brough
Junior Member
- Feb 28, 2022
- 121
- 149
Hello BHW community, I have been mostly lurking around here for the past year or so, trying different methods and products, shopping around. And I finally was able to hit a home run. So it is time to give back.
This method is by no means new, but I have never seen anybody ever talk about it, so I thought about giving it a shot, and it made me profit. It is called Referrer Spam.
-What is Referrer Spam?
First of all, a Referrer is an http(s) header that is provided from the user (aka browser) to any website that the user visits. This referrer header shows up on the analytics as the Source of the visit. Similar to how you see Google in your analytics as a source when a user visits your site from google.com.
Now to the Spam part. The referrer header can be changed to whatever site you actually want, meaning you could setup a bot that visits a million websites with your own custom referrer and each one of the million different websites will have your custom referrer showing in their analytics.
When the website owner or manager sees this new source, naturally they try to investigate and see where exactly was there site linked in this specific page.
-Use Cases & Methods:
Method#1: Referrer Spam + Affiliate Marketing (Tested)
Warning: This method could get you banned from affiliate programs.
1-Find a good affiliate program
*I used paid traffic affiliate programs (babylontraffic, serpempire, simpletraffic)
2-Purchase a domain name that reflects the purpose of the website
*For example, easyseo.cool or easytraffic.com. Then make it redirect to the affiliate program URL.
*To redirect, you could use a service like redirect.pizza or just directly from your domain provider panel. Namecheap Guide: https://www.namecheap.com/support/k.../385/2237/how-to-redirect-a-url-for-a-domain/
3-Get a list of websites that could benefit from the program
*I targeted random small WordPress websites
*Here is a list of 200k random WordPress websites that I collected: https://gofile.io/d/V1iTww
4-Write a script with a bot that visits all the sites in the list
*I tried so hard to get a bot visit to show up on the analytics within a reasonable cost and failed, so I decided to look for an already made solution.
*Here is the script (with UI) that I built on it: https://pastebin.com/aW58p4LL
Results after ~100,000 visits with custom referrer for each campaign:
BabylonTraffic (%20 Commision):
SerpEmpire (%10 Commision):
SimpleTraffic (10% Commision):
However, I got banned from SimpleTraffic due to customer complaints (understandable).
Method#2: Referrer Spam + Paid URL Shortner Services (not tested)
You could pretty much follow method#1 with this one, but instead of redirecting to an affiliate link, it should redirect to the shortened URL.
Also keep in mind, the reason it works really well with WordPress is because of the built in analytics showing the referrer at the top and when you click on one, it directly sends you to the link.
This method can be replicated with ecommerce sites made with website builders like shopify and squarespace. It also works for Youtube Channels.
Hope you all find this useful, this method existed for decades, and no patches were done for it.
This method is by no means new, but I have never seen anybody ever talk about it, so I thought about giving it a shot, and it made me profit. It is called Referrer Spam.
-What is Referrer Spam?
First of all, a Referrer is an http(s) header that is provided from the user (aka browser) to any website that the user visits. This referrer header shows up on the analytics as the Source of the visit. Similar to how you see Google in your analytics as a source when a user visits your site from google.com.
Now to the Spam part. The referrer header can be changed to whatever site you actually want, meaning you could setup a bot that visits a million websites with your own custom referrer and each one of the million different websites will have your custom referrer showing in their analytics.
When the website owner or manager sees this new source, naturally they try to investigate and see where exactly was there site linked in this specific page.
-Use Cases & Methods:
Method#1: Referrer Spam + Affiliate Marketing (Tested)
Warning: This method could get you banned from affiliate programs.
1-Find a good affiliate program
*I used paid traffic affiliate programs (babylontraffic, serpempire, simpletraffic)
2-Purchase a domain name that reflects the purpose of the website
*For example, easyseo.cool or easytraffic.com. Then make it redirect to the affiliate program URL.
*To redirect, you could use a service like redirect.pizza or just directly from your domain provider panel. Namecheap Guide: https://www.namecheap.com/support/k.../385/2237/how-to-redirect-a-url-for-a-domain/
3-Get a list of websites that could benefit from the program
*I targeted random small WordPress websites
*Here is a list of 200k random WordPress websites that I collected: https://gofile.io/d/V1iTww
4-Write a script with a bot that visits all the sites in the list
*I tried so hard to get a bot visit to show up on the analytics within a reasonable cost and failed, so I decided to look for an already made solution.
*Here is the script (with UI) that I built on it: https://pastebin.com/aW58p4LL
Results after ~100,000 visits with custom referrer for each campaign:
BabylonTraffic (%20 Commision):
SerpEmpire (%10 Commision):
SimpleTraffic (10% Commision):
However, I got banned from SimpleTraffic due to customer complaints (understandable).
Method#2: Referrer Spam + Paid URL Shortner Services (not tested)
You could pretty much follow method#1 with this one, but instead of redirecting to an affiliate link, it should redirect to the shortened URL.
Also keep in mind, the reason it works really well with WordPress is because of the built in analytics showing the referrer at the top and when you click on one, it directly sends you to the link.
This method can be replicated with ecommerce sites made with website builders like shopify and squarespace. It also works for Youtube Channels.
Hope you all find this useful, this method existed for decades, and no patches were done for it.
Last edited by a moderator:
