The $18.50 Cold Email Experiment That Made $90 in Guest Post Sales

YEB — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 17:06:26 +0000

Three years after launching a health-focused website, one of our clients decided to try something bold.
The mission was clear: sell guest posts directly, without brokers, without ad spend, without wasting weeks on unqualified leads.

It sounded simple. In reality, finding buyers who were ready to spend money on online publications is a lot harder than it looks.
Until he found a way to target only proven buyers.

Step 1: Finding the Right People

The key was Outreach Email Finder, a tool built to locate business emails for companies that have recently paid for PR articles or guest posts.
These aren’t random prospects — they’re brands that have already invested in visibility, which means they already have a budget for content.

Within minutes, the client filtered the database for health-related companies and exported just under 2,000 fresh, targeted contacts.

Funnel Diagram:

Step 2: Launching the Campaign

He sent his campaign using Sendy + Amazon SES, keeping send costs under USD0.50.
The email was straightforward — a direct invitation to collaborate, plus an unsubscribe button to keep things clean and compliant.

Performance Metrics:

Emails Sent: 2,000
Unique Opens: 745 (43.19% open rate)
Total Opens: 1,373 (1.84x reopens on average)
Unique Clicks: 441 (25.56% CTR)
Unsubscribed: 393 (22.78%)
Bounced: 48 (2.4%)
Spam Reports: 0%

Step 3: Turning Opens into Sales

Twenty-nine people replied. Seven of them were automated AI support emails — impossible to engage with.
From the 22 real conversations that followed, three turned into paid guest post deals worth USD90 in total.

This wasn’t a life-changing sum, but here’s where it gets interesting:

Cost vs Revenue:

Cost: 0.50 (sending) + 18 (email export) = USD18.50 total
Revenue: \USD90
Profit: \USD71.50
ROI: 386%

Step 4: What We Learned

Cold email campaigns don’t have to feel like gambling.
When you start with contacts who have already paid for PR in your niche, you’re not throwing darts in the dark — you’re approaching people who already believe in buying visibility.

This also taught us that approach matters.
A direct pitch worked here, but the unsubscribe rate shows that a softer first contact — asking about the business before selling — might have lowered churn and increased conversions over time.

Final Thought

"When your contact list is built from proven buyers, outreach is no longer a cold shot in the dark. It’s a warm handshake — and sometimes, that’s all it takes to turn USD18.50 into USD90."

How I Stopped Fake “OpenAI” & “Googlebot” Crawlers from Flooding My Site

YEB — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 16:14:36 +0000

If your site is even a little bit successful, you’re probably being hammered by traffic from “OpenAI,” “Googlebot,” or “Bingbot” — or so your logs claim. Spoiler: most of it is fake. Here’s how I learned that the hard way, what I did about it, and the exact steps to fix it.

🧨 The Problem: The Bot Flood No One Talks About

I run a site that gets about 20,000 legit visits per day. But my server logs?

500,000+ “bot” requests every 24 hours — mostly claiming to be “OpenAI” or “Googlebot.”

Analytics showed almost none of that traffic.

But my server load was spiking, and then my AdSense dashboard dropped this warning:

Crawler – Unknown Error

Restricted Ad Serving

Your site is blocking our ad validation bots, so we’re cutting your revenue.

✅ Step 1: Verifying Bots with BotDetect API

User-Agent headers are worthless for bot detection — anyone can spoof them.

So I built an integration with BotDetect API:

Every request gets checked against the API
You send the IP (and optionally the UA)
It tells you if it's a real verified bot or just another fake VPS

Example (PHP pseudo-code):

$response = Http::post('https://api.yeb.to/v1/bot/detect/detect', [
    'ip' => $request->ip(),
    'ua' => $request->header('User-Agent'),
    'api_key' => '...'
]);

Result:

99%+ of “OpenAI” and “Googlebot” traffic was fake.

Verified bot requests were a tiny fraction of what the logs claimed.

🛑 Step 2: Don’t Block Yourself — Enter GeoIP ASN Lookup

Even after blocking the fakes, AdSense was still unhappy.

Why?

Because Google's Media Partners and some AdSense bots don’t always use the standard Googlebot IPs. If you block them? Revenue tanks.

So I added a second layer: GeoIP ASN Lookup.

For every suspicious IP, check its ASN (Autonomous System Number)
If it's from Google, let it through
If not, block with extreme prejudice

Example (PHP pseudo-code):

$asnData = Http::get('https://api.yeb.to/v1/geoip/asn', [
    'ip' => $ip, 'api_key' => '...'
]);

📊 Results: Cleaner Traffic, Stable Revenue, No Guesswork

✅ Fake bots? Blocked.
✅ Real bots & ad crawlers? Let through.
✅ AdSense Policy Center? Clean.
✅ Revenue? Back to normal.

🧠 Lessons Learned

Never trust User-Agent headers for bot detection.
Don’t go nuclear — over-blocking kills revenue.
Double-check with ASN lookups before you block.
Automate everything.

🔧 Tools Used

🕵️‍♂️ BotDetect API – Real bot verification
🌐 GeoIP ASN Lookup – Identify the org behind the IP

Have your own war stories with fake bots or AdSense errors? Drop them in the comments. Let’s fix the internet together.

#api #openai #webdev #tutorial #bots

DEV Community: YEB

The $18.50 Cold Email Experiment That Made $90 in Guest Post Sales

Step 1: Finding the Right People

Step 2: Launching the Campaign

Step 3: Turning Opens into Sales

Step 4: What We Learned

Final Thought

How I Stopped Fake “OpenAI” & “Googlebot” Crawlers from Flooding My Site

🧨 The Problem: The Bot Flood No One Talks About

✅ Step 1: Verifying Bots with BotDetect API

Example (PHP pseudo-code):

🛑 Step 2: Don’t Block Yourself — Enter GeoIP ASN Lookup

Example (PHP pseudo-code):

📊 Results: Cleaner Traffic, Stable Revenue, No Guesswork

🧠 Lessons Learned

🔧 Tools Used