Premium Proxies: Best Data Collecting and Web Solutions
Most proxies that exist publicly, especially the free ones are not really satisfactory for business use. The problem is that premium proxies require heavy resources such as support staff and high-quality networks. This costs money and second-rate proxies supported by ads can never get anywhere near this level. There are a few reasons where if you’re serious about making real money online then using premium proxies like the top-level Bright Data proxies makes complete sense. They’re really won’t cost much more than the rubbish ones either!
What is a Proxy?
A proxy server is an intermediary that sits between the client and the Internet. The client makes a request, which it can’t send directly to the internet because of restrictions like firewalls and sends it to the proxy server. The request then comes back from the internet with both data and a response for the client.
Quite simply it’s an electronic middleman, delivering and receiving your requests online. However, it can also run thousands of different identities by relaying your connection through multiple IP addresses. Which combines the advantages of anonymity with the ability to run many different digital identities.
What Do People Use Proxies for?
The reasons for using proxies are varied. Some people use them to access data that their location might not be able to get, such as videos on Netflix or YouTube. This is because potentially the proxy server can appear to be in any location you require. Typically, proxies have access to many different IP addresses hosted and registered in different locations. This behaviour is called geo-targeting and is increasingly used by websites to filter content to specific location.
Others may need a proxy because they’re trying to operate different accounts or in different locations. When you connect online through a home or office internet connection you generally have a single digital identity. If you use a proxy server with additional IP addresses, you can potentially have hundreds of different identities.
Examples of Proxy Use
So let’s have a look at some common uses of proxies –
Running Multiple Social Media Accounts
Most social media companies want you to have a single social media account tied to your real identity. However, if you use an account to make money or promote products it’s much safer and more profitable to run multiple accounts. Firstly, if you lose an account, it’s less of an issue, plus you can operate different accounts in different areas or manners.
Using a proxy with multiple IP addresses mean that you can run lots of different accounts from a single location. So perhaps you want to run twenty Instagram accounts, one super safe legitimate one and the others spread across different identities. Try this on a single IP address and you’ll quickly get your accounts blocked or restricted.
This is very common on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TicTok.
Buying and Selling on Multiple Accounts
If you look carefully online there’s lots of ways of making money with very little effort. One of the easiest to follow is simply buying on one site and selling on another. However, to do this you need to buy the right product at the right price.
One of the best examples of this sort of digital arbitrage is with the premium sneaker market. Every month limited edition sneakers are released on sites like Nike and Footlocker. Every sneaker can easily be resold for much more than the cost it’s offered for. Unfortunately, they are hard to get hold of plus limited to a single pair per account.
By using a proxy, entrepreneurs can create many different accounts and buy huge numbers of these sneakers by rotating the IP address. These can then be flipped on other sites for instant profits. The same is possible in lots of other areas like sportswear, concert tickets, technology etc. Anything in short supply and high demand can provide instant profits.
Using Country Restricted Sites
You’ve heard of sites like Craigslist? Free advertising and bulletin boards where you can reach thousands of customers with minimum costs. However, the services are normally restricted to locations linked to your IP address. So, a New York based IP address can advertise free on the New York Craigslist boards.
This is great but how much more money could you make by placing free adverts on hundreds of Craigslist boards? All you need is multiple IP addresses in different locations to match up with different accounts and make this happen. Remember though the location of the IP addresses is crucial with these sorts of sites. Only a few providers will be able to support this level of detail primarily the leading proxy providers like Bright Data (Luminati) and Smart Proxies.
Accessing Media and Other Geo-Locked Sites
Almost all of the world’s best TV and entertainment companies have a big presence online. However due to the complexities and vagaries of international copyright laws, virtually none of them are available across different countries. In fact, almost all the major TV companies only broadcast to their domestic market even online. They restrict access to everyone else using the previously mentioned geo-targeting techniques.
Proxies bypass all this nonsense and so to some extent VPNs which are often a cheaper alternative for watching media online. Unfortunately, what’s increasingly happening is that these work arounds are being blocked. Now only certain VPN services work with the large media sites like BBC iPlayer and the main US TV channels. All genuine Premium proxies work though as long as their IP addresses are in the correct location.
What is a Premium Proxy?
The term premium obviously implies a higher quality proxy compared to the standard. You should be careful though when encountering this phrase simply because it’s used by so many lower quality providers too. We will list a few of the basic requirements considered essential to a ‘premium proxy classification.
