The Problem Web proxies can be really useful. The only problem is that they tend to go offline pretty quickly. These websites can take up a lot of server resources and sometimes webmasters can't cope with the demand and give up. There is also the problem of network admins banning the web proxies they find to stop their users from accessing blocked content on their network. The Solution I decided to sit down and think of a way that I could make sure people have access to a number of working web proxies all the time. I decided that they would need a daily updated list. There are literally tons of mailing lists out there so I wanted to do something a little different. This is when I conceived the idea of a web proxy RSS feed. Introducing.. the Daily Web Proxies RSS Feed There is now a way that people can easily access a daily updated list of new web proxies with very little effort. Each day I publish a number of new links to my RSS feed that my users can subscribe to in a number of cool and unique ways. Finding working web proxies will never be easier. Users can access my links in a number of ways: Directly through their browser (Firefox's Live Bookmarks) Integrate my feed directly into their homepage with iGoogle Traditional News Aggregators Web-based Aggregators (Bloglines, Google Reader, My Yahoo! ..etc) The potential here is massive Currently the main website has been up for around a week. I am carefully promoting the website bringing in targeted traffic that I hope will turn directly into feed subscriptions. I am working on a blog that hopefully will be released soon which will drive a lot of traffic to the RSS feed. This whole concept is still in the early stages of development but I am seeing some fairly encouraging results already. A little statistical information via Feedburner: Hopefully the number of subscriptions will just keep on growing. Each day I am seeing an increase. Currently Feedburner estimate (there may be many more) that yesterday I had 29 subscriptions with a reach of 56 readers. Fantastic stuff People are syndicating this feed on their blogs, on their homepages, in their browsers and via their news aggregators. All after one week The beauty here is that all my users opt-in to receive this service. You can't force someone to subscribe to an RSS feed and you can't fake Feedburner stats. The great thing is that all my readers are guaranteed to be checking my feed multiple times throughout the day. I appreciate that this in the early stages but I cannot continue to offer free traffic to proxy owners. So let's get this show on the road! I update the feed once a day with 5 new web proxies. The feed consists of 35 items. This means that you will be featured on my RSS feed for almost a whole week (6 days). To start the ball rolling I am offering 5 positions on this RSS feed to DigitalPoint proxy owners. Once the 5 positions have been taken I won't be accepting any more until next week. This is a test to see what everyone thinks. 1) $5 2) $4 3) $3 4) $2 5) $1 After 6 days we will re-evaluate the situation again. I want feedback from everyone who brought a spot. I shall look forward to hearing from you. - Matt
I don't mind it anyway. The thing is that the idea is really promising and it is a great way to push yourself to the people in a most unobtrusive way. No ads, No fluff only plain simple content which people want. I only wish that this becomes more popular and easy for people to adopt. Anyways, I loose so much money eitherway (Spent without any goal). No harm in putting some of it in experimenting
Like I said this is an experiment, hence the very cheap fees for inclusion. You obviously can't see the potential here but that doesn't matter to me. I'd much rather have people involved who can see the potential of the feed and want to join in with the experiment. I am working extremely hard on this so I hope you all benefit from it. Some more statistics for you. Feedburner stats are for the previous day. So, here are yesterday's stats: The important part here is the reach. Basically this is the most accurate figure of the feeds true audience. See the official description below: Here's the traffic stats for the main website, Daily Web Proxies. Very promising indeed! Oh and finally, the total item use: This is just getting bigger and bigger every day! - Matt
I will take those too, if you give me a bit discount. You too know this is only a start. and I am also experimenting so..... If the results are good, which I believe it should be; It will benefit us both all. Contact me with a quote.
Thanks for that mate All spots have now been taken. Links will be going live tomorrow. I will be updating this thread each day with statistics. - Matt
I would like to know more on promotion methods used by you. This really has potential if this service is promoted to the right people (Needy people ). Please PM me with more info.
I see you have more proxies on your site. BTW I have subscribed too and I see that I would have in benefit if I got to take the first spot too In fact the first spot itself and all the rest too
41 subscribers yesterday Will post a screen shot of the reach later when Feedburner gets updated. PMs have been sent. - Matt
Reach for Tuesday. We're slowly developing a solid user base. Very pleasing indeed. I am working on the blog as we speak and it should go live in the next few days. Hopefully we can use this to drive traffic to the feed. - Matt