So what happens once a customer registers for your SaaS services?
The next step is to monetize your APIs. As the business owner, you should consider the following:
The following is a use case from the online travel industry, of how API consumption and revenue generation occurs. With the right APIs, it is easy to allow more customers to sign up, and offer them differentiated data per API, thus increasing API consumption.
For API usage, key fields to retrieve data from GDS:
• Location of passenger
• Source and destination of travel
• Date of travel
• Number of passengers
Key data points to retrieve:
• Fields input by user (source, destination, date)
• Airport codes
• Airline codes
• Combination of flights that offer the travel option
• Price per combination
• Data validity
Unless the API or set of API support these data fields, the end to end transaction may fail, leading to a lost opportunity for the GDS to monetize the use case. And similar to this ticket booking use case, monetization opportunities also exist for many online platforms.
The next step is to monetize your APIs. As the business owner, you should consider the following:
- Registration or setup charges for the customer (This is also to deter casual customers who are only experimenting with the business model)
- Usage charges (~$.02 per 1000 API calls)
- API category charges (~$.05 per 1000 API calls for bulk APIs, advanced APIs etc.)
- Consulting or support charges (per hour or per incident is the common model)
The following is a use case from the online travel industry, of how API consumption and revenue generation occurs. With the right APIs, it is easy to allow more customers to sign up, and offer them differentiated data per API, thus increasing API consumption.
Travel industry API monetization use case
An online ticketing website such as booking.com wants to pull data about flights to satisfy a user query. This data is provided by Global Distribution System (GDS) such as Sabre, Amadeus and Travelport, who aggregate the data from different airlines, platforms etc. The user query must return data to allow him to view options, select an option, complete a booking, make a payment and get details of the booking on email, SMS and the site.
The diagram below shows the high-level communication, and the APIs in red indicate the monetization possibilities.
For API usage, key fields to retrieve data from GDS:
• Location of passenger
• Source and destination of travel
• Date of travel
• Number of passengers
Key data points to retrieve:
• Fields input by user (source, destination, date)
• Airport codes
• Airline codes
• Combination of flights that offer the travel option
• Price per combination
• Data validity
Unless the API or set of API support these data fields, the end to end transaction may fail, leading to a lost opportunity for the GDS to monetize the use case. And similar to this ticket booking use case, monetization opportunities also exist for many online platforms.
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