How To Promote A Proxy Site

Creating proxy sites seem to be pretty popular these days. Thousands of people use them every day and there is certainly a proliferation of free proxy scripts available to webmasters who are looking to start one. But due to this fact it is pretty difficult to become a big fish in the sea of proxies. So let’s get down to the point – how do you successfully promote a new proxy site? Here are five tips that will help you beat the competition.

1. List your site on proxy.org and other directories. Proxy.org is the biggest proxy directory online and you can receive a sizable amount of traffic if you have yours listed with them. Don’t ignore the smaller directories, however, because you can still receive good traffic from them.
2. Advertise on game arcade sites. A large chunk of proxy users, like students and company employees, use proxies to play games on arcade sites or browse social networking sites, sense those are usually the type of site that get blocked. By advertising on these sites you are getting your name out to your potential audience.
3. Get a dedicated server. Proxies take up a lot of bandwidth and system resources, so most shared hosting providers do not allow their clients to run proxies. You do not want to start getting traffic to your new site only to have your hosting provider shut you down because of a violation of their terms. Do it right from the start.
4. Advertise using a MySpace profile. I know, you’re thinking ugh. But it works, and traffic is traffic. Create a MySpace profile and get a bunch of friends. Have your site link displayed prominently on your profile page and occasionally send out messages to all of your friends telling them of your proxy. Just remember to abide by MySpace’s TOS. MySpace promotion is a shady area, especially if you start getting into friend adder robots and such.
5. Make it simple. People come to proxies for one reason – to surf other websites. So make it easy for them to do. Have your form that takes in the URL that the user wishes to visit displayed front and center. There is no need to have a lot of clutter. Honestly, all you probably need is a quick blurb about your proxy, an adsense block above your form and one below it, and that’s it.

Proxies tend to come and go fast. Take yours into the big league by building a solid, simple site hosted on a dedicated server and promoting the hell out of it. You may initially be wary about having to plunk down $99 to $140 a month on a dedicated server, but it won’t do you any good if after a month your hosting account gets shut down.

If you follow the tips above you will get lots of traffic, fast, so you’ll quickly need the power of a dedicated host. And with traffic comes revenue potential. Stay tuned for my next article which will show show you how to beat the notoriously low click through rates of proxy sites and make a profit!