Many people think it’s required to have a VPS (virtual private server) in order to spam links or run scraping software, well the truth is it’s not at all required and most people can get by without it.
If you’re just doing some occasional scraping then you can even do this on your primary system, but if you plan on doing some spamming and/or letting some big scrapes run it’s ideal to have it on another system. This is where a VPS comes in handy, but also comes the added expense which can be anywhere from $30-$150 per month depending on the system you choose. But don’t worry, there is a really easy and free solution to this expense and it’s likely in your closet right now, an old laptop!
Well if it’s not then you can easily dig one up and even if you have to spend a few bucks you’ll still save money in the long run. Just a few hundred dollars will buy you a nice system to run everything and the cost will wind up being less than that of a VPS over time. Some questions you might have:
What about my internet connection getting hogged up?
Chances are you won’t notice this, I run GSA or Scrapebox around 100 threads and things run just fine. If you’re going really hard then it’s wise to monitor your internet usage to make sure you don’t go over your allotted amount. Worst case you could upgrade if necessary, an extra $10-$20 to boost your connection is still less than a VPS.
What about the spam police arresting me?
Come on bro, get yourself a set of proxies and you’re good to go.
What if I need to run software 24/7?
Not sure why you need to do that, people running GSA like that are confused.
Will the results be any different on a VPS compared to my home connection?
Nope, it’s all on the proxies my friend. And you’re likely going to have much more power on a laptop with your home connection than a VPS.
Can big G tell I spammed from my home IP where I built my site and check my ranks 20 times a day?
If you’re asking this question then you need to take your tinfoil hat off my friend.
Does it have to be a laptop?
No of course not, I just like having a laptop closed and tucked away, that and most of us have one around.
Ok Jacob, shut the hell up and tell us how to setup our own VPS already. Well it’s pretty damn simple so don’t get mad at me for making you wait this long.
Required Tools:
- Free account for Team viewer
- Decent laptop
How to Setup your Spam Station
Make yourself a Teamviewer account and install that shit on both systems, your home and the laptop. Now change the settings on your laptop so it never goes to sleep and runs with the lid closed. After that, install all your tools and you’re good to go, just login to the laptop through teamviewer to run everything.
Voila, you’ve got yourself a home VPS spamming station!
Now take that extra money you’re saving now and put it to better use. Until next time bros, good luck smashing out more SERPs.
Final Thoughts:
If you live outside the US (or even in the US for that matter) then your ISP could have different rates, fees, and terms so be sure to use your due diligence!
Another awesome post. When is your info product coming out where you teach out how to configure proxies, use GSA/scrapebox, and how one smashes SERPs. Take our money.. please!
Happy Holidays
Ha thanks MbX, I wouldn’t call it an info product but I have created a community with tutorials covering exactly how I run GSA, from options, proxies etc to the actual setup to campaign.
It’s over at BlackHatStacks.com
This post talks more about it.
Happy Holidays to you as well, crush it.
Fuckin’ awesome, bro.
Exactly what I’m doing right now after PowerUp screwed me.
Just wasn’t aware of TV
By the way, invest that money saved into BHS, worth every penny
Well, yeah, but if your ISP is a hard rock then this is a no-go. They will kill your connection instantly. Some of use really have to use VPS. Good read though.
A “hard rock”, what the does that mean? You get an allowed amount of upload and download Mbps from your ISP, running Scrapebox for an hour or two, even doing that daily should be fine.
That’s also why I recommend monitoring your usage if you’re going at it heavy.
How many proxies does it take to run SER @ 100 threads?
~50
It’s good if you got a 100 MBps connection.
Want to save more ? buy a good specs laptop with broken screen :p
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/laptop-broken-screen
Thanks Prab, didn’t think of trying to purchase a laptop with a broken screen. Very clever.
I have 50 MBPs download and it does just fine.
RE: Can big G tell I spammed from my home IP where I built my site and check my ranks 20 times a day?
If you’re asking this question then you need to take your tinfoil hat off my friend.
Hey Jacob, what does this mean? Sorry, could be English is weak.
Lol, sorry for confusing you, that’s my sarcastic English rambles.
