{"id":128,"date":"2011-04-05T13:13:44","date_gmt":"2011-04-05T20:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/themanwhosoldtheweb.com\/blog\/?p=128"},"modified":"2011-06-15T01:19:35","modified_gmt":"2011-06-15T08:19:35","slug":"bests-apis-to-autoscale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/themanwhosoldtheweb.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/bests-apis-to-autoscale\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s an easy way to autoscale. Use an API."},"content":{"rendered":"

So, you want to autoscale your site.\u00a0 Now what?<\/p>\n

A great and easy way to autoscale is to leverage another site’s API. What’s an API, you ask?\u00a0 An API, or application program interface<\/a>, is, as defined by Wikipedia, a particular set of rules and specifications that a software program can follow to access and make use of the services and resources provided by another particular software program that implements that API.\u00a0 Okay, now let’s translate that into English.\u00a0 An API is a tool that big sites (e.g. Google, Wikipedia, eBay, Amazon) create to allow other sites (i.e. think your site) to easily access their data.<\/p>\n

Here are some examples.\u00a0 Amazon and eBay affiliate sites all use APIs provided by Amazon and eBay.\u00a0 That’s how they are able to extract all the product info they need for their own spin-off sites.\u00a0 This is also how sites integrate Google Maps–by leveraging the Google Maps API.<\/p>\n

Now, how does this help you autoscale?<\/p>\n

An API is the doorway between your site and your site’s content.\u00a0 This means you essentially don’t need to create any data yourself, because all the data you need is already created for you.\u00a0 You just need to go through the API (i.e. the doorway) to get the data being requested by your site’s visitor.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

For instance, let’s examine an Amazon affiliate site selling business books.\u00a0 This site doesn’t need to create a product page each business book title.\u00a0 It only needs to create 1 product page.\u00a0 Then, depending what the visitor is browsing or searching, that 1 product page will pull the necessary data from Amazon.\u00a0 Therefore, for each unique book title browsed, unique data will be returned–resulting in a unique page.\u00a0 This means, from Google or any search engine’s perspective, the site has X,XXX pages, where X,XXX equals the number of business books available on Amazon.<\/p>\n

With the right API and site design, you can grow your site to XX,XXX pages, even XXX,XXX pages or higher–with minimal work.\u00a0 Talk about autoscale at its finest!<\/p>\n

Are you conjuring up some ideas already?\u00a0 Great.\u00a0 Here are some of the my favourite APIs, organized by categories (somewhat)<\/em>.\u00a0 Think about how you can leverage these APIs to create value-add sites that autoscale.<\/p>\n

RANDOM NEEDS<\/strong><\/span> <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Google Maps<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/www.google.com\/apis\/maps\/<\/a>
\nIf you have a site that has addresses or locations, pop in a Google Map.\u00a0 It just makes your site looks so damn professional with a map and those pins. \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 I put it on all my niche business directories.<\/p>\n

Facebook Connect API<\/strong>
\nhttps:\/\/developers.facebook.com\/<\/a>
\nThese days, don’t bother creating your own membership community.\u00a0 Facebook is just too big of a gorilla.\u00a0 Tap into their members with Facebook Connect, which allows you to pull names, locations, networks, profile info (interests, movies, music), etc.<\/p>\n

YouTube API<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/www.youtube.com\/dev<\/a>
\nGrab videos embeds and video info (e.g. ratings, tags, thumbnails).<\/p>\n

FOR SITES THAT SELL<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Amazon API<\/strong>
\nhttps:\/\/affiliate-program.amazon.com\/gp\/advertising\/api\/detail\/main.html<\/a>
\nGreat product info, customer reviews, even restaurant listings!\u00a0 You definitely need this if you want to make money from being an Amazon affiliate.<\/p>\n

eBay API<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/developer.ebay.com\/common\/api\/<\/a>
\nJust like the Amazon API, if you’re an eBay affiliate, you need to use their API instantly scale your storefront.<\/p>\n

FOR CONTENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

MediaWiki API<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/meta.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/API<\/a>
\nThis is Wikipedia’s API.\u00a0 Good stuff here.<\/p>\n

Twitter API<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/apiwiki.twitter.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Google Search API<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/code.google.com\/apis\/ajaxsearch\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Digg API<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/apidoc.digg.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Delicious API<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/del.icio.us\/help\/api\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Am I missing any big, useful ones? Post it as a comment and I’ll update this post accordingly.<\/p>\n

Wanna learn more?\u00a0 Well, check these blog articles then:<\/p>\n