VPS Virtual Private Servers

Most serious Craigslisters already have a VPS. They run ubuntu linux on the VPS, and squid proxy server to manage ip addresses. This kind of setup is a must have for any serious posting campaign. If you use IP’s from any other source.. commonly HMA will give good enough results, and we find, most of our clients are using them. Craigslist has a rule about proxies. If they detect them, they softblock your account. Permanently. There is nothing to stop them from buying the HMA list, and banning them all within one hour of their creation. They have proxy scraping robots, these robots find all free proxies, and add them to their ban list, with a timer set to this rule, 30 days is the normal. Any Craigslist account found to be accessing any of these ip’s during the 30 day period from when the rule was made, will be softblocked from that moment on, forever. So, the serious Craigslister will not be able to use these reliably, and must make their own VPS.

We have a manual to do this, however, due to different system configurations, it has gone out of date, we will fix it when we get a moment. You can visit the squid site for current documentation on how this is done with ubuntu. You can also have your hosting provider create it for you for a nominal setup fee. We suggest about 50$ as a fair setup fee. Depending on your area, and your requirements, different hosts charge different fees. Remember, you need to find physical machine servers located within 50 miles f the Craigslist you wish to operate from. Do NOT use Godaddy for this service, they charge the highest, possibly $150 and up.

They keep trying to up sell you with junk as well, and they will “throttle” you (deliberately slow your server). We discovered this by operating rsstoblog auto poster from one of their systems. When we asked why the auto poster was unreliable, when it had just been functioning perfectly, we were told “your hitting a ceiling in your current hosting environment” They played dumb, and tried to up sell us. So, we declined, and put it on a different server with them, and turned down the settings for the auto poster, and it worked perfectly. They lied to us, and tried to deceive us, just to up sell us. We recommend getting ONE deluxe host with them if your new to webmastering. If you configure it correctly, you can run as many sites off of that as you like with no extra fees. But no auto posters or robots must be run from your shared server environment, or you will also hit a “ceiling” in your shared hosting environment and they will permanently throttle your server causing you problems with all your sites. Enough said about them for now.

Our Proxy Revolver is only recommended for XP. It can be used on different systems by emulating XP with a software called VM Ware, aka VM Player. Virtual PC Should technically work, but in our testing, it does not work reliably, don’t use it. Using proxy revolver in XP compatibility mode on windows 7, 8 does not work at all either. Virtual PC is built into windows 7 & 8, they call this compatibility mode. This is there because Microsoft continues to make and sell new operating systems that do not work well with existing programs since the time of XP. That said, there is a great option that you can use with your VPS. Ubuntu is running Squid on the server already, but you can add VM Ware. Once this is done, you can add in image of Windows, or create one of your own. This will allow you to log into your Windows virtually from anywhere.

So, to sum this up, you can run CraigsFlagger Pro, CraigsPoster Pro, and FoxyRevolver from the same VPS that you are using for your squid setup and not tie up your own PC with the 3 robots. You will have to decide, shared hosting, or dedicated. If you don’t mind 100 and up per month, dedicated. We run this type of system from shared hosts, and pay 60$ per month only.

In the virtual XP system we mentioned, proxy revolver can manage each unique posting robot for craigsPoster Pro. You will assign the ip from your own list of IP’s you installed into squid, and entered into Proxy Revolver. At the same time, Firefox can be open, and flagging ads with a different rule, set by Proxy Revolver for the Firefox app. We suggest to click flag forever, and revolve the IP’s on a timer from your IP pool you entered into Proxy Revolver. For each ad you omit, the next time it is renewed, CraigsFlagger Pro will automatically ignore it the next time it comes up renewed. So, as your ads automatically get renewed, they will not be getting flagged if you had previously omitted them. These technologies combine to make a formidable solution to your Craigslist woes, and eliminate flagged ads, and wasted days and burned accounts when used as we describe in these tutorials. Our technology has been in development since 2008, and it based on principals of Craigslist that have been quite constant for some time. We expect no major disruptions that we cannot handle with a quick update.

This is a very smart system the way we see things as far as pricing and justification go. To post reliably you will need the dedicated IP’s to do any volume. When flagging, you can do a lot with 5 privately owned IP’s. Different sections and different accounts will vary. But we suggest you begin with 5 IP’s and see what you can do with that. Sometimes people will ask us, what happened? It doesn’t flag anymore? Is the software still working? If its going down the list flagging, it’s working still. If the ads don’t come down as easy as they used to, either the IP’s have been banned, or the target wised up and got brand new accounts, and or more of them, and is following the Craigslist posting rules now because you are tearing them offline. They aren’t going to just sit there and starve, these targets of yours are not plastic ducks.