And we begin!

[VisualA]

I wrote a book. I actually wrote four books.

It took me three years, but of course, it wasn't just the writing that took so long. The artwork had to be commissioned, discarded, re-commissioned, argued over, altered, polished, discarded again. The books had to be chopped up into sections and sent to a small army of beta readers, then handed out to editors, back to beta readers, back to editors, rewrites, re-edits, rewrites, re-edits, back to beta readers. Until the whole damn thing just glowed like a Stanley Kubrick film.

What kind of book is it? Fantasy, the worse selling kind. Was I aware of this when I got into it? Yep! Yep, I sure was. This was an idiotic adventure that I began. But at least my eyes were wide open. In fairness, I believe that there are many things in life that are extremely stupid. Some of them we must never do. Others, we simply have to do. When this started, I realized how stupid it was but I just could not stop myself. If I only ever do one stupid thing in my life... let it be this.

I founded a publishing company.

If I was going to self publish (and that is exactly what I was going to do) then I needed to do it correctly. There is no point in finding success only to have the IRS (its an American thing) come after you a few years down the line because they found out people were sending me money without the expressed permission of the US government. Can't have that. In the land of the free, thats how people end up in prison. So I did all the paperwork, hired the correct people, reported to the correct agencies and pre-emptively apologized to the appropriate government institutions.

Publishing was easy.

Spent a few weeks on youtube researching things like epub formatting. Which platforms are better for self-deluded, OCD authors like myself. Then I uploaded and pushed 'go' only to have nothing happen and I had to spend a few days trading emails with support staff and asking why their automated publishing services do not actually provide the features they advertised. But, you know, in a nice way. It must always be in a nice way. Without a PR mask, the world would just consist of corporations shouting and screaming at people 24/7.

And now... nothing.

Yep! Nothing at all! Just as planned. Unironically, this is exactly what I expected to happen. Amazon lists four novels with zero views, zero purchases, zero reviews and zero traffic. The time when they might have offered some limited bit of public exposure for a new product is long gone. Here we are in 2024. Amazon receives more submissions everyday then they have customers. In many ways, I was not surprised. Gone are the days when a person's simple internet activity could move the needle so far as ranking and algorithm. Whether it is tiktok, facebook, youtube, or twitch... if you aren't pewdiepie then noone is going to even hear about it.

Its all a grift.

And it has been for quite a while. There was a time when a person only had to put up a banner ad on a website to pull in traffic, but of course that is gone. There was a time when a person only needed to hire an influencer or buy a twitter ad and thats gone too. Even white hat options are naively ineffective at this point. It is easy for a thousand dollar ad run to get 10k impressions, 500 click and zero sales.

Dead internet theory dies a slow death.

In my day we would blame this on bots with the clickthrough rate caused by adblockers handing out false information. Yet now, even this is suspect. There isn't a day that goes by when facebook is accused of simply 'making up numbers' for campaigns it never actually ran. And why should they? They never cared about your money anyway. Meta gets by on selling stock, not by collecting pennies from unaffiliated nobodies.

Enter BHW.

Its not the best game in town. It is the only game in town. Don't believe me? Thats fine. I respect your opinion. Just wait a year and tell me if the problem has gotten better or worse. No, really, I'll wait. The internet is dead. I'm not here to argue that point, but, as you can well imagine, I am here for a very specific reason.

Arise, my undead minions!!!

This is where my journey begins. If my book has zero reviews on Amazon, then why can't it have a thousand? If my book has zero reviews on Goodreads, then why can't it have five thousand? If the internet is all fiction anyway, then why can't I be the author of that fiction? (Bots, I'm talking about bots). BHW is fantastic when it comes to sharing tactics, strategies and methods for running botfarms across all the major platforms. Although this is the first time I've made an account, I have been coming here for years and just absorbing how things are done and what obstacles can be expected. When someone asks "What is the greatest book of all time?" on Reddit, I find myself easing back into my chair and asking "How difficult would it be to warm up a thousand reddit bots?"

