My First Step Towards Passive Income | The MVP Challenge💵
Tags: webdev, tutorial
Published: 2022-11-22 16:38:16

Today, I took a day off from freelancing and challenged myself to build something in a day that could potentially generate some income.

## The Idea

Over the years I had to build a lot of scripts for myself that I use. A lot of people to whom I showed them have shown interest in using them. So the approach was pretty simple to convert them to tools and APIs that other people can use.

## The Execution

Time was of the essence hence I took the fastest way. I still wanted a good experience for the users So I used a bunch of tools.

1. I went through the scripts I have and decided to move forward with a #seo Page Audit Python Script that I have developed in the past. The reason I went with this is that it has a pretty wide use case with relatively less competition.

2. I restructured the code to a lambda function behind an API gateway and deployed it using [serverless](https://www.serverless.com). Serverless is just amazing, it streamlines the whole process and makes the deployment and management pretty scale. So in a few lines of YAML code, my API had dev and prod mode and was on the cloud.
3. Made a [RapidAPI](https://rapidapi.com) account. Took me around an hour to set it up(The documentation is pretty confusing) which includes creating limits, testing, and documentation for my API. RapidAPI takes care of Authentication, Documentation, Rate Limits, and specially Monetization(It took a single click to connect my PayPal).
4. Did the final testing via a different account to ensure limits are correctly enforced and everything is working correctly.
5. Made a quick website using [Docusaurus](https://docusaurus.io) and documented the features. This tool is so amazing you can create a website for documentation very quickly. It's a self-hosted open-sourced (courtesy of Meta) platform built in react that can generate static HTML pages using Markdown language.
6. Created a Git repository pushed the code and connected the repository with [Vercel](https://vercel.com) and my website is live(from creation to hosting) in under 2 Hours. 
7. I already had a domain api.ind.in (pretty cool name right 😎). Changed its domain servers to Cloudflare and pointed it to Vercel. This process took minutes. A single click enabled a catch-all system for emails for my domain which are forwarded to my personal email address. 
8. Made a contact us form using [tally](https://tally.so) and linked it to the website. Where people can request new APIs or get in touch with me. 
9. Linked my website to my RapidApi profile, the documentation page to my API and enabled Search Console for the website.
10. Wrote an article about it 🤓. 

## The Final Product

The whole process took me less than 10 hours. Below are the links to the final products. 

- [Rapid API Page](https://rapidapi.com/organization/api-ind)
- [Documentation Website](https://api.ind.in/)

If you know the right tools you can be 10X productive. Checkout my picks for [best tools for startups](https://sid.black/tools/best-tools-for-saas).
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