The 'API marketplace' and 'API economy' narratives are largely pushed by companies who make API proxies: Mashape, Mulesoft, etc. (EDIT: not Mashable, they're unrelated)
I've yet to hear true success stories in this space; to me it just seems like wishful thinking (on part of the marketplace and on part of API developers) about a second app boom; notably, in the hype cycle, the API boom has largely been superseded by the Chatbot boom, which is functionally very similar, although the gatekeepers are different.
That is not to say you can't make money this way. Perhaps it's useful for hobbyist-level projects, or cut-from-the-same-cloth wrapper APIs that hardly offer anything unique but at least one sucker signs up anyway -- the same as with apps, really. Is this actually a thriving market?
There was a subthread on HN not too long ago from a guy who quit his day job to scale ipinfo.io, which sells an API subscription product for geoIP lookups. He's doing fairly well.
So I think there is a market for services like this, especially since API Gateway takes away a lot of the kinds of scaling headaches the creator talks about in the linked post.
We've been using the Azure API Management on my team for well over a year now on a couple projects. Though monetizing it is still just a goal, it's been pretty useful just for the features auth, logging, CORS, and some routing issues.
My impression is that it's not a big thing yet because many of the tools really don't support monetization any too well right now (I'd be interested in hearing counter-examples). That said, once the tooling catches up, it will be interesting to see if it actually takes off or not.
Yeah, it's a huge huge market for sure. It's why pretty much every Web APP provides an API to integrate with. They don't do it because it's worthless :)
API Marketplace might help discovery. Not sure about that though.
Need a US bank account to sell [1]. Not quite as restrictive as devpay's requirement for a US legal entity, but still a hassle. I think I'll stick with a free AMI and stripe/quaderno for payments/VAT for license keys to unlock premium features.
There are companies like World First[0] who work with Amazon resellers to repatriate funds for people who sell through Amazon. They set up a virtual bank account for the resellers. I think they would enable this type of business.
Despite all the complaints and open letters about Amazon's horrible work culture and bad organization, they seemed to be building great products at an amazing pace. I read somewhere that AWS deployed 1000 new features to production every week. Whatever they're doing, it seems to be working. My only complaint is that most of their UI interfaces feel like Web 1.0
Amazon's store frontend interfaces are A/B tested. Their backend stuff for developers---not so much.
The look and feel of the Amazon store looks 'web 1.0' because it has high information density, and less white space. Current web fashion is to have minimalist design with lots of white space, but that fashion not UX.
As a UX example, Amazon's store follows pretty standard practices---tables for tabular data, cards for related items that will be skimmed, vertical scrolling to support long item lists without changing the layout on browser resolution, consistent sizing/spacing/coloring for headers, control locality so clicking a button changes information near by it.
It does all of the things you'd expect a regular web app to do, but sprays it over a long-form page instead of burying it in tabs increasing scroll distance via whitespace.
Where Amazon fails is niches. Their interface is generalist, so they don't have great UX for buying clothes, or buying groceries (albeit no one really has a great interface for that).
Which makes me certainly wonder about what assumptions I am making about the general computing public that are obviously false. I assume that Amazon's pages are probably some of the most optimized and A/B tested in the world. If their interfaces feel sooo Web 1.0, I can only imagine it is like that because of extensive and exhaustive testing and metrics analysis. What lessons can this teach to the rest of us, who don't have the infrastructure or user-base to do the kind of testing that they do?
AWS is a very specific business unit within the company and from my friends that work there seems to have a very different culture than Amazon (retail) proper.
Yes their dev/release cycles are quite impressive.
That makes Web 1.0 sound bad. AWS seems to be using Angular and is full of UI quirks and bugs that would have been impossible without JS. HTML forms work predictably, reliably, and with a high degree of affordance.
You could say this about a lot of businesses; AAA game companies, supermarkets etc all can have horrible work culture. But when you are spending millions, and can hire as many people as you want, and work them hard, results will come.
Slightly away from topic, but my new burn is "this is so web 2.0." Because that was like 10 years ago. Personally, I think AWS feels pretty "now" with UX only a developer could love (said as a sometime developer).
I'd rather they had a better work culture and deployed less than "1000 new features every week", in the same way I don't care for cheap sneakers made in sweatshops.
The API gateway seems quite expensive to me. I guess it has its use cases and mine doesn't fit into it.
I run a free API www.macvendors.com that handles around 225 million requests per month. It's super simple and has no authentiction or anything, but I'm also able to run it on a $20/m VPS. Looks like API gateway would be $750+data. Bummer because the ecosystem around it looks great. You certainly pay for it though!
It's a steal for mediocre organizations where traditional development of even a simple proxy to some other AWS service would be a couple months' planning and launch late with show-stopping bugs, eating a couple man-months total before reaching stability and ultimately serving only a few thousand requests before getting shelved.