If you’re using proxies, there is no difference spamming links from your home IP compared to the IP from a VPS. That’s all I’m saying.
Heck yea man. One issue I found with comcast is the 300gb a month bandwidth cap. After that you pay out the ass.
I dropped my vps and used that money to put towards a business cable line with unlimited bandwidth. Still came out about 15bucks total cheaper a month.
Breaking even, but able to use a 6 core raid system with 64gb of mem. Way better than a vps.
Exactly ^^
Is GSA still powerful after Penguin? Is it more reliable just to pay for powerful links rather than relaying on tons of less powerful and dangerous links fron GSA? I didn’t touch my tools from months.
Of course, and which penguin lol? And that would also depend on what kind of “powerful links” you’re paying for. Public blog network links? Well, that’s another discussion.
Investing in your PBN? Then maybe we could argue that, but for ranking competitive terms and spamming to do it, GSA is still an important piece of the puzzle. If the site you’re blasting carries a big risk then you probably shouldn’t be blasting it at all. But for purely ranking a site with spam, hell yeah GSA is still powerful.
How good is having a dynamic IP connection? You can switch to a random IP anytime you wish, there will be no need of creating a VPN or using old laptop as alternative.
Waiting for your comments..
And Merry Christmas Buddy..
That shouldn’t change it, the point is to have the software running on a separate system which doesn’t interrupt your main work station. And regardless we’re using proxies so the root IP shouldn’t matter, dynamic or not.
I should stop spending my dosh at fiver and get my own rig. . Your a life saver man… I almost drowned in seo debt
; ₩
110% disagree with this – After running link building tools with 3 different ISPs in the UK – every single one of them resulted in huge bandwidth charges, even the ‘unlimited’ providers. Running GSA with 300 threads was chewing through around 15GB of bandwidth per day on its own. Never mind anything else.
Every time that bandwidth was exceeded – it cost an extra £5 and if you look at this image http://i.imgur.com/1zD291t.png you’ll see it was much more cost effective to have a VPS.
Also your post doesn’t cover anything about checking your ISP’s terms of service for this kind of thing. 1 ISP terminated my account without notice for running GSA and some will refuse internet marketers flat out.
Proxies or not – that will not save you. And yes Google can tell precisely what you are doing from your home IP whether you use proxies or not. If you use firefox, chrome, internet explorer or safari then by default – they know every single website you visit, every single page and for how long.
Well shit I didn’t think about how strict the UK ISPs could be or other foreign countries for that matter. So for guys like yourself you might be forced into a VPS, but for a large majority of us in the US it’s an unnecessary expense. Not to mention just makes things slower.
Sure Google *can see what you are doing on those browsers but that’s not how they stop spam, it’s them algos. My example is extreme of checking your ranks 20 times a day through chrome and spamming from that same IP, but that’s my point, doesn’t matter where you spam from, same results if you’re using proxies.
I’ll add a disclaimer that you should investigate more if you’re not in the US so people can avoid hassle like you’ve experienced in the UK. But for all the US readers who are running GSA correctly, there should be no problem running it from a home connection and I stand by that. With the way I run GSA there is no need to run it 24 hours a day and ever go beyond 100 threads, I might run it for bursts of 10-30 minutes, get a few hundred verified, tier if necessary and move on.
Scraping is the only real resource hog, there is no way around letting Gscraper roll for 3-6 or 6-12 hour periods, so the real task is making sure that doesn’t exceed what your ISP allows. And at that you will likely only be scraping a few days out of the month. Keep in mind I’m using GSA only for submission and verification, nothing else at all, which is the best way to run it IMO.
Did you have GSA scraping search engines and checking PR also? What kind of filters do you usually have running? 15gb of bandwidth per day is a shitload.
“Proxies or not – that will not save you. And yes Google can tell precisely what you are doing from your home IP whether you use proxies or not. If you use firefox, chrome, internet explorer or safari then by default – they know every single website you visit, every single page and for how long. ”
Well, if you are using opendns and then using ser to build a tumblr web2.0 then tell me how the f**k will google know about your ip ?
People just get tooo much paranoid about google tracking without any real logic.