Of course it is a challenge, but Reddit indexes for Google and it is a high authority site. With enough fake people talking about my work(s), I can one day blur the line between fantasy and reality. Go look up "Lost in Yaba: Down and Out in Laos", a terrible book to be sure, but you wouldn't know that from typing it into Google. Goodreads rates it as the greatest book of all time, outranking 1984, War and Peace, Catcher in the Rye, a Tale of Two Cities. This book can't be stopped... everyone is talking about it. But is that true? What is the truth?

And why can't it be me? I've used Javascript before, I am familiar with browser automation. I can afford one of these unlimited rotating 5g proxy sites for $100/month. After some time, research, practice and a whole lot of trial and error... I can become the internet. And when someone pulls out their kindle and goes looking for something to read, all they will find is me. And me. And me. And me again. Also me. With me, myself and another person who is also me. I will be everywhere and the only reality they can expect to find is the one I crafted for them.

Kinda ironic, I know. Fantasy author creates fantasy of popularity, grifts the unsuspecting. Fuck you, my book is gold and I will force you all to believe it.

 

[VisualA]

My first task will of course be to create an email generation bot. This will get me familiar with the specifics of browser automation and give me some great practice when it comes to mimicking human browser behavior. (Scanning, scrolling, slow entering of information) and of course tracking data and proper use of browser and proxies.

After than, I can bring everything I've learned over to Reddit. There are some great guides on here about warming up reddit accounts and I hope to properly automate this over the next few weeks. My goal is 0% detection rates.

 

[BigOrangeCat]

how is fantasy the worse selling, I liked that when I was younger

 

[VisualA]

how is fantasy the worse selling, I liked that when I was younger

Well, it is a little off topic but I'm bored so here I go...

There are a lot of reasons why it sells poorly but it is only when you add them all together that they become 'The worst' selling.

1: The vast majority (I will guesstimate 75%) of books tend to be 'Trendy Buys' that exist as a result of peer pressure. Most of these books are purchased due to word of mouth and are seldom actually read. The fame of the book (and often the book's subject matter) are enough to justify the purchase, however a reader will typically not go so far as to invest their time in ACTUALY reading it. Here is a good example... the #1 NYT bestseller right now is...

"It ends with us" A battered wife raised in a violent home attempts to halt the cycle of abuse: the basis of the film.

And the #2 NYT bestseller is the sequel to that book. This is a topic/subject that plays into a larger narrative (often a political narrative) that gets picked up by book clubs, talk radio personalities, activist bloggers and your typical wider media groups. People purchase this book to say they have purchased it (and plan to read it), however the vast majority typically does not. It is more of a symbol than anything else.

2: An overwhelming majority of readers are women and women prefer certain genre/styles that appeal to their own sensibilities. I'm not just talking about romance novels, although romance novels are (or at least once were) an extremely lucrative genre. Preferred genres also include 'True Crime' and 'Scary stories' (not necessarily horror, but sometimes horror). This was the appeal of Stephen King for the longest time. Stephen King had a talent for riding the line between 'Scary' and 'Horror'. Everytime he worked a bit of romance in, his book just became irresistible.

3: Self help books and self improvement books. These include things like "How to raise your children" and "How to get a raise at work", etc, etc. Typically these types of books end up being impulse buys and typically do not get read... although they can easily end up in catagory 1's "Trendy Buys" if they get enough momentum.

4: Biographies and Autobiographies. These books get pushed hard by whoever wrote them and typically carry the weight of the celebrity they are about. They get an initial boost to sales, followed by a gradual payout as the celebrity promotes them. Politicians love this sort of genre as it also allows them to launder money (No one really read Newt Gingrich's book, but if you wanted to bribe a senator you could just buy 10k copies of it). A good example is the current NYT #3 "Kamala Harris" book. I wonder how long it took them to slap that thing together.

5: Children's books. This is a real cash cow, because parents will always want something to read to their children. It makes them feel good about themselves and it makes them feel like they are setting a good example.

6: Sci-fi, or what I like to call 'Futurism' is every author's attempt to be Aldous Huxley. This is a very niche market, but still sells. There are a lot of silicon valley types who want to stay abreast of imaginative technological advancements long before they become a reality and will sometimes frequent this topic. However, it is typically preferred that authors keep the characters and plot to a minimum and simply focus on technological themes rather than tell an actual story.

7: Fantasy... It took George RR Martin over thirty years before he started making money from his books. Stephen King wrote a few fantasy novels... can you name them?

