hmm interesting how things will work out for you

Hey thanks for the mention jon. Great idea! Here’s the proxy hitter i’ve been using for years. Its perfect for your technique.
http://www.bluehatseo.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/I-Faker Desktop Pro.zip

Hey Jon,

I’m actually working on something like this for my Webmaster Toolkit on my blog, expect it to be published tomorrow.

I also sent you an email about a link exchange, did you get it?

someone keep us posted it would be interesting to map out the success day by day…

Come on, this is just plain fraud.
There is not even anything creative about it…

I think my last comment got nuked. So I’ll try again.

I found the proxy hitter I used couple years back. Still works like a charm and much better than stealth advertiser.

http://www.bluehatseo.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/I-Faker Desktop Pro.zip

Wow, I actually followed your blog thinking you had something intelligent to offer but this shows how much of an idiot you are.

This tactic has been tried and done along time ago, basically cheating toplists using proxys. Any decent trade or toplist script nowadays has anti-proxy protections in there so you can just forget about it.

I can’t believe you would be advocating this.

Actually Danny, although topsites list spamming has been done for over 7 years now top referrer listspamming is still relatively new(about 3 years ago). There is only one top referrer script that blocks against proxies and that is the one formerly used by warez.com. Even it doesn’t do a very good job. It also doesn’t block against web proxies should you go that route. There is a TON of traffic that can be pulled from proxy hitting top referrer lists. If you think this is bad advice thats perfectly okay with the rest of us, because i have several sites that have been consistantly making $x,xxx/month each from this exact technique. They are all automated and i don’t even have to check up on them more than once a year.

Fraud!
I pray your business fails completely, that would really make my day.
You are such a dumbass, it’s funny.

There are toplist/reffer/trade scripts that protect against proxy hits and its up to the site owner to take their own measure to protect against this. However, Just because you make money from sending fake traffic doesn’t mean its the right thing to do.

Do what you well, I personally rather trade real productive traffic than try to cheat other site owners with fake proxy hits.

BTW Eli I love how you justify this for the sake of gaining traffic. Guess for some people ethics just doesn’t exist huh?

Hey nice post Jon… and thanks for the resouce Eli, I’ll be sure to check that one out.

Its just internet traffic. Regular users floating around aimlessly and bored. You take this shit way too seriously. Its not like I’m eating babies.

but I understand where you’re coming from. To each his own. I have my moral limits as well so theres no point in poking at the differences.

btw. have you ever been to earthcom.info danny?

Very interesting. I am not sure about the ethical implications of it, but you guys are definitely thinking.

Yep, its pretty unethical. As you can see it does piss some people off. I will write about a way to gain traffic through whitehat way next. Just to make danny and bert sleep better.

Eli is eating babies? What?

Anyone try this yet that can report back for the good of the group?

No Eli, it’s not a matter of “to each his own”. If I said I like to go out and mugg people as a living and you objected, I couldn’t just shrug and say “You take this shit way too seriously. To each his own. I have my moral limits.” There are plenty of people trying to make a legitimate living on the web (like Jon, so I thought) and they have enough problems to deal with without you spamming their refers list.

I still don’t understand where your coming from. First off your dealing with the expected. I also have two sites that use top referer lists. I expect a certain percentage of my traffic to be from people cheating the list through proxies. Its a downright given. You just got to use that to your advantage. I personally use it to score some legit traffic from old sites through banner exchanges as well as giving a push to the legitimate people on my list to increase the visibility of my links so they can rank higher. For the sake of competition its not a bad thing, just like its an expected thing. I learned a long time ago to rely less on my own logs. Secondly, Jon presented this as an idea, not as a suggestion. What good does it do to blurt out BUT THIS IS IMMORAL! Choose your own level of involvement in the industry. There’s no point in trying to cap everyone elses involvement with your own views. I don’t categories the people who spam my lists the same as i would “muggers.” Having a limit on what your willing to do is fine, but why sit there and harp on everyone else about it. I personally would never email spam but I don’t see email spammers as evil people. The most harm they do to me is be a nusaunce by lowering a bit of my productivity, but nothing more than spider solitaire does.

