Building a Real Software API (what It actually takes)
Other Videos📅 2025-05-10
Transcript
[00:00] Let's pretend this is your app with no API. If you don't have API, you're closed in. No one else can access it unless they actually go to your website. But we can take your app, make an API endpoint of it, and now you can start monetizing that and creating an extra revenue stream for your software. So, let me show you how to do this so you can start plugging into other developers tech stacks and making a new revenue stream for your safer company. Sound good? Let's jump in. Welcome back, y'all. In this video, I'm going to go over how you can start selling API for the software you're creating. the advantages and possible disadvantages
[00:31] associated with this. And just to give a little context, yes, behind me is the API I'm personally selling. At the time of making this video, we currently are selling six different endpoints, which means that every single time an individual calls the chat response endpoint, we make money. So, now that you know that I actually know what I'm talking about, let's jump in. Stage one, is the company you're creating going to be solely an API oriented company or are you some type of hybrid? bump ups. We're a hybrid where we offer a web app but also the ability to actually develop with the API endpoints. So as a high
[01:03] level here, stage one is your app. Now typically what most softwares opt to do is they'll create a closed ecosystem where no one else can access the API endpoints and in order to get value from the software, you obviously just got to go to the website or you have a situation where it just makes sense to add API documentation like Mailchimp and being able to access that through software in a text stack. So the idea is this though you have your app let's say the value of this app is it does PDF analysis you provide a PDF you get information out the way we can then
[01:33] monetize an API is that we would create a whole separate function here that is just for API this endpoint is what's called in order to do the value you have in your app but in order to create this endpoint in a secure scalable way there's a couple steps associated with this the first one is that we need a proxy and we need the ability to call this in a secure way therefore we need to use a thirdparty service. Now, if your actual apps functions themselves, whether they're on Firebase, Superbase, or wherever you're hosting your functions, it doesn't typically matter
[02:03] where you host them for this next step here for the actual proxy part. Some examples of API management tools are like Apogee from Google. There's also one here called Kong HQ. So, once you find your API management software, this is where you're going to set it up so that we have a secure way of accessing data from here to the API endpoint. Now, one thing I want to point out that is pretty big in the industry when it comes to API and selling and monetizing API is a lot of these services on a service level will provide the ability to create your API endpoint. That's no issue. It's actually pretty simple. The issue
[02:34] becomes when you actually need to monetize that endpoint. And typically what you'll have to do is contact their customer service and really walk through each platform's way of integrating monetization within the actual API call itself. Setting up an API call is simple, but actually making money off every single call, it gets a little bit more complex and it's case by case depending on the service you choose. Just type in sell API on Google or API management software. You'll see what I'm talking about. Some of them will have the entire infrastructure of the
[03:05] management software, but the monetization part is a plug-in. You'll have to find out which one is yours. So taking a step back, assuming we're going down the hybrid approach where you already have an app that provides value. Now you want to add this extra layer of API. We got our app here. We have the management software we are opting to use whether it's Apogee, Kong or etc. From there, this is where we then provide the actual endpoint itself to a developer. Depending on how you structure your API and making it available to an underlying consumer, the way we did it at bumpups is that we created a whole developer
[03:36] portal just dedicated to development. This is where you can grab your API key, input into your text stack and get going. And then the actual documentation itself with how to actually use our API. We use scalar s c a l a r. This is pretty cool. Nice UI. Very easy to test payloads in it, etc. Therefore, the structuring of your underlying business model when it comes to API will be two major things. First one is going to be the docs, so tutorials on how to actually use your API. And as you can assume, we got some nice tutorials here at bumpups. And the other one will be
[04:08] portal. This is where the developer will put in their payment information to actually buy credits or load a balance. Also on top of that to get their API key in a secure way, everything of this nature. Your portal is going to be associated with whatever API management software that you chose to go with. Therefore, it's a very streamlined process where the individual signs up on your portal. It automatically gets tracked into a separate backend. So if you're using Apogeg within GCP, you keep proceeding that way. Once you provide those two things, the last thing here is going to be the actual developer
[04:38] themselves. So, numa draw is the developer. Here are a couple things about how to attract new developers. First and obvious one is create content like this where you use your own API in a tech stack and show why it's even cool, why it even has relevance. So, for example, on this channel, so make sure to subscribe here. I'm actually going to do a full-blown building out a software from scratch, zero lines of code, showing you how to do it with AI using BumpUps API, and we're going to build out a software together. GitHub repo, pushing PRs, like everything. So, you
[05:09] can really get a full idea of how to build out software from scratch if you're interested in that. Regardless of that though, here is another cool way you can attract more developers to your API. If you're familiar with this channel, you already saw this coming from a thousand miles away, but integrating with other platforms. Now, a really good example of this would be Zapier. Zapier already integrates with 8,000 different apps. And to actually add your API to Zapier's platform, it's extremely simple. So right now, if I type in bumpups, we exist. We're here and we integrate within Zapier and its entire ecosystem. This is free. And then integrating into other note platforms
[05:41] like make and piped become evidently obvious as a way to attract more developers to actually leverage your API in their tech stack. Zapier also gives us the ability to give example ways that people can actually leverage your API. So, for example, here, generating timestamps for a new YouTube video, creating a Mailchimp newsletter campaign for a new YouTube video of bump ups, etc. And they make the actions themselves very by-size very easy. So, therefore, when it comes to the developer and attracting developers and creating an ecosystem for developers, here's the major thought process most
[06:12] developers will have whether or not to use your API if it fits their use case. Typically, when you look at someone else's API, you have a mental choice as a developer whether or not to use it because in your head, you're like, well, in theory, I could probably build out the entire custom pipeline myself to achieve the same end value point. So, for this very specific example here for bumpups, the developer has a choice. Do I build out a custom pipeline to handle video data and get out actionable outputs? If the answer is yes, then they would opt not to use bumpups. But if the
[06:44] answer is no, I don't want to take all that time to build out a custom workflow just to handle video assets, then they would lean towards using bumpups because we make it very simple. Simply put in a link to a video and you get actionable outputs. Meet spell bumpups. Correct. Bump-ups. There we go. Okay, I need to work on my handwriting. You know, like when you're writing or like signing something on like the little terminal when you check out sometimes those signatures, it just looks like absolute scribble. Like I'm like I'm pretty sure this wouldn't pass if someone was like is that your signature? I was like whatever. Scribble hit green light.
[07:15] We're good to go check out. So that's a high level on how to start selling API for your software. Make sure to subscribe here because in the future I'll probably build out an entire playlist showing you how to really build out API for your app from scratch as the content around this on YouTube and honestly all social media is just non-existent. It seems like this is a really like no one's doing any content on this topic. I don't know why. Make sure you leave a like. is completely free. Those are two random videos. I think that's random.