I love fantasy. I think most people do. But they just don't sell like the others. The issue is that there is 'Reading' and then there is 'READING'. And they are not the same thing. Fantasy novels are not going to come with all the benefits that all the other genres do. Anything which conveys an actual story is going to require time and attention. It is not the sort of thing you can put on an audiobook and listen to bits and pieces while you ride on a subway for twenty minutes at a time. Anything which requires imagination and/or concentration is going to get passed over for a less serious publication.

Even on high traffic Amateur free sites like "Royal Road", the analytics speaks for itself. Zero views, Zero clicks, Zero interest. And this is a site with millions of people who are specifically looking for fantasy books. But even here, these people are following trends... not making a genuine effort to 'Actually Read' something.

It is a challenge. Not an insurmountable challenge, but a challenge none the less.

 

[Tameika Reid]

Best of Luck On Your Journey.
Following!

 

[VisualA]

While I endeavor to make a bold start of this new project, the world comes crashing down.

And whatever can go wrong, surely will. My fourth book is done and ready to be published, I just need one last piece of art from my artist and I can get that finished off. But in the meantime, the audiobook version of book 1 is not going as planned. The audiobooks are important because they are scheduled to be the money-makers of this project. The ebooks are just there to be pirated and add legitimacy to my overall brand. When people spend money, it will be spent on the audiobook(s). Unfortunately, however, the voice actor I have been engaging with has charged top dollar and done a 'less than stellar' job. So now I am facing down the prospect of finding another voice actor, while trying to finish off the fourth book, while gearing up for this new task. (BTW, did I mention I have a full time job?) This is quite exhausting. But whatever, in the words of Ghengis Khan...

Lets fucking go!!!!!!!!

I am using Spyder as my Python IDE and I started playing with playwright for page scraping purposes. Really, this has just been an effort to familiarize myself and will play a much larger part later. For right now, I refurbished a quality laptop and I intend to make a GUI that will allow me to remotely control the botting application on the laptop (so I do not have to disturb it while it is running). So far it has been very interesting and will make for a 100% independent device that I can influence from anywhere in the world. Once I am confident that the GUI is polished and can pass along instructions (and farm reports) I will begin adding functionality to the child application. As a test, I want to have the child application begin scraping a series of online dictionaries for lists of words that can later be mashed together as account names. This will allow it to draw from a huge list of original (and random) names when setting up accounts for emails/reddit/amazon/goodreads/etc.

I am excited.

 

[VisualA]

Update:

I told a friend what I was doing and he laughed. His words were "You are the only person I know who would build a GUI for the purpose of hacking".

Although I'm not actually "Hacking", it is more accurate to say that I am "Botting" but his overall point was not lost on me. Sometimes, my perfectionist streak will kick in and I end up going a little too far in some places. So, yes, absolutely, the GUI is complete. In between the first post and now, I have learned Python and created a large GUI that I can load on multiple PCs for the purpose of connecting and monitoring several systems at once (regardless of where they might be). And the system is set up so that any relevant updates can be easily pushed toward my command browser. I am quite happy.

My naming convention involves film production (because it is symbolic of what I am doing).

The producer keeps in contact with a 'Director' and receives regular updates. The director spawns assistants who scrape helpful information and it also spawns 'casting agents' who keep track of the actors and sees to their overall well being. From the casting agent, we spawn instanced actors who receive information from data files kept by the director (the script) and when they are ready to take the stage, they slip into the role of a user and put on a performance. When they are done, they make a report to the director and clear the stage so that the next actor can take their place.

The most recent setback has been on the actual automation side of this process. I had planned to use the python API 'Playwright' however it seems that playwright has serious issues with the IDE I am using (Spyder- the application I program with). Although I can simply download and use another IDE, I have decided that I don't want to. I like Spyder and if 'Playwright' doesn't understand my love for that IDE then perhaps playwright should kiss my bum. Instead of playwright, I will be using Selenium instead.

Although this change means that I will have to learn Selenium now (instead of playwright), I will gladly invest the time and be happy with the knowledge that there will be less issues down the road.

