Ideas for generating revenue from a "Space API"?
Hey everyone!
A long time ago I built and released one of the first "space and launch news" mobile apps. At the time, I had quite a bit of trouble finding APIs for the data feeds I wanted to present: launches, planetary data, real time satellite tracking, star catalogues, and more.
The app ended up using a variety of obscure APIs and data sources along with web scraping and embedded WebViews to present the features I wanted. I always thought an all-in-one "Space API" might be a useful product.
I've been spending some time building out just such an API, but I have become quite concerned regarding the long term feasibility of the project. The monthly machine costs are not high, but they aren't $0, and I have no idea as to how to introduce a business model to generate enough revenue to even cover the cost of the service, let alone profit.
This space is quite niche, and developers who are in need of such an API are (presumably) few a far between.
With that in mind, I thought it would be interesting to see if anyone here has any ideas about how I might generate revenue for this type of product. I've certainly spent quite a bit of time thinking about this, and I hope some discussion with others might lead to a new insight!
What about making a user-facing site that displays the information with some ads, mostly as a way to get visibility and SEO juice, and sell the API separately? That way, visitors can easily sees the capability of the API and non-technical users give you additional value.
Are you meaning to provide an alternative to the Launch Library 2 API?
No, the goal of the API was to provide a data source for a variety of space related information, not specifically launches (e.g. star catalogues, calculations and information related to two-line element sets, planetary data, and more).
I see. A possibility may be to build some product or service on top of the API and sell that. Or sell access to the API to developers of astronomy and space apps.
Maybe contact magazines/ YouTubers or any type of blog related to the subject. Tell them about it, you might sign a deal or two!
What sort of deal?
By deal I mean give access to your API in exchange for a one-time fee or monthly fee, maybe offer the first month as a trial. You should also build a landing page that explains the benefits of using your API, what kind of data you gather, showcase the work you've putten into this. Good luck!
You mention that some of the data is available in APIs as well as scraped. For the more well known or "popular" APIs you collect from who uses them? Would those people benefit from a one stop shop with all the other data?
Not sure if this is totally off the mark, but have you seen those star map poster creators like thenightsky.com? I could see someone using your api for solar system themed posters.