Most affiliate marketing conversations are about physical products and one-time commissions. That world is fine, but it's not where the recurring money is in 2025.
The AI SaaS market is growing faster than any other sector in software, and most of these companies offer affiliate programmes that pay 20–40% recurring commissions — meaning you earn every month a referred customer stays subscribed. One $99/month tool at 30% is $30/month per referral. Get a hundred of those and you've built something that pays without constant promotion.
Where to look
The AI writing and content category has the most options right now. Jasper pays 30% recurring. Anyword pays 40% recurring. CopySmith, GetGenie, and Hypotenuse all sit in the 20–30% range. These tools solve a real problem for a real market — businesses trying to produce more content without hiring more writers — so the conversion case is straightforward if your audience overlaps with that problem.
AI video is the next frontier. Lumen5 pays $100 per sale. Keyla AI is at 30% recurring. If you're producing content about content creation, these write themselves into your reviews and tutorials naturally.
Outside the content category: Jasper, Descript, HubSpot's AI-integrated CRM (30% recurring for the first year), and Notion AI (which pays $50 per activated signup plus 20% for 12 months). For productivity-focused audiences, the case for Notion practically makes itself.
The honest reality of AI affiliate marketing
The opportunity is real, but there's a distinction that separates the people earning consistently from the ones chasing commissions. Promoting tools you've actually used converts three to five times better than promoting tools you've only researched. Audiences can tell. The review that says "I've used this for six months and here's what broke, what surprised me, and what I'd replace it with" outperforms the listicle every time.
Pick two or three tools that actually fit into your workflow. Use them seriously. Then write about what you've found. That's the affiliate strategy that compounds — and in the AI space right now, the commissions are worth doing it properly.