In circumstances like these, I've estimated per-request costs of systems at tens of dollars.
you should definitely look at Kong[1] - they have an opensource API Management tool. They do have their own commercial product Mashape[2] whose pricing is $250 plus 20% of the API Revenue[3] and they have one more option called Gelato[4] that provides Kong Integration
Teams targeting this capability ought to consider how much specific information Amazon would be able to derive: utilization and revenue growth rates. We've seen platform providers crowd out existing solutions on their platforms when a particular product becomes popular -- Twitter, and their treatment of developers on it's platform, is a classic example.
Through the lens of Twitter, AWS seems to be creating for itself the opportunity to benefit from this sort of third-party R&D on a massive scale.
On the other hand, on Amazon scale you cat probably get pretty good idea about trending API services by just looking at the AWS DNS statistics (and/or some network level metrics) and Amazon Alexa stats.
I use Mashape for monetizing an API. They have great customer service, but it seems like their marketplace hasn't gotten a lot of love in the last few years. Instead they seem to be focused on other things, like Kong.
I do however, think my customers prefer monthly plans instead of a strict per usage billing. It also helps me predict growth in advance.
I think this is a great opportunity for back-end developers who lack full-stack skills or don't have a front-end sidekick to produce valuable software.
Unfortunately, just like the app store, you would still suffer from discovery issues so the developer must also think about upping their marketing game.
Very excited about this new development from Amazon though!
> Unfortunately, just like the app store, you would still suffer from discovery issues
To some degree certainly quite likely, but personally I don't think it'd be as pronounced in such b2b / dev2dev contexts as it would be on today's b2c app stores, to the (hard to quantify/guesstimate) degree that users in the former more carefully scrutinize more offerings and contrast them with their actual requirements.
I highly recommend visiting 21.co. They develop for some time technology to easily charge/collect/pay bitcoin on every HTTP request in the 21 Marketplace.
They have cool (afaik opensource) technology using standard HTTP Response 402 "Payment Required" - yeah, there is such thing :)
I think this is a great new addition to AWS. Amazon's pace of releasing new things is just astounding.
As an API provider I'm pretty excited to find out how this works and whether the AWS marketplace is really ready for 3rd party services.
Having tried mashape a couple of months ago I like the idea but found their implementation a bit cumbersome and confusing. I hope Amazon's approach will be simpler.
The "per request" model is seriously limiting. I work in the mobile app machine learning/analytics space and per Monthly Active User makes a lot more sense for that market.
Or use 3scale or WSO2?
I understand, pricing point of view, amazon will be 10 times or more cheaper. But level of effort required and limited features set, you have to decide what you are trying to do with your time & skills.
Excuse my ignorance, can you tell me an example of a what kind of API would someone sell and someone else buy and why? I just don't understand what is the business model here. Thanks.
Would be interesting if they enabled integration with Ethereum for API monetizing. But that is probably unlikely as they would go against their own payment platform.
What are the advantages of using AWS over selling the API yourself? I can think of a few:
* AWS handles the billing software for you.
* AWS markets to enterprise companies who already have billing integrated and pay a lot of money. So less hassle collecting payment, and less resistance to charging lots.
* You get the AWS brand associated with your API, so people may be more likely to trust it.
The main reason I can think of is, if you make an API that you think will handle 100/s but the product takes off and you end up with 1,000,000/s, you don't have to do anything.
[+] [-] niftich|9 years ago|reply
I've yet to hear true success stories in this space; to me it just seems like wishful thinking (on part of the marketplace and on part of API developers) about a second app boom; notably, in the hype cycle, the API boom has largely been superseded by the Chatbot boom, which is functionally very similar, although the gatekeepers are different.
That is not to say you can't make money this way. Perhaps it's useful for hobbyist-level projects, or cut-from-the-same-cloth wrapper APIs that hardly offer anything unique but at least one sucker signs up anyway -- the same as with apps, really. Is this actually a thriving market?
[+] [-] bjacobel|9 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13328971
So I think there is a market for services like this, especially since API Gateway takes away a lot of the kinds of scaling headaches the creator talks about in the linked post.
[+] [-] Pigo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sheraz|9 years ago|reply
This has the same feel.
[+] [-] Natsu|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blazespin|9 years ago|reply
API Marketplace might help discovery. Not sure about that though.
[+] [-] sinzone|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] osullivj|9 years ago|reply
[1] http://awsmp-loadforms.s3.amazonaws.com/AWS_Marketplace_-_Se...
[+] [-] adaml_623|9 years ago|reply
[0] - https://www.worldfirst.com/uk/online-sellers/?al
[+] [-] GordonS|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slackoverflower|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dismantlethesun|9 years ago|reply
The look and feel of the Amazon store looks 'web 1.0' because it has high information density, and less white space. Current web fashion is to have minimalist design with lots of white space, but that fashion not UX.
