If you have a penchant for coding but looking for a way to put it to good use, you may want to consider selling your APIs. Buying and selling APIs has become a great way for coders to create a passive income while they’re currently looking for or continuing to work in their other jobs.
How do you go about selling your APIs? Where do you market your talents so that they’re easy to find?
What Are APIs?
API stands for Application Programming Interface, and serves as the means for two computer programs to talk to each other. It has a pre-defined set of functions that allows other programs to work together, including getting information from other program, creating new data, updating existing data, or deleting data.
The use of APIs speeds up the development time and process, and makes the work easier by providing read-made solutions. Check out bullpreneur to find out more ways to put your coding out there into the market.
How To Sell Your APIs
The best place to get your APIs out there is through API hubs on the Internet. You can sell access to your API, making some cash every time someone chooses the API that you’re offering. This creates a passive income that you don’t really have to worry about or monitor extensively. You can charge customers by tiers, allowing for greater access the more money that they pay.
The great thing about these hubs is that you don’t have to set yourself up as a business or register the name of a company to operate under. You can just put your APIs up and wait for the cash to start rolling in.
Make Something Useful
There’s no point in making an API that no one is going to use. Take a look at the market and see what people are looking for. Create an API that can solve a common problem; you may not make millions, but you’ll be generating a good bit of income if no one else has created an API to solve a common problem that people face on their daily basis.
Put Your API Out There
Once you’ve built it, tested it, and fine-tuned it, it’s time to put them up in an API hub for the rest of the world to see. You can choose the pricing scheme and who has access to your API, and most hubs will take care of the payment collection for you. Keep in mind that they may take a percentage for every transactions, since they are hosting access to your API for you, but the percentage is usually a pretty small amount.
Don’t become disheartened if your API doesn’t skyrocket as fast as you want it to. It takes time for these kinds of things to gain traction, and you should be spending your free time thinking of other APIs to create anyway. The more you put out there, the more people will take notice and consider what you have to offer.