My Tech Blog’s First Affiliate Earning: Not from Vultr, but from BeWild AI

I felt genuinely happy when I checked my affiliate dashboards today.

I had always assumed that my first affiliate earning would most likely come from Vultr. After all, I have written quite a few articles about Vultr, self-hosted WireGuard VPN, and server deployment, and I have also added a number of Vultr affiliate links to those posts.

But the actual result was a little unexpected: my first affiliate earning did not come from Vultr. It came from BeWild AI.

The amount was only $1, but the value of this record is not really about the money itself. What matters is that it proves one thing:

The affiliate marketing path on my technical blog has finally worked at least once.

Vultr Had Clicks, but No Signups Yet

According to the Vultr Referral Program dashboard, there were indeed some clicks in July.

The chart shows multiple clicks in the first few days of the month. Some days had 5 or 6 clicks. However, the signup section below the chart still shows:

No Signups for July 2026

In other words, Vultr’s current situation is simple:

There are clicks, but no signups yet.

This is not difficult to understand.

Most of my Vultr-related articles are technical practice notes, such as:

Moving from LetsVPN to a self-hosted WireGuard VPN

WireGuard configuration optimization

Testing the Vultr Singapore node

Troubleshooting frequently blocked ports on a self-hosted VPN

Many readers of these articles may only be looking for technical workflows, configuration details, or troubleshooting experience. Even if they click a Vultr link, they may not immediately register, add funds, or deploy a server.

To be more realistic, Vultr’s conversion path is relatively long:

The reader first reads the article

Then clicks the Vultr link

Then creates an account

Then adds funds

Then actually creates a server

Then meets the affiliate program’s valid conversion conditions

If the user drops off at any point in this process, the affiliate dashboard will not show a final earning.

So even though Vultr has more clicks, the lack of short-term earnings does not mean the articles have no value. It only means the conversion cycle is longer.

The First Earning Came from BeWild AI

By comparison, BeWild AI has received much less traffic from my blog.

So far, I have only written one Chinese article and one English article related to BeWild AI, with roughly 4 affiliate links in total.

Yet the first affiliate earning came from this project.

From the BeWild AI invitation dashboard, I can see the following data:

Total invited users: 1

Rewarded users: 1

Total reward amount: $1.00

Pending amount: $1.00

Withdrawable amount: $0.00

Withdrawal threshold: $25

The dashboard also notes that rewards can only be withdrawn seven days after they are issued.

The amount is small, and it has not reached the withdrawal threshold yet. But for me, it is still an important signal:

The BeWild AI affiliate path has already produced a real signup and a real reward.

Why Did BeWild AI Generate the First Earning?

My own judgment is that the reader intent behind BeWild AI-related content is much clearer.

Vultr articles are more technical and practice-oriented. Readers may simply be using them as references. But the demand behind BeWild AI-related content is usually much more direct:

How can users in mainland China subscribe to ChatGPT Plus?

What can they do without an international credit card?

Are WildCard, OneKey, Dupay, and similar solutions still usable?

Is there a currently available way to subscribe to ChatGPT Plus through a third-party service?

This type of demand is usually not casual browsing. The reader often already has a specific problem and wants to solve it as soon as possible.

So even though BeWild AI has fewer articles and fewer links, it may convert faster as long as the content matches a strong user need.

This gave me a very practical reminder:

Affiliate marketing should not be judged only by article count or link count. The strength of the user need behind the article matters more.

My Current Affiliate Program Table

To avoid confusion as I add more affiliate links, I have started managing affiliate programs with an online table.

This table mainly records program-level information, such as:

Program name

Official website

Affiliate link

Affiliate dashboard

Status

Application date

Commission model

Notes

My current affiliate programs include Vultr, DMIT, DigitalOcean, BeWild AI, ZgoCloud, and others.

Some of them are already live, some are still waiting for application results, and some have been abandoned because they are not suitable or do not meet my current conditions.

The purpose of this table is not to record individual articles. Instead, it records the status of each affiliate program itself. For example, whether BeWild AI is already live, what its commission rules are, where the affiliate dashboard is located, and whether it has generated any earnings are all better recorded in this table.

I Also Created a Separate Affiliate Article Table

In addition to the affiliate program table, I also maintain a separate affiliate article table.

This table works at the article level.

It mainly records:

Article title

Article URL

Language

Corresponding affiliate program

Number of affiliate links in the article

Current status

For example, Chinese and English Vultr-related articles are recorded separately. The Chinese and English BeWild AI-related articles are also recorded as separate entries.

The benefit of doing this is that I can review the data from two angles later:

From the program level: which affiliate program is more likely to generate earnings?

From the article level: which type of article is more likely to bring clicks, signups, or orders?

This is much clearer than trying to keep everything in my head.

I Still Cannot Confirm Which Article Generated the Earning

However, there is one unresolved issue with this first BeWild AI earning:

I do not know whether it came from the Chinese article or the English article.

The reason is simple: both the Chinese article and the English article use the same BeWild AI invitation code. The backend only shows the user’s masked email, date, and reward amount. It does not show the source URL or the exact article that generated the signup.

So I should not force this earning into one specific article.

A more accurate approach is to record it in the notes field of the BeWild AI row in the affiliate program table:

The note is roughly as follows:

2026-07-09: Found the first affiliate earning. Direct invites: 1. Reward: $1. Current status: pending amount. Withdrawable amount: $0. Withdrawal threshold: $25. Since the Chinese and English articles use the same invitation code, the specific source article cannot be confirmed yet. The only confirmed source is the BeWild AI affiliate program.

This is a more accurate way to record the result.

It does not exaggerate the earning, and it does not misattribute the source.

Attribution Needs to Be Improved Later

This experience also exposed a tracking problem: if all articles directly use the same affiliate link, it becomes difficult to know which article produced the actual result.

If I continue to take affiliate marketing seriously, I may need to add an intermediate redirect layer later.

For example:

The Chinese article can use one internal redirect link

The English article can use another internal redirect link

Different pages and different link positions can also use separate redirect entries

All of them can eventually redirect to the same final affiliate invitation link

In this way, even if the affiliate dashboard does not provide detailed source data, I can still use website analytics or server logs to roughly determine which article and which entry point contributed the click.

This is not something I have to implement immediately. But if affiliate earnings start to grow, attribution will become more and more important.

What This $1 Earning Really Means

From a purely financial perspective, $1 is of course a very small amount, and it has not even reached the withdrawal threshold.

But in practical terms, it proves several things:

First, a technical blog is not completely unable to generate commercial conversions.

Second, affiliate links do not only generate clicks. They can also produce real rewards.

Third, articles that match strong user intent may convert better than pure technical notes.

Fourth, affiliate programs and affiliate articles need to be recorded separately, otherwise later analysis will become messy.

Fifth, attribution should be considered early. Otherwise, even if an earning appears, it may still be unclear where it came from.

For me, this is not a “how I made money” story. It is more like a real milestone record:

From zero to the first affiliate earning, the path finally worked once.

Whether this can continue to generate earnings still needs more observation. But at least this moment is worth recording.