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Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?

#51

Post by soared »

mtlynch wrote: post #44

Not making a living, but I make about $200/mo from an API that parses recipe ingredients like "2 cups finely chopped onions" into structured JSON.[0] I put it in maintenance mode in 2019, so it's about 99% passive income, as I spend only about an hour or two on maintenance per year. I'm surprised all my clients haven't switched to LLMs, but maybe I still outdo LLMs on price/accuracy since it's so niche. I'd like to s…

I made this exact website with ChatGPT’s API to prep for an interview a couple months ago! Biggest hurdle I ran into - asking chatgpt for help on using the chatgpt api was completely useless, as it was trained on a deprecated version of the api so none of its examples even worked.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?

#52

Post by soared »

aaviator42 wrote: post #3

On the same topic: does anyone have an API concept that they wish existed and that they'd be willing to pay for?

Local grocery prices. Let me upload a shopping list and allow me to optimize for cost (visit this store for these items, this store for these items) and a trail to follow through the store for optimal pathing.

Same thing for home improvement - Lowe’s in stock indicator is wildly wrong to the point that I sometimes call and ask an employee to go physically look at the item.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?

#53

Post by gervwyk »

thuanao wrote: post #48
gervwyk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not an api but, Internally we’re just looking for a native text to speach app that auto records all meetings and call a webhook with the transcript. not the notes! for some reason all most rmeetings apps gives you only notes and seldomly a webhook or similar. also not interested in zapier etc. After two weeks off looking for a solution, we’re going to vibe code something basic and use deepgram. If we just skipped the…

Recall.ai is exactly this. Using them at my current company and it works well. It even supports live transcription.

Aah nice. I knew about them but did not see they have a desktop sdk

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?

#54

Post by callamdelaney »

kinard wrote: post #47
flir wrote: post #9

I can tell you what we pay for: postcode lookups.

Ridiculous that postcodes/uprns lookups are not open data (yet). hohum.

They are in the UK but you have to have some magic understanding of around 15 separate files. Seems to be purposefully difficult.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?

#55

Post by philipodonnell »

mtlynch wrote: post #44

Not making a living, but I make about $200/mo from an API that parses recipe ingredients like "2 cups finely chopped onions" into structured JSON.[0] I put it in maintenance mode in 2019, so it's about 99% passive income, as I spend only about an hour or two on maintenance per year. I'm surprised all my clients haven't switched to LLMs, but maybe I still outdo LLMs on price/accuracy since it's so niche. I'd like to s…

What kind of customers are using this API? I’ve had many similar thoughts but I get hung up on the idea that customers are “developers” from a marketing standpoint, because those developers are developing something and that something is probably a bigger driver of utility that a truly generically developer tool like Cursor.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?

#56

Post by couchridr »

soared wrote: post #52
aaviator42 wrote: post #3

On the same topic: does anyone have an API concept that they wish existed and that they'd be willing to pay for?

Local grocery prices. Let me upload a shopping list and allow me to optimize for cost (visit this store for these items, this store for these items) and a trail to follow through the store for optimal pathing. Same thing for home improvement - Lowe’s in stock indicator is wildly wrong to the point that I sometimes call and ask an employee to go physically look at the item.

What do your eyes tell you? https://youtu.be/P7KBcsdPhxA?si=RNDXSwiHqCKDLv0i&t=107

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?

#57

Post by jt2190 »

franky47 wrote: post #11
Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #8

I know of a guy, but his scenario was quite unique. I was working for an energy company who shall remain nameless, but who's internal IT was a tangle of external consultants milking the place for millions, and ineffective/underserved full time staff who couldn't run a query on a database without a change control committee of consultants milking them for yet more cash. Anyway, this guy was the go to guy for gas custom…

> moved the customer data for gas customers to his own system That sounds highly illegal.

I assume “customers” means internal customers, i.e. business units at the energy company who had come to rely on this guy’s ability to navigate the insane I.T. and actually get things done for them.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?

#58

Post by Eikon »

I run https://www.merklemap.com/ a certificate transparency / subdomain search engine.

I’d say that this kind of projects are not different than any entrepreneurial endeavor, and the biggest challenge is usually acquisition, even though the technical part was / is hefty too.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?

#59

Post by throwaway7783 »

sjducb wrote: post #37
Lord_Zero wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browserless can do this for free: docker run -p 3000:3000 browserless/chrome:latest

> instead of managing browser clusters, and handling all the corner cases The cost with running a docker container is you have to manage that container. You’re paying with dev time not money.

Exactly this. We keep forgetting time and money that needs to be paid to a developer to setup and manage stuff.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?

#60

Post by tasuki »

I work for a tiny company. Most of the revenue is from paid API access.

I don't think I'm authorized to share any of the specifics, so will keep it generic.

The API is a world-class machine learning model for a specific scenario. There's a public price list, and various customers manage to negotiate various discounts.

Our biggest challenge is that Google Lens (while much worse than us for our specific domain) is becoming good enough for the average potential customer.

I think one of the regrets is only doing the ML API and not the end-user apps. It turns out the people creating the front end pocket most of the money.

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