Your bandwidth limit is a problem with uk isp , BTW , i think you were using a “home” unlimited plan. Try a plan made for business place.
“Well, if you are using opendns and then using ser”
by “ser” did you mean server?
Off course if you are using a VPS server to build links goggle can not connect it to you. But the above question deals with running link building from home on a laptop. In which case it may become a red flag for google.
No, we’re using proxies to register and submit links, Google analyzes the end result, not the IPs from which they were created.
Hi Jacob, and thanks for the post.
I am doing the same thing with an energy efficent pc, but do not use TV.
Spending the money I saved from powerhosting VPS on more good proxies.
Connection is 50 MBS Download and having no trouble at all with 100 threads.
It’s not only cheaper but also much more comfortable than running GSA on VPS (which always tends to create problems of some sorts).
Have nice f***ing holidays :-)
Hi mate. Seems a fair compromise if you can’t afford $20 a month for a basic VPS. On top of Mathews comment about ISP’s and bandwidth, it’s worth noting that leaving a 300w laptop on 24/7, in the UK at least will cost you about £10 ($16) upwards a month depending how hard you work the cpu. Either route you go there are costs associated. Merry Christmas! Nick
Sure there are electricity costs from running the laptop but my other point is you shouldn’t be running SER 24/7 if you’re doing it right, you’re paying to run an improper setup if it needs to be running constantly. And to have a VPS even close to as fast as a cheap home system you’d need a VPS at least $50+ per month, probably more like $100+ per month, so there’s the cost savings and I can also work 10x faster as well setting things up.
I guess so, but remember the old laptops you are talking about will be old dual core chips at best. Any vps will match those things. Yes, to get a quad setup will cost you more, but then it’s the same as having a top spec machine at home which will cost you money to buy.
If you only need to fire up gsa for a few hours why bother with a vps at all?
Well that’s part of what I mean, if you’ve got a nice verified list and are running GSA for only submission and verification (like I do) you can build thousands of links in under an hour, hence not having the need to let it run constantly. So I’m still building quite a bit of links, probably more in 10 minutes than most people get from running GSA for a week. So a VPS is overkill when running like that, unless I’m scraping and checking PR a ton with Gscraper like everyday, then maybe, but getting by just fine without it compared to when I had two of them.
I would have thought most people could choose to not run 300 GSA threads at a time and use whatever ISP without problem. No?
Bit of sour grapes here as you are clearly giving out better advice. I use an old laptop without problem.
Woodward just wants more people buying VPS through his links, and to enforce that that is what you MUST do, he is correct etc.
Not everybody is doing this on such a scale.
I have seen him recommending huge (unnecessary) ram specs to people in his comments – just not needed. Nice commissions though.
On PBN’s….can you use free domains like http://www.example.wordpress.com or http://www.example.moonfruit.com ? This would save a lot of expense on hosting.
Thanks Jacob!
Merry Christmas
Nah the whole point is to use aged domains with good links and host them on different IPs, using those would be essentially like setting up brand new domains. Not the way to go.
Sorry Jacob, but i think it the other way.
I prefer to run it on a VPS, since my country has shitty connection speeds and prices are high too, 1Mbps cost $30/month.
Anyway nice idea for those with Good Speed.
Happy New Year
For sure, if that is the case then you’re better off paying for the VPS.
For most of us with good speed and moderate use (without running 24/7) we’re good to go. I pay $49.95 per month for the cheapest Internet plan, does me just fine.
Happy new year to you as well Ram!
Nice post!
I just ordered a used Dell Optiplex for this purpose. I going to stack it on top of my regular workstation and share the monitors. I have 100mb internet and I checked for any US based Charter Cable users, they have no data limits.
Well played sir.
hey Jacob, If i have 100 proxies to use…do i really need a vps because I have been working without one all this time so far:S guess what I’m trying to ask is what is the difference…that it won’t interfere with anything else on my hard drive now because mine seems to be working fine right now without one:)
No you’re fine, it’s just if you don’t want that shit running and interfering with other shit you’re doing. Running around 25-50 threads with that amount of proxies and you’re golden brother.