As a developer, one way to generate passive income is by building and selling your own API. This tutorial will walk you through creating a Node.js application using Express, Axios, and Cheerio to scrape data from websites and turn it into an API that you can monetize.
What is an API?
An API (Application Programming Interface) allows different technologies to communicate and share data with each other. They are the behind-the-scenes enablers powering most of the apps and services we use daily.
Building Your API Step-by-Step
- Set up your project by creating a directory, initializing npm, and installing required packages like Express, Axios, and Cheerio.
- Create an Express server to listen for requests on a designated port.
- Use Axios to fetch HTML data from websites by making HTTP requests to URLs.
- Parse the fetched HTML using Cheerio to extract relevant data like links, titles, publication names etc.
- Store the extracted data in an array or object structure.
- Set up routes in your Express app to return this data when specific endpoints are hit.
Making it Market-Ready
To make your API more valuable, scrape data from multiple authoritative sources related to your topic instead of just one. The tutorial shows how to scrape climate change news from over a dozen major publications.
Deploying and Selling
Once built, deploy your API using a service like Heroku. Then head to RapidAPI Marketplace to create documentation, set pricing tiers, and list your API for sale. Developers can then subscribe to access your API.
The transcript walks through each step with code examples, so you can build your own news API and have it ready to deploy and sell in no time! Building and selling APIs allows you to turn your coding skills into a passive income stream.