On the browser side of things, I have also been experimenting with products like GoLogIn and Octo-Browser, however it is difficult to come to a decision on anti-detect browsers. They all appear to have the same features and are evenly matched so far as reputation goes. Even here on BHW, mentions of these browsers appear to be interchangeable. Yet, I suspect I will have to come to a decision soon as the first phase of testing is nearly complete.

I plan to use a 'Director Assistant' to scrape Dictionary.com for every word that is five characters or less, remove any bad words and dump them into a large CSV file for later retrieval (this will allow for random name generation by mashing words together). Once that is done, phase 2 begins -- which is the automation of email account creation via selenium + anti-detect browser + rotating 4g mobile proxy.

After I have a thousand email accounts...

Phase 2 will be complete and I will be ready for reddit.

 

[awesomewebsites]

If the book is really good, you just need some initial sales. You can even distribute free copies to some readers and they will refer to their friends if content in book is useful.

 

[VisualA]

If the book is really good, you just need some initial sales. You can even distribute free copies to some readers and they will refer to their friends if content in book is useful.

I would like to believe that. It would certainly make my job a lot easier.

And from an outsider's perspective, I can understand why it might appear that way. In fact, despite my negative attitude, steps were taken (before this phase) to rule this out as a hypothesis.

1) I made contact with a variety of ebook, litenovel and litrpg pirate groups that deal in bulk distribution to free sites and added my book to their collection for release.

2) I hired ten individuals on fiverr who were connected to pirate groups. I provided them a copy and gave them the instruction to "Put this absolutely everywhere you can". (Several of these people were very creative and really surprised me).

3) I hired Google SEO bloggers to generate content in the form of press releases and mock interviews that would point at some of the more accessible locations.

4) I published on draft2digital which distributes to 15+ major platforms (Amazon, Kobo, Temu, AppleBooks, Googlebooks, barnes and nobles, etc. Even public libraries.)

The results were, unfortunately, much as I expected them to be. Zero readers, zero views and zero conversations. This is not to say anyone thought it was bad... It clearly indicates that (despite accessibility), no one even knows it exists.

-------------------------------------------

The strategy that I am working from relies heavily on my own personal exposure to the market. Many of the things I have personally read were not products I discovered on my own. My exposure consisted of people talking about it. From that, an interest was generated and as more and more people began to mention that brand/product, the more interested I became.

I propose that the internet has reached a state of critical mass. A person drowning in the ocean is not going to stop and take notice of a single drop of water. This has to be the most talked about drop of water in existence in order to get anyone to stop and notice. (But this is just a theory, I could be wrong. Doubtful, but possible.)

The idea that all I need to do is release it and it will be judged on the quality of its content is, unfortunately, not a realistic one. (At least, this is what tests have lead me to believe)

 

[VisualA]

Update 9/24/24

Okay so, I went back to playwright. I got a cute little IDE called Aqua (Python Jetbrains Aqua) and it has no problem with Aqua. Unlike selenium, I came to find out that playwright has a lot of time saving features and honestly, I have spent too much time already. So what have I done?

Up and running, almost fully tested

I am at the 'live phase' and it is time for me to sign up with an anti-detect browser and get myself a 5G Rotating proxy (one of good repute). So far we have...

Producer-Bot

Producer-Bot's job is to sit on my desktop and stay in constant communication with Director-Bot, this will allow the entire setup to operate independently but still relay reports back to me and keep me updated on connectivity and any issues that might be encountered. So far as software development is concerned, we can call my desktop 'Testing' and we can call the latop Director-Bot is opperating from 'Production'. Doing it this way will allow me to scale up in the future (Reddit is not the only platform I plan to invade).

Director-Bot

Director-Bot has the ability to launch and control other bots on its system. It remains in constant communication with Producer-Bot and has the responsibility of controlling the whole show with a variety of multi-purpose applications. It not only keeps me informed but it steers multiple bots toward a single purpose and takes action when required.

Secretary-Bot

Secretary-Bot is one of the applications Director-Bot starts and controls. It's purpose (her purpose?) is to perform random tasks that may be required. To date, we've had her do things like 'Page scrape all of dictionary.com for a list of words that can be mashed up into names'. In the near future, it will be her task to coordinate with the Script-Director and setup email accounts. (I am thinking GMX or Hotmail. Although there are some japanese alternatives as well).

