Proxies For Dummies: The Condensed Guide

Yesterday I was asked to explain more about proxies by an unnamed commenter; as I’m bored, I’ll give you a short guide on what they are, how they work and most importantly how you can earn with them. Now, I don’t make as much as some of the high earners with proxies, but make a moderate amount; right now I’m earning anywhere between $10-$25 a day for about five minutes of work a week, and that’s off one site. Imagine if you could replicate this success with say 5, or even 15 proxy websites? Yepp, add that up… you’ll realise how profitable proxy websites can be.

There are people on Digital Point that earn $1000s a month with their proxy networks; that make seem a long way off, but look at mine- at $10 a day, I’ll take in $300 a month, and all you have to do is repeat that with three others and you will be able to pull in close to $1000.

What is a proxy, and what does it do?

I’d be willing to bet that all of you have come across Facebook, Myspace, Orkut and similar such websites at least once in your internet lives; well, those of you at school and work probably would be able to guess that your administrators might not like you using them instead of doing the 1000 word essay you’re supposed to be working on. Well, due to this such websites, as well as other time wasting websites like arcades may be blocked by your workplace’s filters, and thus you’ll be unable to visit them and have to work. Sound fun? Well, proxies change all that; you can use a proxy to bypass those filters and visit the websites of your choice. How do they work? I’m not going to go into intricate details, but basically they send you through an unblocked website to reach the one that’s blocked.

How do I create my own proxy?

Now, if I can create one, you all can. I’m a person who is rubbish at coding, rubbish at graphics and rubbish at nearly anything tech related, so me being able to do it proves how easy it is. There are a few proxy scripts out there, but I’d suggest you use PhProxy; I’ve found it the easiest to modify and thus haven’t bothered with the others. Before you setup your proxy you will of course need a domain name; I’d suggest that you buy a .COM from Godaddy, using the coupon code OYH3 to take the price down to $7.15. Now, picking a domain for a proxy website is often hard; the key point is to make sure that the domain does NOT have ‘proxy’ in it. Why? Well, a lot, if not most filters block out common words, like ‘casino’, ‘porn’, ‘gambling’… proxy is one of the words on that list. You can always use something related- play around with combinations of ‘unblock’, ‘cloak’, ‘hide’, ’surf’, ‘browse’… you get the drill.

You will need hosting with your proxy; check out the Digital Point Web Hosting section and you will often find cheap (not necessary good though!) hosting. My dedicated server should be up in the next couple of days; once that is ready, I’ll be able to offer you guys hosting at a total ripoff completely affordable rate. For a single proxy, hosting should not cost more than $7 a month.

Web hosting and a domain name is pretty decent; if you want advice on a domain name, feel free to ask; as for web hosting, wait a couple of days and I’ll get you some from my server. After you have that, what do you do?

Souping Up Your Proxy

Now, you will need to install a theme on your proxy; generally people aim for themes with a large Adsense block, which naturally leads to more clicks, and thus more revenue. The best website that I’ve seen for proxy templates is Free Proxy Templates; PhProxy Script Number Six is the one I use for Cloakus.com and that has done pretty well with regards to the click through ratio. Feel free to choose any of the ones you think look good; remember to look for ones that have Adsense ads in a good place, preferably blended so they’re more likely to bring you revenue. Now, Adsense is only allowed on the homepage of a proxy website; do NOT put it on the proxified pages or else Google will ban you, simple as. Whether you like it or not, a lot of people will be using your proxy to visit pornographic websites; now, Adsense of course isn’t allowed on them.

To put in your Adsense code, all you will have to do is edit the config.php file (through your cPanel or an FTP program) and replace your Adsense pub ID. It will look something like pub-xxxxxxxxxxx. That’s it, nothing else; all clicks on ads after you save the file will be credited to your account. Pretty simple, eh?

So, we’ve spoken about proxies; a few small details about setting them up, and how they work. But, what are the use of proxies without visitors? The most important thing for a proxy is visitors, because without them, you don’t get clicks, and without clicks, you don’t get revenue.

Driving Traffic to a Proxy Website

How do you drive traffic? One of the best ways, and the way I started out with was by using Stumble Upon; it brought me 5,000 visitors in a week and is of course free to use. To use Stumble Upon, you will have to have their toolbar installed; to ’stumble’ something, all you have to do is click the thumbs up, or ‘I like it!’ button. Do a couple (hundred) Stumble exchanges in the Digital Point Freebies section and it will slowly add up, bringing you visitors and eventually traffic.

Large forums can bring you a boatload of traffic to your proxies. Most of the readers of this blog are regulars at Digital Point; have the link to your proxy in your signature and start a thread asking for a review of your website, and there’s a good chance you’ll get a decent number of visitors. If you start a thread solely asking for a review of your website, it’s more than likely that 95% of all those who view the thread will check out your website; hardly a bad thing considering most threads on highly popular forums get at least 100 views.

Other blogs. Now, I generally use this way to get some traffic to the University Kid, but feel free to use it with your proxies. Being one of the first commenters on large blogs like John Chow/Cow, Shoemoney, ProBlogger (and this one, of course  ) can gain you visitors, especially if you post an interesting or controversial comment. Don’t be a jackass though, and try to add something to the conversation otherwise all you’re going to do is get flamed.

Create a Facebook/Myspace Group. Which people use proxies most? Teenagers, and younger people at the work place. Since proxies are generally used to access social networking websites (and porn, but let’s forget that for this post  ) it’s quite likely that a large percentage of Facebook/Myspace users need proxies, and what better way to do that then by creating a group (or sending out a Myspace bulletin) and then spamming inviting your friends to visit it? Social networking websites can send thousands of visitors, if used the right way; if you have a network of friends, building up a membership of about 500 to a Facebook group is not hard at all to achieve.

Google and Yahoo Groups can help you bring a decent amount of traffic. What are you going to do? Well, sadly… most of the ways to drive traffic on this list relate to polite spamming, and that’s what you’re going to do to these groups with the URLs of your proxy website. Here’s a few you can go to:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/free-proxy-lists/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/free-proxy-server

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/khorramdin

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mygmproxy/

http://groups.google.com/group/proxy-rank

http://groups.google.com/group/Proxy-Web

http://groups.google.com/group/proxy-group

Feel free to utilise those URLs how you like; make good use of them though! 

Other than that, you could always do a few link exchanges, submit to proxy topsites (I consider it a waste of time, but it may work for you) and even pay for advertising on a popular website like Proxy.org. Once you get yours up to $1.00 a day, just do more of whatever you’re doing and you should see the traffic (and thus revenue) rise. Good luck!

A small question about proxies from me…

I’ve hopefully answered all of your questions; I have own of my own (a rhetorical one) that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit these past few days. Do the ‘big guns’ in the industry, the likes of John Chow, Shoe Money, ProBlogger John Cow, etc use, or ever have made proxies of their their own? If yes, it would be interesting to hear how well they did; if no, why not?  . With upwards of 10,000 RSS Subscribers for the first three, and an ardent following for the last, think just how much a proxy of theirs would benefit from a 100 word post on the home page? Perhaps a bit of shameless begging for one of mine could do well, eh? 

Hope all of this benefitted y’all. Will submit it to a couple social networking websites later in the day; feel free to stumble it and comment if you found it interesting. Just did a small word count in MS Word and this is 1600 words! Y’all better comment now…