Proxy Builder Blog

June was a modest month for my proxy websites with profits slowly declining into the summer. I decided to give myself more motivation to drive my earnings up. From now on I’ll try and give a break down of each month’s proxy earnings on this blog.

I’m hearing lots of proxy webmasters are increasingly struggling with low profits. I’ve personally found with proxies its always been possible to achieve profit, you just have to get more creative and work harder for the payoff. I also found that its a great time to start proxy sites in summer so you’re all set to get traffic in the winter months.

I’m listing the ad companies below by the earnings I achieved in June, starting from highest to lowest.

Adsense - http://www.google.com/adsense

Earnings: $505.96

Freedom of Ads - http://www.freedomofads.com

Earnings: $110.11

Canep Media - http://www.canepmedia.com

Earnings: $87.94

Mediashakers - http://www.mediashakers.com

Earnings: $52.54

Hide My IP - http://www.hidemyip.com/

Earnings: $14.98

Adversal - http://www.adversal.com

Earnings: $4.14

Total Earnings: $775.67

Overall web proxies are still a great niche to be in, however it takes a lot of trial and error to create good revenue streams. I am still sitting on a vast array of untapped proxy resources and plan to develop them over the coming months. I am currently tweaking my server configurations to see if I cant squeeze more traffic out of them and results look promising so far.

I have recently stumbled accross a powerful little traffic building strategy and thought I’d come share it with you guy’s. It has become a very helpful tool in my traffic building strategies and best of all it’s free!

I knew about Yahoo and Google Groups for a long time but never really understood how much they are used by members of the proxy-seeking community. They essentially provide a sturdy service from which to supply a proxy newsletter. It is obviously very useful to be able to get the freshest proxies to your inbox daily. We’re talking the one’s that might even slip under the radar of even the best filtering software.

So below I share with you a recently compiled list of some of the best fresh proxy mailing lists that I’ve found. You may need to create an account for each service but it is a very quick and relatively painless process. Included with some are brackets with the rough amount of members that had joined each at the time of compilation.

Google Proxy Groups

http://groups.google.com/group/persiskiknigi [7681]
http://groups.google.com/group/proxy-rank [2100]
http://groups.google.com/group/Proxy-Web [861]
http://groups.google.com/group/dailyfreshlist [119]
http://groups.google.com/group/free-web-proxy-gtnetwork [7077]
http://groups.google.com/group/proxy-emailer [76]
http://groups.google.com/group/TheProxyReport [195]
http://groups.google.com/group/anonymous-web-proxies-php [66]
http://groups.google.com/group/php-web-proxies [700]
http://groups.google.com/group/unblocktheblocked [136]
http://groups.google.com/group/dailyproxies [54]
http://groups.google.com/group/cybiao [51]
http://groups.google.com/group/top-proxy-sites [560]
http://groups.google.com/group/0day-web-proxy-lists [127]

Yahoo Proxy Groups

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/BLACK_PROXY [2192]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/free-proxy-server [743]
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/free_proxys_list [1889]
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mygmproxy [687]
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/proxy-sharing
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/proxy_group
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/PROXY_LISTS
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/PROXY_PROXY
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/dailyproxy
http://groups.google.com/group/proxy-rank
http://groups.google.com/group/Proxy-Web
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/proxies
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/proxy_fox
http://au.groups.yahoo.com/group/My_Proxy_Base_Centre
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fresh-web-proxies
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Adabestan-Kaveh-Ahangar
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ProxyMaster
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/proxynoob
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/onefake
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/proxiesandcensorship

After browsing through many of the webmaster forums I frequent, I have come to the conclusion that hosting is one of the biggest obstacles new-comers face when entering the market. I regularly see many people complaining that hosts shut them down, sometimes with little to no warning.

There are many web hosts who are simply used to hosting static content, which is easier to facilitate and less resource intensive on their servers. Since web hosting is such a lucrative business, it has become a very low-margin game for some operators. If you are draining the resources away from 1,000 other accounts on a dedicated server then it simply isnt fair on the other users.

Every legitimate hosting business usually has a sort of terms & conditions over its usage. If you’re like myself, it can be very easy to simply accept the terms & conditions without really understanding the limitations they impose. The real kicker will always be their included clause, “We reserve the right to close your account at any time.”, or variation thereof.