I personally think we all benefit a lot more by allowing Jon to present his creative ideas without fear of moral outrage from the readers.

Paul…last time I checked, proxy traffic isn’t illegal. Mugging people is. Just thought I’d point that out for you

Eli, i can’t find the download link…

Eli,

Yes, Jon posted it as an idea rather than a suggestion, and I have nothing against the open discussion of subjects like this. I assume this retort was not directed at me, since my above comment was directed at you and not Jon.

As for categorizing spammers with muggers, that wasn’t the point I was trying to make. All I intended to do was to point out that there is some parallel: muggers take goods that belong to others, spammers take (in this case) backlinks that belong to others. As for it being illegal, there may be no criminal laws against spamming, but it looks like fraud to me so who knows how it would turn out in court, especially if it is making you $x,xxx per month per site.

Ok, here is a solution for all you people that think this way is “fraud”..

Here it is..

Instead of using fake traffic, go buy up some cheap traffic and send it to those URL’s. If you do it this way, make sure that you make more money than you spend…

Yeah you people are acting like your breaking the law or something. The bottom line is, if your smart, you should use the system to your full advantage.

Methods like this encourage website owners to make their fraud protection better, make the quality of the sites submitted better. Fraud is a GOOD thing, it encourages quality.

You can read my experimentation with the method.

A hot topic for you web-master forum owners…

Paul, what do you use for traffic building? Instead of trying to rip Jon & Eli a new one, why don’t you offer constructive tips and advice on how to build traffic without having to use such methods…

Hey, if muggin people works for you, great, but don’t complain when you walk up on the wrong person… haha…

You know what else is a great way to get traffic and spark a comment war?

Write something so controversial and ridiculous that people will get pissed off at you.

I put something about politics from a very extreme perspective and it worked. My blog was 10 days old, and that article got 22 responses.

THAT was the real trick, eh jon?

I didnt even know that this was gonna happen. But if I did want to start a comment war and link bait, then I would write something about religion or president bush. hehe

JerkyBeef:

I wasn’t trying to “rip anyone a new one”, I was just giving my opinion on the subject.

I don’t make websites much these days (I find programming more enjoyable and profitable). When I used to make sites, I would get traffic by creating useful content or building a useful service. In some cases, I was able to put a single link on a forum or in blog comments, the right people saw it, and soon enough I had some decent traffic. The traffic is more of a temporary spike, but long after you have had your 15 minutes of fame there are lasting backlinks. This has worked for me with a blog, a forum, and a web-application, among other things.

Jeff Key: I have been amazed with the speed that you built your blog. I think it’s a good example of what I am talking about: quality content + some promotion = traffic.

Not a bad idea Jon. I really like the site and what you’re building. Keep up the great work!

Interesting trick, keep us updated

People actually already do this.. my buddys runescape site cheatzscape.com got accused of (and actually it was one of his mods but they still did it) using a proxy.

Those sites have proxy detecting things. They sent him a nasty little message on his web forum to tell him t cut off the proxy or he would be removed.

What ever happened to hard earned money instead of trying to figure out how to cheat money…

Karma is a bitch.

dude.. that’s just a dickish thing to do. seriously.

I don’t know about the ethical implications of all this, but the idea is sound and I’m sure there are lots of other making use of it.

Personally I’ve always been fascinated by the “dark side” of the way most things work because it takes such outside the box thinking to excel, and this is no different.

@Eli - Thanks for the tool, man. Do you ever run out of cool shit?

Yah this trick seems too obvious. I am sure any good site would have a stop against proxy traffic.

Hey there

I’ve been testing I-Faker from the link Eli provided. It *looks* like it’s working but the hits do not register to my web server’s logs.

did anybody else get the same problem? And does anybody know a nice, open-source proxy hitter?

I’ve tried this with one blog I own and I can attest that it did work in fact!