Thursday, April 23, 2009

How to pull out members' emails from forums.

I'd like to start giving some advices based on my own experience on how to develop your own mailing list. 99 percent accurate and targeted mailing list, so you won't spam people advertising stuff they do not want.
#1. Download email addresses from forums. 
Not all of them. Forum members only. It takes pretty much less time and won't give you a bunch of garbage emails. Again, it will be only people who intentionally registered at forum which covers your market's field. For instance some real estate forum or digital photography forum.
As an example i will take a real one, only index URL is fake.
Once you open forum website, find and go to the members page, URL now looks like this:
http://forum-example.com/inb/index.php?s=&act=Members
Now, if you navigate to the second page (page #2) URL will change to this:
http://forum-example.com/inb/index.php?..&max_results=10&filter=ALL&sort_order=asc&sort_key=name&st=10
It has &st=10 at the end. That's the most important part. Third page will show up as
http://forum-example/inb/index.php?..&max_results=10&filter=ALL&sort_order=asc&sort_key=name&st=20
See changed number at the end? &st=20 ? Perfect.  As you noticed it increases permanently adding 10.
Finally navigate to the last page, in this case it is page 408
Now you need some program which will extract email from this forum for you.  I use Atomic email Hunter. Here is a free trial download link: Atomic Email Hunter
Once you have it installed go to Search - Search in list menu and click on Globe at the right side (link generator).
See how to change link pattern so it will match our example:
http://forum-example/inb/index.php?..&max_results=10&filter=ALL&sort_order=asc&sort_key=name&st=$$$
Start numerating from: 10
Links count: 407
Step value: 10
Numbers of digits: 2
Do not change Rearrange box pattern. Leave it as AEBDCCDBEA
Click on OK and make sure that Thread count is set to 2 and Scan where: Current site only.
Just like on the snapshot:

As a result we get the following list:

http://forum-example.com/...index.php?&max_results=10&filter=ALL&sort_order=asc&sort_key=name&st=10
http://forum-example.com/...index.php?&max_results=10&filter=ALL&sort_order=asc&sort_key=name&st=20
http://forum-example.com/...index.php?&max_results=10&filter=ALL&sort_order=asc&sort_key=name&st=30
http://forum-example.com/...index.php?&max_results=10&filter=ALL&sort_order=asc&sort_key=name&st=40

----cut-----
http://forum-example.com/...index.php?...&max_results=10&filter=ALL&sort_order=asc&sort_key=name&st=4060
http://forum-example.com/...index.php?...&max_results=10&filter=ALL&sort_order=asc&sort_key=name&st=4070

Done, see your mailing list getting large ;)
If you do not want do go into this. simply collect all emails from all the pages and threads forum has putting in straight URL. Mind that it will take hours and a waaay longer...

The price for Atomic Hunter is $79.85 Click here to download free trial of Atomic Hunter (Extractor)
PS. Free trial lets you do all described above.

1 comment:

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