I don't know how many people own proxies here, but I thought we needed a thread to discuss promotion techniques, traffic and revenue stats, and anything related to the proxy biz. I thought I'd share what I'm doing currently. I'm not an expert by any means. I just thought I'd give a little advice to others about what is working and isn't working for me.
Ad Networks
CPC
Adsense- Right now I'm using adsense on the front page of my proxy. Of course with little content on the front page, I'm getting shit ads. In the beginning I had "gastric bypass" type ads, as one of my keywords was "bypass myspace" those paid pretty good, but didn't get very many clicks. Now I have proxy ads and entertainment type banner ads that get ok CTR, I guess. As of this post, today I have had 194 clicks and have made $5.46. Yes, that's proxy traffic for you. I can't decide if its mostly because of the Iranian traffic or I am being mega smart priced. Probably a mixture of both. Over 60% of my traffic is US, 15% Australian, 10% Iranian, 5% UK.
Bidvertiser- I may try them if Adsense keeps paying me shit. Do they ever smart price and are they ok with Proxies? How do they pay for foreign traffic. Maybe I would have better luck with Adbrite's CPC text ads.
CPM
Adbrite- I used to use a CPM banner on my proxified pages. They pay alright. You need a lot of traffic to make them worth it.
Adversal- I used popunders, but I found that having them popup on every 3-4 page loads was way to much and annoying as hell even to me. I took them down, because I didn't think that the extra $ was worth turning people off.
Canep Media- I just applied to them yesterday after I heard some good things about them. I don't really know how well they pay yet. I was under the impression that they had a bidding type system like adbrite, haven't looked into it though.
Other
CPA and Affiliates- I tried Auction Ads for a little while. Using some keywords that I thought teens would like. Abercrombie and Clothing mainly. I got some clicks, but I think that I would need a lot more traffic to make it work. I think that I might try some ring tone or email/zip type affiliates on Azoogle sometime.
Selling Ads on DP- Possibly the easiest and highest paying option for low traffic proxies. AWStats overestimates proxy page views by a lot. I sold a banner ad on my proxified pages when my proxy was getting only 200-300 uniques a day but with 100,000+ page views. I sold the banner ad for one week for $30. Now, I can probably get much more.
Promotion Techniques
Myspace- So I used my Myspace account with about 10,000 friends to promote my proxy at first. I posted some comments and bulletins , but realized that the best way was to simply start a proxy group and invite all the friends to it. I use Friendblaster Pro, and Myspace doesn't have CAPTCHA for group invites. I didn't really get the results I had hoped. I think I need a lot more friends, especially younger ones to see better traffic.
Hi5- Possibly a gold mine for social networking advertising. No where the userbase of Myspace, but they claim 50 millions users. No CAPTCHA or usage limits whatsoever! I used hi5 robot to send out requests to a few thousand people in one day. Well, I guess there are some limits. I had to wait a few days for most of the requests to get accepted or denied before I could send some more out. Hell, even if the traffic is not the best, Hi5 does not have a "no follow" link system like Myspace. Some of these profiles are PR4-PR6. I haven't gotten any backlinks yet, but its only been a couple weeks.
Yahoo Answers- Useless. Already spammed into oblivion. I paid some guy $14 for an email to 10,000 members of a yahoo answers proxy group. I got about 2,000 uniques the first day. Lots of Iranian and crap visitors.
Topsites- I paid like $5 for 100 top site submissions. These are only useful once you have decent traffic. Traffic= higher rank= More Traffic.
SEO- I have some good meta tags and am focusing most of my efforts on a certain keyword. I paid $6 for 100+ PR4-PR8 directory submissions. I realize that SEO is a risk, because by the time you are ranking good and the traffic starts rolling in you may already be blocked by websense. I'm going to try my luck.
Scripts
Right now I'm using a modded PHPProxy script. I don't know PHP that well but I did manage to change some things to make it less likely to be blocked. Some webfilters are starting to block the stock PHPProxy script. I used to use Zelune, but I couldn't put ads on the proxified pages. When the fix did actually come out, my template wouldn't work when I tried to change the code. Again, I'm not a coder, and don't know enough PHP to know what was wrong.
So, that's about everything I'm doing. Hopefully I'll be able to make it up to the $20-$30 a day mark with a single proxy. I know that's shit compared to some of you on here, but I would like to use it towards funding my other "real" sites and projects. Again, I don't know how many own proxies here, but I'd like to here your ideas, advice, anything you're doing. White Hat, Black Hat, Whatever.
