Web scraping is not only about data. By selling that data, you can help someone grow their business and make more money yourself.
By Anmol @November, 16 2023
“If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”
- Warren Buffet
In today’s world, data has become the most valuable asset. Simply by knowing enough about the competition and the changing market trends, you can make informed competitive decisions that can greatly benefit your business.
But where does this data come from?
Not too long ago, this kind of data collection was done through surveys. But today, with the help of web scraping, all this information is available at the click of a few buttons.
Scraping websites relevant to your business generates data not only about your customers but your competitors as well. And today companies are willing to spend a lot of time and money to acquire this data.
What is Web Scraping?
Web scraping is a process of collecting data in an automated fashion. Generally, companies use web scraping for price monitoring, customer profiling, lead generation, and targeted advertising to make smarter decisions.
Unlike the mind-numbing task of extracting data manually, web scraping gathers thousands of data points and leads from the internet and provides you with consolidated insights and market trends.
Web scraping has two integral components. The web crawler and web scraper.
The Crawler
Is an artificial intelligence that explores the internet by search and follows the relevant links, much like a person exploring the web. To begin with, you need to first crawl a website with a particular URL before it can be scraped.
The Scraper
Is a tool designed specially to extract data from websites quickly and accurately. Web scrapers come in a wide variety and designs depending on the purpose and size of the project. An integral part of every scraper is the extractor which processes the code and then collects the relevant data.
How to make money from Web Scraping
Web scraping not only benefits the companies, but also the people selling the data. Let’s take a look at a few different ways a data collector can cash in his efforts:
If you have a scraper then you can offer your services to people looking for big data. Data is extremely valuable to people looking to expand and their business and you can make the most of this opportunity by providing your services.
For example- A fitness service might be looking for trainers to join their gym. You can use your web scrapers to find out who the best trainers in the town are, their rates, contact details, working hours, experiences, and customer reviews and offer this data to help them make a more informed decision.
Freelancing websites like Upwork and Fiverr are great places to explore opportunities. These websites will not only help you meet the best clients but also guarantee a fair price for your service and effort.
Reselling
Discounts, last-minute deals, lightning offers, etc. are age-old marketing tactics, and yet very effective. If you regularly scape websites you might come across these deals frequently. If you have caught a lucky drop in price and purchased the item, you can later sell it for full price. Reselling premium and limited edition items can be a great way to make some cash as these items are highly coveted and hard to get. Reselling is a huge part of the real estate industry and platforms like Zillow are some of the largest collections of homes and real estate properties you could resell, what is better to get access to these than with the use of our easy to use Zillow homes data extractor.
If you are good at web scraping and have the data, try selling it. You will come across many companies looking for similar information for competitive advantage. And why limit yourself to one client? You can use your expertise and data extracting skills to service a plethora of clients and their needs.
But it’s not easy to make a scraper from scratch. So if web scraping has sparked your interest, you can try pre-made web scrapers from WebAutomation for free!
Selling Research
The benefits of web scraping not only stop at data. Another great way to make money with web scraping is selling research. Academic and research institutes are always looking for a wide variety of data for research purposes. You can even draw original insights from data which can be even more valuable than the data you scrape. When you own an e-commerce store or website, product data from Amazon and similar platforms become very important to your business that is why we have the ready-made Amazon scraper for products to ease the stress of the job.
Make price comparison websites
People love saving money. Before making a purchase decision online, they often check various websites selling the same product to avail the best deal possible. By collating all this information in one place and regularly updating it, you not only make everyone's life easier, but you have also set up a constant revenue source for yourself.
Web scraping can not only profile customers but can also predict their behaviour trends. It can be used to identify market opportunities and gaps in the product offering. These insights can then be used to understand customer needs and come up with new products or product innovations that meet consumer expectations.
Scraping customer leads
Every successful sale starts with a customer lead. And companies are willing to spend handsomely to gather those leads. You can either sell these leads to the companies looking for similar customer profiles or use them yourself by targeting people with relevant advertising to monetize them.
Creating an app
The data collected by web scraping can be collated in an app along with a bot to create a simple yet highly effective product. For example, you can make an app that alerts people about price drops on certain products they wish listed. Or an app for monitoring a drop in airline prices.
Become a data engineer
If web scraping has caught your fancy, you can always look at building your career in the big data industry as a web scraping engineer. A web scraper at the top of his career can earn up to $131,500 annually.
Make sure to use a rotating proxy so you overcome any crawling defences or blocks that prevent you from web scraping. Choose from a list of trusted rotating proxies to help speed up the scraping process list of trusted rotating proxies
WEBAUTOMATION>IO PRE-DEFINED EXTRACTORS
If you are looking for a quick and easy way to scrape websites, try our web scrapers for free! We have a plethora of predefined web scrapers, all of which are easy to use and free to try. From real estate to e-commerce, you can scrape any website you want. Our scrapers will provide you with a plethora of information within minutes.
Here are a few web scrapers you can try out.
For any queries feel free to drop us a message at info@webautomation.io
We aim to make the process of extracting web data quick and efficient so you can focus your resources on what's truly important, using the data to achieve your business goals. In our marketplace, you can choose from hundreds of pre-defined extractors (PDEs) for the world's biggest websites. These pre-built data extractors turn almost any website into a spreadsheet or API with just a few clicks. The best part? We build and maintain them for you so the data is always in a structured form.
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