Script-Director

This bot's purpose will be to actually mash the names together and create directories for the individual actors. Anytime a username/password is required. Anytime a text file needs to be accessed. Anytime an actor needs to be told who he is and what he is doing, he will need the Script-Director to dig up 'The Script' and let them know.

Costume-Director

This bot's purpose is to oversee the proxies and anti-detect browser so that actor access will be as simple as contacting the Costume-Director and declaring itself ready. Then it can be assigned the latest and greatest in accordance with the desired role and I can keep track of everything from a single bot.

Actors

I have not made these yet. Currently I am completing the functionality of the Costume-Director as it currently uses a static IP and Chromium (for testing purposes). But now that we are moving to our final objective, it is time for that to change. The actors will actually not have much in the way of functionality. Their job is to instance themselves, follow the script, make a report to the director and then make way for the next actor.

In conclusion...

I may be a crazy person.

 

[Adeelalam]

May I ask which publication services did you use, because I am also thinking of writing a book in the future.

 

[VisualA]

May I ask which publication services did you use, because I am also thinking of writing a book in the future.

draft2digital

 

[VisualA]

Another week gone by and what do I have to show for it? Forgive me, I am anxious.

Everything is mostly finished, with only a bit of testing to do. Torn between Octo-Browser and GoLogIn, I eventually decided on Dolphin Anti and spent a solid 12 hours trying to figure out their API. I had some trouble with sending/receiving tokens but their tech support turned out to be super friendly. Also chatgpt ftw.

Using my bots, I had them take turns visiting a variety of browser testing sites and each one reported that I was 100% not suspicious. Although, I find this suspicious. My first inclination is to conduct more testing, however that is a recursive loop that appeals to my OCD and somewhere deep inside I realize that the only true test will be against reddit itself.

So, now it is time to do some proxy shopping. Here we go...

 

[VisualA]

It helps me to visualize code. That is the issue with complexity, it forces us to zoom in and zoom out until we end up developing a headache. In a lot of ways, i suspect, it is a lot like gardening. Growing a single plant is easy. Running a small flowerbed is also easy. Running a two hundred acre farm is... complicated.

But so long as I can lay it all out and take some time to let my eyes wander over it, everything will eventually be addressed. And when things break, I can parachute straight into the eye of the storm and fix what needs fixing.

 

[leontineentitled]

I wish you the best in your journey. I hope you will achieve your goals

 

[VisualA]

Another week gone by...

And what have I been doing? Well, when last we left our villain(s) I was ready to grab a proxy service and start making emails. However, with any journey, things became interesting.

I made a bunch of upgrades to my python GUI, added functionality and logging features to the backend and when it came time to get a test with a proxy, I came here to look for one.

A word on BHW proxies...

First, I would like to say that it is amazing just how many different companies will take 'BHW' as a discount code and give you a lifetime 50% off. I felt like royalty. Next, there does not seem to be any kind of consensus or standardization as to what a proxy is or how it should work- this is actually a good thing as it provides a lot of variety.

The direction I went...

iproxy turned out to be amazing. I don't want this to turn into an iproxy advertisement, mainly because it would upset the admins, but also because I have only been using them for a few days. However, I would really like to mention the brilliance of this idea. Rather than pay a proxy group to use a select pool of IPs (whether residential, mobile, public private), you turn a cell phone into your own private proxy. Sounds silly, but it works.

Saturday morning I was standing in line at Wal-Mart looking to buy a $100 prepaid AT&T Moto G 5g, set it up under a fake name (just because I could), rooted it, installed iproxy from the google play store and started the process of installation. The process took a while, but it wasn't complicated at all. It was just a series of menus that walked you through what had to be done in order to get it to work. This is how it works (genius, I don't know why I didn't think of it)

You attach it to a laptop and set it to tether so that your laptop uses the phone's network and nothing else. You set the phone to use mobile data and only mobile data. Then, after sending a signal to iproxy's servers (where ever they are), they send a signal to their app on your phone. The phone then sets itself to airplane mode (thereby severing the connection with the mobile network), changes it's location data, and when it comes out of airplane mode and reconnects, the mobile network assigns it to a different datacenter (based on your new location) and (gives it a new IP).

Completely brilliant.