Increasly though there has been a much needed influx of dedicated web hosts. There are now several companies that are starting to fill the very turbulent and hard to manage proxy hosting business. I thought I would bring you the three, as I’ve seen, most respected proxy hosts around. I’m sure there are many more around and please leave your own recommendations for proxy hosters in the comments.

Cloak Host
WD Servers
Tech Entrance

These companies offer a very comprehensive list of proxy hosting plans and should be enable you to grow capacity as fast as possible.

I see alot of people requesting information on which advertisers to use on proxy websites. I decided to compile a list of best ad providers I’ve found so far. I am using all of these companies on my proxy websites with varying degree’s of success. They are ordered in importance and the revenue generating capabilities I’ve seen from them.

Google Adsense
As always, Adsense is the exclusive ad provider on the homepage of most of my web proxies. I’ve found Adsense to consistently give the best results and yield the highest CPM for the main page. Its great to experiment with all the different ad format and options available to achieve maximum revenue.

Canep Media
I have only been working with Canep for two months but they provide an excellent publisher interface with realtime earnings & impression tracking. I use Canep across a large portion of my network with CPM hovering around $.10. They allow you to place ads on proxied pages which can help boost your income from these hard to monetize positions.

Freedom Of Ads
Almost identical adserving platform to Canep Media, they use adECN to trade ad inventory. Fill rates seem slightly lower than Canep but I have only recently added FoA to my proxies so things may improve in future. If you’ve learnt how to work with Canep its easy to jump right in.

Media Shakers
I added Media Shakers to my proxy network in the last few days. Things arent looking good to date - CPM’s are abyssmal, the administrative interface is too basic and they offer a simple contact page for support. They do allow proxy websites however and I’ll get back to you on them after further testing.

Adversal
I have recently removed all Adversal code from every web proxy I operate. I do not see pop-ups as a viable way to sustain traffic, I hate them and I’m sure my visitors would too. I only included them in the list because they do accept proxy publishers, I would not recommend them however.

Hide My IP
I came accross Hide My IP about two months ago. They provide an affiliate based system for anonymous proxy software. I’ve made a few sales to date and been paid via paypal twice. They arent anything special but they can help to fill spare ad inventory on your proxied pages. You earn money on a per-sale basis.

Adbrite
I had a dilemma whether to include Adbrite, since they terminated many of my own proxy site ads without warning a couple months back. People are still earning money through them though but I would will offer a strong warning for you not to use their services on proxied pages. You may lose all earnings, without warning and with no recourse.

I welcome all suggestions of other web proxy advertisers, please add them in the comments if you know of any more.

Over the last few days I have begun updating the Adsense ads across my entire proxy network to the new format. Well, I say new, but as I’m sure you’re all aware of the changes that were put in place about two months ago. You can now manage all aspects of the advert just by logging into Adsense and I’m going to break down the three advantages I see for all publishers.

The first benefit I saw in using the new ads was the slight drop in the amount of on-page code. If you’re using 3 ad units per page, which seemed to be the average for my own sites, you’ll see about a 500 byte drop in the filesize. This is going to help speed up load times for end users and reduce the amount of javascript having to processed from your website. In the age of superfast connections it might not have an impact for some, but remember there is still a large chunk of <56k users on the net.

I’m not 100% sure on this, but I do believe the “Show non-Google ads from another URL ” feature was included within the Adsense javascript that was placed on your site. It is now alot simpler to manage alternative advertisers from your Adsense control panel instead of having to go back through each site when you want to change or add an alternate monetization source.

My number one favourite feature of this change is the color palette management. I used very few palettes before but now I see this as a viable method to keep my visitors from getting ad blindness. Ad blindess tends to happen with regular users who subconsciously skip past or avoid the ad units altogether. By having numerous color schemes across my website adverts, I hope to draw more attention back and subsequently achieve more revenue.

I’m sure theres plenty of other reasons that slipped my mind, but I am already seeing the rewards for changing all my ads to the more centralized system. It is already a mandatory requirement for creating new ad units and I can see Adsense reigning it in for webmasters alot more in future.