Hi everybody.
My name is Luca and I'm not a developer. I shipped 4 APIs in two weeks. After 10 days I have 10 subscribers, 43 calls and $0.
My day job is in finance. I don't write code for a living. A few weeks ago I needed to validate EU VAT numbers for a side project, and I got angry at the SOAP/XML mess out there. So I did the thing everyone warns you about: I built my own APIs. Cloudflare Workers, a lot of AI help, and stubbornness.
Now there are four of them, all in the same boring niche (EU B2B compliance, the stuff invoicing software needs):
Total cost so far: 0€. Cloudflare free tier does everything. They live on RapidAPI with a free plan and two paid tiers.
Now the numbers, because nobody ever posts these:
10 subscribers. 43 total calls, and I'd guess 30 of those are my own tests. Revenue: $0. The 4 reviews on my listings? Friends. I asked them personally, one by one.
So yes, this is a "nobody cares about my product yet" post. But here's what surprised me, in both directions.
Things that broke (my favorites): Things I learned:
"Build it and they will come" is a lie told by people who already have an audience. Marketplaces don't show new APIs to anyone, because search is sorted by reviews and traffic... that you don't have yet. It's a locked door: you need traffic to get traffic. The only keys I found so far live outside the marketplace: answering real questions on Stack Overflow (with honest disclosure that the API is mine), one tutorial on Dev.to, and this post.
Where I am now: 4 APIs, 0 customers, 0 regrets. The product works. The distribution doesn't. Yet.
Questions for people who've been here:
I'll answer every comment. My English is not perfect and my energy today is even less, but I'll be here tomorrow morning with coffee.
Links in the first comment, so the post doesn't smell like an ad.