Instead of using a fixed group of IPs for $200/month, you are exploiting your own network provider for $6/month (thats how much iproxy charges). Really, if I wanted to be clever about this, I am fairly certain I could just reverse engineer the phone app and pay nothing. However, its only $6, how cheap am I really going to be?

So next weekend! I will complete all testing and have a thousand emails ready to make a thousand reddit accounts.

(and i fucking dare them to catch me)

 

[chris4life]

Best of Luck On Your Journey.

 

[VisualA]

First test kicked off on sunday after a few last minute changes.

Before I got started, I created 50+ fingerprint profiles on dolphin anty and tested the heck out of my 5g rotating mobile proxy (my cell phone w/iproxy loaded into it). Everything was set. A unique browser with a random 5G mobile IP would navigate to www.tuta.com, create a free email, send a single email to a long list of corporate 'customer support' email accounts with a unique message. Something like "I'm having trouble with my wifi" or "I lost my shipping number". This was just a test to make sure the email was properly setup and ready to be used. Also it was intended to add enough randomness so that the email owners would not become suspicious about a bunch of email accounts getting set up and not used. "Help Aveeno healthcare! My product doesn't work as intended!" Random details for random accounts.

When it was done, it would close the browser, switch IPs, switch browser profiles, and start all over again. Just like that. Every 3 minutes. 10 email accounts were created and as you can imagine, it took 30 minutes. I was very very pleased. And then suddenly... a captcha appeared. I was all like...

WTF?!

How is this even possible?

I halted everything and just stared at it for a while. Ten accounts went through just fine but the 11th account was somehow suspicious? I closed it all down, double checked everything and brought the entire thing up with the intention of creating 1 account. The moment it got to the detail confirmation screen... there it was again. I waited two hours. I waited six. It didn't seem to matter how long I waited... somehow they knew.

But how? My IP is a genuine 5G ATT mobile connection from a different corner of the country every single time. My browser was a handcrafted profile with different cookies, different MAC address, different user agent, different everything. (or so I believe). All of my actions are randomized, the mouse moves, the script pauses for random lengths of time, sometimes checkboxes get clicked and unclicked as if the user were indecisive (or confused).

Although it does not seem to matter. The moment it lands at their site, it appears to know exactly who I am. It allows me to make my way to account creation and then...

A few times, I solved the captcha myself just to progress and I am very glad I did, because on the other side of account creation was a message that informed me that this new account was pending review and would be inactive until an admin approved it. (they know!!)

But where did I go wrong? If a spanish email provider (in spain apparently), if they can see through all my proxies and anti-detect profiles... then surely reddit would have no issue.

I have to do better. I need 100% anti-detection and in order to do that I have to find out what I am doing wrong.

 

[VisualA]

Maybe...

Maybe they are just suspicious that ATT customers suddenly love their website and they all want a free email? That can't be it. Not after only 10 signups. Surely, they get more traffic than that.

 

[VisualA]

Update:

I made a reddit account. Reading back over this thread has taught me something.

1) I'm too paranoid.

2) So are my opponents.

It is entirely possible that these places do not truly "know" whether or not they are dealing with bots. It is easy to assume that they have a habit of treating everyone and everything as a bot. A 'Trust Score' if you will. Reading some of the other threads has also pushed me towards account warm-ups and these ideas all seem to come together into a common theme. Social media platforms are under attack. They want to know whether I am a possible friend or a possible foe. I logged back into all ten of these email accounts and found their eyes upon me. Then, I carefully, manually, made some reddit accounts. They did not try to stop me.

So, I am rethinking my approach.

I will setup these accounts a little each day. Do some basic warm-ups. Take my time with it. Build that trust score. This might sound like a lot of work, I realize. However, I can easily automate small parts of this (lets not call it a process, lets call it a routine) until it is 100% automated.

Step 1) Boot up an account (python profile) and attack Google for my own homebrew CTR manipulation I have been experimenting with.

Step 2) Then head on over to the email site and log in.

That is where the automation stops for now. After that I can verify that nothing crazy has happened to the email account and make my way over to Reddit for five minutes worth of simulated browsing. I do this for each account, every day. Manual setup, manual warm-up and then I will slowly start to automate parts of the routine.