As a UX example, Amazon's store follows pretty standard practices---tables for tabular data, cards for related items that will be skimmed, vertical scrolling to support long item lists without changing the layout on browser resolution, consistent sizing/spacing/coloring for headers, control locality so clicking a button changes information near by it.
It does all of the things you'd expect a regular web app to do, but sprays it over a long-form page instead of burying it in tabs increasing scroll distance via whitespace.
Where Amazon fails is niches. Their interface is generalist, so they don't have great UX for buying clothes, or buying groceries (albeit no one really has a great interface for that).
[+] [-] ChicagoBoy11|9 years ago|reply
Which makes me certainly wonder about what assumptions I am making about the general computing public that are obviously false. I assume that Amazon's pages are probably some of the most optimized and A/B tested in the world. If their interfaces feel sooo Web 1.0, I can only imagine it is like that because of extensive and exhaustive testing and metrics analysis. What lessons can this teach to the rest of us, who don't have the infrastructure or user-base to do the kind of testing that they do?
[+] [-] jaboutboul|9 years ago|reply
Yes their dev/release cycles are quite impressive.
[+] [-] sapeien|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hacker_9|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mlangdon|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josh_carterPDX|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stanmancan|9 years ago|reply
I run a free API www.macvendors.com that handles around 225 million requests per month. It's super simple and has no authentiction or anything, but I'm also able to run it on a $20/m VPS. Looks like API gateway would be $750+data. Bummer because the ecosystem around it looks great. You certainly pay for it though!
[+] [-] lotyrin|9 years ago|reply
In circumstances like these, I've estimated per-request costs of systems at tens of dollars.
[+] [-] machbio|9 years ago|reply
[1]https://github.com/Mashape/kong
[2]https://www.mashape.com/
[3]https://market.mashape.com/pricing/providers
[4]https://gelato.io/pricing
[+] [-] politician|9 years ago|reply
Through the lens of Twitter, AWS seems to be creating for itself the opportunity to benefit from this sort of third-party R&D on a massive scale.
[+] [-] jpalomaki|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] impostervt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ciokan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndrewOMartin|9 years ago|reply
They might not need to know the specifics, just count hits. Then they could look at the public end of any seriously popular API.
[+] [-] tyingq|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperpallium|9 years ago|reply
OTOH platform owners (eg MS, apple) have done this (aborbed others' applications as feaures) without apparent harm.
[+] [-] pavelmelnichuk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] edshiro|9 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, just like the app store, you would still suffer from discovery issues so the developer must also think about upping their marketing game.
Very excited about this new development from Amazon though!
[+] [-] dualogy|9 years ago|reply
To some degree certainly quite likely, but personally I don't think it'd be as pronounced in such b2b / dev2dev contexts as it would be on today's b2c app stores, to the (hard to quantify/guesstimate) degree that users in the former more carefully scrutinize more offerings and contrast them with their actual requirements.
[+] [-] rdslw|9 years ago|reply
They have cool (afaik opensource) technology using standard HTTP Response 402 "Payment Required" - yeah, there is such thing :)
Nice initial set of demos and information: https://21.co/features/
Disclaimer: I'm not author/founder/investor/bitcoin evangelist. I just like what they try to do.
[+] [-] arielm|9 years ago|reply
As an API provider I'm pretty excited to find out how this works and whether the AWS marketplace is really ready for 3rd party services.
Having tried mashape a couple of months ago I like the idea but found their implementation a bit cumbersome and confusing. I hope Amazon's approach will be simpler.
[+] [-] orasis|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scrollaway|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajainy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] picsoung|9 years ago|reply
https://www.3scale.net/2015/10/new-aws-api-gateway-integrati...
[+] [-] dandare|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxekman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelBurge|9 years ago|reply
* AWS handles the billing software for you.
* AWS markets to enterprise companies who already have billing integrated and pay a lot of money. So less hassle collecting payment, and less resistance to charging lots.
* You get the AWS brand associated with your API, so people may be more likely to trust it.
What other reasons would somebody use this?
[+] [-] raverbashing|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mullen|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LeicaLatte|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sapeien|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bombthecat|9 years ago|reply
I work with datapower / API connect and Axway api-gateway / manager.
This will definitely have an impact on my work.
Time to learn a new tool :)
[+] [-] billconan|9 years ago|reply
in the end the traffic will be routed to my backend, I will still handle the requests myself. What's the benefit of using a gateway?
[+] [-] intrasight|9 years ago|reply
Billing is mentioned in two sentences:
1. "As I mentioned earlier, you can use Usage Plans to bill for usage and to create an ecosystem around your APIs."
2. "You can then process and analyze the data as desired. For example, you could bill your subscribers on a per-call basis."
So I'm reading this as I am responsible for billing the customer.
[+] [-] drvdevd|9 years ago|reply
[edit] meaning youre already using their billing APIs in there somewhere