Fast Connections
Speed is pretty much essential for any proxy server and shouldn’t be too hard to achieve. Bandwidth and network connectivity isn’t usually much of a problem to the larger providers as the costs per unit/proxy fall considerably with scale. Speed is vital to many e-commerce functions for instance copping sneakers or high demand tickets. In fact, for these sorts of task ideally you should try and pick proxies with servers based near to your target websites.
Private IP
The cheapest proxies and VPNs reduce their costs by sharing the IP addresses with thousands of users. Unfortunately, although this does bring the cost down, it also causes other issues. If you’re sharing a single IP address with a thousand other users then there’s a fair chance some will be accessing the same sites, sending out spam or something similar. The cheaper the proxy means the bigger the number of users who are probably sharing.
Imagine accessing your hugely valuable Instagram account which pays your mortgage every month while the same IP address is used with stolen credit cards on the same site. The risks are very real and can easily result in deleted or blacklisted accounts.
Private VPNs, proxies and IPs will generally only allow a single user to connect at any one time. The premium proxies will reserve exclusive access to your account only. For valuable transactions and managing accounts then this is the ideal option.
Residential IPs
Although every IP address looks fairly similar and follows the same notation, they are actually very different. Every IP address is registered by some sort of organisation before it can be used online. These registrations are then classified by the organisation type.
If you’re looking to keep a low profile and act like an ordinary user, then you really need to use an IP address which is classified as residential. This is the most trusted category and will allow you access to all the websites functionalities.
Unfortunately, because residential addresses are harder to get hold of most proxies will use commercial or data center registered addresses instead. The websites know this, and commercial addresses are often flagged as potential proxies or VPNs services.
A premium Proxy should have a residential IP address, or one assigned to mobile network.
Premium Proxy Service
Although you’ll see quite a lot of services claiming to provide premium proxies, the reality is that there’s not really that many. When you’re looking check out the requirements above, don’t get distracted with cheap offers of thousands of rotating proxies either.
Any company, marketing firm or someone who really wants to make money online will only use a handful of proxy companies. It’s really only a couple who operate at this quality level. You can only buy genuine premium proxies from these companies.
My favorite is well worth trying out – they’re called Bright Data (previously Luminati) and they’re without doubt the corporate choice for quality proxy services. They are definitely not the cheapest but they’re not too bad either. Also, there’s loads of tools in the dashboard which allows you to use your proxies more efficiently.
Remember quality is way more important than quantity when it comes to proxies. Decide your budget and buy a few less high-quality premium proxies – you will not regret it.
FAQ – Premium Proxy Services
Datacentre Proxies
When people speak of datacenter proxies they’re often talking about different things. As is the case with most of the proxy market lots of terms are used interchangeably. However, the standard view is that these are proxies which are housed in standard datacenters using commercial IP addresses registered directly. However potentially these proxies could use any sort of IP address and still be housed in the datacenter.
What’s a datacenter ?
Datacentres have been around since the late 1960s and they’re big buildings that house computers. It’s a place where people store things like data, applications and servers in order to make them easier to share.
The first thing about data center proxies is that you can’t just buy them, they have to be ordered from the datacenter manager of your choice. There are many
What are Fresh proxies
This sounds like something like a greengrocer but it’s not! When you hear the term ‘fresh proxies’ it normally refers (as usual) to the IP addresses assigned to the proxy. Fresh proxies use ‘fresh IP addresses’ which have not been used on proxies before. Hence, they’ve not been used to spam, or run social media accounts, login into Facebook or anything like that.
In reality it doesn’t mean the IP address has never been used before merely that it’s not been shared and used on a proxy server. This means a fresh IP address is much less likely to be blacklisted or have any dubious history.
Are ISP Proxies – Premium Private Proxies?
ISP proxies are a relatively new innovation in the proxy market. It’s fair to say that ISP proxies (if they’re genuine) are the best proxies you can get in 2023. The reason is that they describe standard proxy servers housed in datacenters (best place for speed/security) but with genuine registered residential IP addresses. Up to this point the vast majority of residential IP addresses have been borrowed from standard users in exchange for using some sort of application or software. This means that the proxies have to effectively piggyback off home user’s internet connection obviously not ideal for speed and stability.
ISP proxies use residential IP addresses registered directly from ISPs and telecoms companies. This means that the proxy companies have complete control over the addresses, and they can host them on fast secure servers housed in datacenters. They also have exclusive rights to the addresses too. Effectively this gives the best of both worlds – premium residential proxies.
