Running a Successful Proxy Site

My first proxy was hosted using hostgator's shared sever.

As you can imagine, Hostgator banned me and asked me to not come back ever again along with deciding not to refund any of my money back. That is when I knew I needed to get my own dedicated server.

Hostgator

Fortunately I paid only $.01 for the first month, so it wasn't a big deal. I was able to compensate my loses, by selling off my website for 0 before it lost any traffic. That was my first proxy site. After that, I decided I need to record what I did everyday or I would lose focus on what kept me successful.

In this article I will talk about the 5 most secret techniques to running a successful proxy site.

1. Monetize your Site

You can monetize in many different methods. My favorite method is to put adsense on the main page. With the mass amount of proxies on the net, you would expect the CPC to be lower, but since the ads are targeted you will achieve high CTR. Approximately 5-6% would be good depending on ad placement. Here are my suggestions for ad placement:

Two 250x250 blocks above the URL, and then a 728x20 block right before the Browse button.

2. Avoid blending your ads

It's been proven that CTR will increase by using bright colors, because kids are looking for information and they do not care if it's blended or not. That's how advertisers make a lot of money using "click me!" ads which entices a lot of kids these days.

3. Use ads on proxified pages

Use adbrite for the proxified pages, and Adversal for the pop ups. Those two alone can help make up for your hosting costs if you used correctly. Spend time to make sure that they're working correctly and that adbrite will collect relevant information. DO NOT USE ADSENSE or you'll be banned.

4. Link Building and Traffic

Do digg.com, and all the other social bookmarking service. Pay people to do them for you. Also do them for topsites. If you get more back links, Google gives more important to your page, and same with yahoo, and microsoft, and all the other search engines like inktomi. It's [b]good[/b] to link exchange with the same proxy sites, because, when one site gets blocked, they will go to the other site! Put the links on the main page, and topsites at the bottom of the page. Topsites can bring good traffic, but they won't if your page is last on the site. Remove topsites that don't bring any traffic, and remember to add them back if you think you could beat the other sites in terms of page impressions.

5. Get a WHM RESELLER, and host your own proxies

It'll come the time when you make your first proxy, and then find that it's very successful and you are earning - a day from Adsense. You will want to create 20+ more sites (and I'm being very realistic). So I recommend to get a WHM Reseller package from hostgator. There are coupons which you can use to get off the entire package. I recommend a reliable site which will pay you back if you are not satisfied with Hostgator's service. The reason you will want to get a WHM Reseller package, is because you can host multiple sites. You will be making + a day from adsense, which will be enough to cover costs of hosting. Also you have complete control over your sites.

Once you have a lot of traffic coming in, link to proxy dot org, and you will be receiving traffic from them daily. Also pay for Myspace bulletins, and post on forums, since they are cheap way to achieve great traffic. The best way is to put your tag in a signature on the forums you post in. Google is pretty lenient about proxy sites, but still - DO NOT ever CLICK on your own ADS.

I have a lot more tips but I feel it's unnecessary to divulge them all, in one post. I hope these advice is enough to help those who started out on the wrong path, and for those who are new to the proxy worlds. We need more proxies, so that kids can go on blocked websites at school. After building your proxies, promotion is really cheap, or nearly free. It'll spread like wildfire through myspace bulletins and word of mouth. Trust me on this one.

Also, one more tip, DO NOT try hosting your proxies on a shared hosting plan, unless you want the administrator to kick you out. I paid only $.01 for hosting, and I got away with it for one and a half months, but it doesn't mean you will be able to either.

Running a Successful Proxy Site