Ad Networks
CPC
Adsense- Right now I'm using adsense on the front page of my proxy. Of course with little content on the front page, I'm getting shit ads. In the beginning I had "gastric bypass" type ads, as one of my keywords was "bypass myspace" those paid pretty good, but didn't get very many clicks. Now I have proxy ads and entertainment type banner ads that get ok CTR, I guess. As of this post, today I have had 194 clicks and have made $5.46. Yes, that's proxy traffic for you. I can't decide if its mostly because of the Iranian traffic or I am being mega smart priced. Probably a mixture of both. Over 60% of my traffic is US, 15% Australian, 10% Iranian, 5% UK.
Bidvertiser- I may try them if Adsense keeps paying me shit. Do they ever smart price and are they ok with Proxies? How do they pay for foreign traffic. Maybe I would have better luck with Adbrite's CPC text ads.
CPM
Adbrite- I used to use a CPM banner on my proxified pages. They pay alright. You need a lot of traffic to make them worth it.
Adversal- I used popunders, but I found that having them popup on every 3-4 page loads was way to much and annoying as hell even to me. I took them down, because I didn't think that the extra $ was worth turning people off.
Canep Media- I just applied to them yesterday after I heard some good things about them. I don't really know how well they pay yet. I was under the impression that they had a bidding type system like adbrite, haven't looked into it though.
Other
CPA and Affiliates- I tried Auction Ads for a little while. Using some keywords that I thought teens would like. Abercrombie and Clothing mainly. I got some clicks, but I think that I would need a lot more traffic to make it work. I think that I might try some ring tone or email/zip type affiliates on Azoogle sometime.
Selling Ads on DP- Possibly the easiest and highest paying option for low traffic proxies. AWStats overestimates proxy page views by a lot. I sold a banner ad on my proxified pages when my proxy was getting only 200-300 uniques a day but with 100,000+ page views. I sold the banner ad for one week for $30. Now, I can probably get much more.
Promotion Techniques
Myspace- So I used my Myspace account with about 10,000 friends to promote my proxy at first. I posted some comments and bulletins , but realized that the best way was to simply start a proxy group and invite all the friends to it. I use Friendblaster Pro, and Myspace doesn't have CAPTCHA for group invites. I didn't really get the results I had hoped. I think I need a lot more friends, especially younger ones to see better traffic.
Hi5- Possibly a gold mine for social networking advertising. No where the userbase of Myspace, but they claim 50 millions users. No CAPTCHA or usage limits whatsoever! I used hi5 robot to send out requests to a few thousand people in one day. Well, I guess there are some limits. I had to wait a few days for most of the requests to get accepted or denied before I could send some more out. Hell, even if the traffic is not the best, Hi5 does not have a "no follow" link system like Myspace. Some of these profiles are PR4-PR6. I haven't gotten any backlinks yet, but its only been a couple weeks.
Yahoo Answers- Useless. Already spammed into oblivion. I paid some guy $14 for an email to 10,000 members of a yahoo answers proxy group. I got about 2,000 uniques the first day. Lots of Iranian and crap visitors.
Topsites- I paid like $5 for 100 top site submissions. These are only useful once you have decent traffic. Traffic= higher rank= More Traffic.
SEO- I have some good meta tags and am focusing most of my efforts on a certain keyword. I paid $6 for 100+ PR4-PR8 directory submissions. I realize that SEO is a risk, because by the time you are ranking good and the traffic starts rolling in you may already be blocked by websense. I'm going to try my luck.
Scripts
Right now I'm using a modded PHPProxy script. I don't know PHP that well but I did manage to change some things to make it less likely to be blocked. Some webfilters are starting to block the stock PHPProxy script. I used to use Zelune, but I couldn't put ads on the proxified pages. When the fix did actually come out, my template wouldn't work when I tried to change the code. Again, I'm not a coder, and don't know enough PHP to know what was wrong.
So, that's about everything I'm doing. Hopefully I'll be able to make it up to the $20-$30 a day mark with a single proxy. I know that's shit compared to some of you on here, but I would like to use it towards funding my other "real" sites and projects. Again, I don't know how many own proxies here, but I'd like to here your ideas, advice, anything you're doing. White Hat, Black Hat, Whatever.
