me, a laptop, and an unreasonable tolerance for staring at Stripe dashboards at 11pm.
