Essentials for building an API Community
If you are an API provider ready to expose your API Store to the public then you have come to the right place. Find out all the secrets of transforming your ordinary API Store to an extraordinary one with these simple tips on changes you can adapt in order to attract API subscribers and ultimately grow your API community.
Let’s take a look at what is actually meant by an API community.
In general the word “community” is closely associated with a group of people with common or similar interest. So in this case of a community with respect to your APIs it can be interpreted as a group of people who is interested in sharing a common interest in your published APIs and your API Store, which you have used to expose your APIs.
The bitter truth is however awesome and useful your APIs may be to the public, if the way you present it to external users does not give a positive vibe then the chances anyone would want to be part of it is close to zero :( This sends out a negative message to your subscribers. Let’s look at this with a real world example.
You can see the two cakes above. Both of them are equally delicious and made of the same ingredients but if you were asked to pick one which one would it be? It will definitely be the second. The reason is that the presentation of the second cake is way ahead of the other. The first cake seems as though no interest was taken on how it appears to others. The same applies to your store. No matter how much effort you have put to your APIs if you need to grow your community it needs to consist of some essential capabilities which will help to attract and grow your end user community.
So what do I really need to have to build an API Community?
Customized Theme: One of the most essential requirements which you need for your API Store is to have a custom theme. A custom theme implies that you need to brand your API store to represent you and your organization. Make the look and feel of your API store attractive and personalized which makes you stand out among other competitors and attract users to it. Just like the chocolate cake above your community will want to choose you over the rest. Read more about how to add customized themes from this post.
A Customized URL for your API Store: A customized URL refers to the url which you use to expose your API Store. Perhaps you might use a generic domain to host your API store. If you use a generic URL as your API store URL it will be quite a common one and would not represent you. This will give a negative feeling for your end users. If you have a customized url for your API Store it will be much easier for you community to find you as well and would help to create a good impression.
Self Signup for your API Store: Now you have changed the look and feel and added a customized URL to expose your API Store. How will users join your community? Will they have to personally contact you? Will they want to go through that effort? How long will that process take? To make sure you don’t have these problems is why you need the capability for external users to be able to register themselves to your API Store. Same way in how we go and register to various communities you need to facilitate for your end users to be able to signup and be a part of your API Store. A more elaborate description on self registration is explained in this post
Community features for your API store: Similar to how we go and read all the reviews when making purchases online users who come to your store would also want to see what others think about your store. They would want to know how well your store is doing and if it would be worth to be a part of it. For this you need to incorporate some community features where your API community can rate and comment on your APIs and API Store so that it will give a positive feeling about being a part of it to external users seeing it.
User management for your API Store: Once you have allowed the capability for external users to self register to your API Store you need to still be in control over them. Since this is your API Store and you should be able to manage the users the way you would want. If you want to get rid of a user you should be able to delete them or restrict them from certain APIs. For this you need to be able to carry out user management initiated by you and also controlling access for certain users for your APIs. You can read more about it following this blog post on how you can provide certain restrictions for your API community.
Ability to bill end users for their API consumption: Now that you have grown your API community why provide all this for free? When it comes to a point that your API community is growing at a rapid rate and your APIs are becoming more popular among the public you need to start thinking about running this as an API business. With a capability like this you would be able to bill your subscribers for their API usage based on the criteria you define. Read more about how you can run an API business following this post.
Now that you have gone through the above checklist you will be able to get on the right track on what you need to grow your API community and stand out among your competitors. Make these simple changes today!
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