Unleashing the Power of APIs: How Aimad Made Five Figures on Rapid API Hub

My journey

Hi! I am Aimad from Morocco. I started my journey of programming and development when I was around six years old. Like every other developer, I started with Visual Basic and Pascal. Eventually, after some time dabbling in the programming world and solving problems, I switched to web development. My go-to languages became PHP, Python, and JavaScript.

When I was thirteen years old, I built my first real project. I hacked around and built an app that helps to download videos from the internet.

Later, I started another project called Periscope for Web. The reason why I built this project was that in the past, you could only start a live stream from mobile. There was no web version of Periscope. So I reversed the mobile app and created a web platform that also got featured on Product Hunt. That was my first time reverse engineering a mobile application.

I learned from my experience. I was curious about what to do next. And then I found TikTok. At that time, TikTok did not offer a web platform. So I reverse-engineered their application and built my own web version. Unfortunately, I ran into some issues with TikTok, so I took down my web application.

First APIs

Being a web developer, I have built SaaS applications, and I remember using Stripe as my first external API. However, the first API I built was during my Periscope for Web project. This was back in 2015, and I couldn't sell it. I think it is the same year Rapid was founded.

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ScrapTik was the first API I ever had a chance to monetize on Rapid API Hub. It was my first success in the API industry, and I am very proud of it.

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Thought Process behind a new API

When I think about building a new API, I first do some research. I try to find problems and solve them via APIs. This is one way of doing things. I also try to find new opportunities. For instance, AI is trending right now, and I have created an API using ChatGPT. It isn't public yet.

I also visit Rapid API Hub for inspiration. I navigate to the top APIs section and look up some APIs. I try to find out what the APIs are missing. Once I figure it out, I start building the API. I take care of the missing features and also add new ones.

Once everything is ready, I publish it on the Hub and start monetizing.

Getting to know about Rapid API Hub

When I took down TikTok for Web, I researched how to monetize the internal API, and that's when I found out about Rapid API Hub.

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My first impression was that it's really intuitive. You can easily publish your APIs. It provides you with analytics to track the API requests of the end users. You just have to publish the API, and voila! Your API is ready to monetize.

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You can build your own API, publish it and start monetizing it. Everything is in one place. With Rapid API Hub, you just need to focus on the product (API). You can sell your code.

Currently, Rapid API Hub is my full-time job. I reverse mobile applications and create their APIs. Then I publish those APIs on Rapid API Hub.

The inspiration behind building a five-figure API

I made the ScrapTik API that earned me five figures in December 2022. I built it due to two reasons. The first one is because TikTok is a fast-growing platform that was the most downloaded app in 2021. Secondly, it was a challenge for me to reverse engineer it. So while doing it, I learned a lot of new reverse engineering techniques.

And when it came to publishing the API, Rapid API Hub made it feel like a breeze.

I have created the endpoint in a way that they are very intuitive. Anyone can just use them right away without needing to look up a lot of documentation.

Experience with Rapid

It has been an incredible experience working with Rapid API Hub. I have used it to monetize several APIs. It's intuitive and easy to use. We can publish an API in less than five minutes and only need to focus on the API.

One feature that I love about Rapid products is the API testing and alerts. We can test our APIs in the cloud. The API alerts instantly let you know via SMS and email if something goes wrong with your APIs. This helps me ensure my API is up all the time and I do not lose business.

One thing I would like to see in Rapid API Hub is the ability to communicate with clients via a chat interface where we can also send files or images. This way, we will not require third-party apps like Telegram to provide support for our APIs.