Issue#14: Building $1K-$10K MRR micro saas products around API bundles - both platform based APIs and general APIs
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No fluffy content. If your goal is to build a $100m ARR business, this is not the right post. Here I am are NOT going to talk about building the next Facebook or Twitter. If your goal is to make a $1K to $10K MRR, continue reading.
This post will cover one SAAS area and talk about multiple niches in this space. This post also explains more on how to do tech implementation, do market analysis, how the current players are doing, and also ends with a cost analysis to understand the overall cost for 100 users.
APIs aren’t new. But what is new is bundling a set of APIs and allowing users to use these set of APIs under a single account.
Some players:
NoCodeAPI: The easiest way to connect with APIs. Save time & money to set up your Google Sheet, Airtable, Google Analytics, Twitter, Telegram, Open Graph API, MailChimp, 50+ application APIs without any backend.
APIStacks: Automate your business with Fast, Scalable, and Reliable APIs.
AbstractAPI: Automate routine dev work with Abstract's suite of APIs. Serving billions of calls to 1,000,000+ developers and end users worldwide.
Negative Nancy says - “Most people need only one or two APIs. Bundling will not work”
Me - Needs change dynamically. Having more options is always preferred.
Negative Nancy says - “Do one thing but do it best. Provide one API but provide it the best”
Me - This will not work here. API implementations becoming simple day by day and single API platforms won’t work.
Negative Nancy says - “It gets complex as the number of supported APIs increases”
Me - Not really. With a proper tech stack, this can be easily scaled and maintained.
Deep-dive
API Bundles, API Packs, API Combos, API Stacks - Pretty much all refer to the same thing - Bundle multiple APIs into one simple micro-saas solution and lets users use whatever API they want under a single plan.
What is the catch here and why would anybody prefer something like this? People love bundles and combo packs. Even if a user wants a single API for his/her use, given a chance to pick a platform that provides a single API vs combo APIs, the user prefers bundled APIs. The reason is just simple - “users need can change anytime and if someone is giving a combination of APIs pretty much for the same price, why not to opt that”??
Let’s divide the API types into two categories for our understanding.
Generic APIs - These APIs are generic - for example, currency conversion, webpage screenshot, get the location of IP address, etc.
Platform APIs - These APIs are specific to existing platforms like Google sheets, Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
So, what are these founders doing here? They are doing two things
Create an API for some generic functionalities.
Provide an easily accessible API on top of existing platform APIs. - We also call this - creating a wrapper for existing APIs.
Some niches
While we cannot carve out a niche out of this, let’s see the list of the most required APIs that you can create as a bundle plus some out of box ideas around bundling the APIs.
Basic APIs that you can add to your bundle (these are most popular and are mostly used)
Currency conversion API
Time conversion API
Public Holidays API - Don’t underestimate the Public Holidays API. See HolidayAPI doing this as a simple API mechanism to get Public holidays data and making thousands of dollars in revenue and that's just one API. Imagine if you could bundle all related APIs into one saas platform, there is a lot of demand for it.
Website screenshot API
Image resize API
Uploader APIs
IP Geolocation API - For example, IPInfo has made huge revenues by just providing IP related info for a given IP.
Weather APIs - Yahoo Weather API needs no introduction. There are still a lot of B2B products that need a simple weather API for their products.
Web scraping APIs.
VAT validation and rates APIs
Visa related info based on the country
…. see more samples here
Some platform based APIs and new niches
APIs around Google suite products: You may be thinking that Google is already providing a ton of APIs and why another wrapper around Google products. Existing Google APIs are complex and need a lot of components like OAuth2 etc. That is the reason, there are new micro saas tools built around Google APIs. For example, sheet2api, sheety just connects the existing Google sheets and provides easy to use interfaces/APIs to read and write to sheets. You can explore more on this niche and extend this to the entire Google product suite - Google Drive, Gmail, Google calendar, etc. For example, NoCodeAPI attempted at this but is only just giving a JSON of the sheet data. You can create simple micro saas around the entire Google product suite. You can extend this to similar products like Airtable.
APIs around communication tools: Create a bundle of APIs that can help it easy to use communication tools like Telegram and Whatsapp. For example, I am using NoCodeAPI’s Telegram hook to receive alerts on my Telegram about my micro-saas activity. Certainly, I can code using Telegram API but NoCodeAPI platform made it easy for me by just giving me a single API without any nuances. This can be extended to all communication tools like Telegram, Whatsapp, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Slack, etc. The user would be just authenticating to your micro saas app using OAuth2 or using API keys and your product just give the user a consumable API to interact with these platforms.
See another 8 niches around profitable API Bundle based micro saas products (Pro version)
I also recommend Holiday API (https://www.holidays.rest) to obtain up to date information on public holidays. That's what we use in many projects already.
What do we mean by uploader APIs?