Setting your Sneaker Bot up for a Release

All right, you have a good sneaker bot running on some good specs (like a server or a VM), and some proxies loaded into it. How do you set it up for a drop? This is where knowing how to cook comes in. Because you have several different banking identities, you are most of the way there already. At this point it’s a matter of using your brain in an organizational manner.

Different bots have different functions and features, of course. But they all operate similarly. It’s the concept that’s most important here, so we will discuss it in a conceptual way.

Remember, the limited releases are what you want; the “one per customer” items – only you want multiples of them. You have to set your bot up so you are several different people (who may happen to have the same name) using your different billing identities, that is different cards with different addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. A mix or prepaid and “virtual” credit cards from a service like privacy.com are best.

Yes, you do need different phone numbers. Don’t sweat this too much, because vendors do not verify phone numbers with the bank when they charger your card, and they never call. This is more for the shipping company if they have trouble with the delivery. Worse comes to worse you can use fake numbers. But seriously – you can’t come up with a half-dozen numbers between your cell and land lines, work number, friends and family? If not, you can buy cheap numbers from Skype and even put voicemail on them.

You are going to love your billing identity spreadsheet, where you keep each prepaid card associated with a different address, email, and now phone number. You’ll be referring to it often.

Your bot will have a place for you to enter your different credit cards, so your billing identities are kept in the software ready to use. You can name your credit card profiles something; I suggest naming them after your email address. This is because you must enter your email address manually in most bots when adding a task in the bot, and then usually choose which card to use from a list afterwards. So this way it’s easy to choose the one with the matching email.

The bot will let you choose to have a particular card charged only once during the session. This is a good way to organize your tasks. You can only buy one item from each identity, so use this option and group your tasks by credit card. You might have each card trying to buy six different sizes. As soon as one checks out successfully, all other tasks for that card stop because you have the “one charge per card” option selected.

Let’s try a more visual example. Say Yeezys are dropping on all four Footsites at a particular time (which is usually the way it goes down). You can set up your bot to work all four sites, assigning a different identity to each site, using a different proxy for each site. Once you have your early links, probably from SoleLinks.com, it’s time to set the bot up with your purchasing tasks. In a single instance of the software open, your tasks would look something like this:

Foot Locker Tasks
Size 8 - emailaccount1
Size 9 - emailaccount1
Size 10 - emailaccount1
Size 11 emailaccount1

Eastbay Tasks
Size 8.5 - emailaccount2
Size 9.5 - emailaccount2
Size 12 - emailaccount2
Size 13 - emailaccount2

Champs Sports Tasks
Size 8 - emailaccount3
Size 9 - emailaccount3
Size 10 - emailaccount3
Size 11 - emailaccount3

Footaction Tasks
Size 8.5 - emailaccount4
Size 9.5 - emailaccount4
Size 12 - emailaccount4
Size 13 - emailaccount4

Get the idea? In a perfect world one of each group of tasks has a successful checkout and you score four pairs of Yeezys for a nice payday. Remember, each email account above is tied to a separate address, phone number, and credit card number, so as soon as one prepaid card checks out the bot stops trying to check out any other pairs using that card.

In the above example, the ideal setup would be assigning one of your proxies to each individual task, using 16 different proxies in total. This is because multi-threading bots make repeated fast page requests at the sites, which is what gets your IP address banned. If that were not the case, you could get away with four proxies here, one for each email account. But when you multiply the fast requests x 4 you risk getting the IP banned for too many requests. If the bot begins to return 403 error messages you should stop the bot, swap the proxies out, and restart – although that risks being too late. So if you are only getting one or two 403 messages, you might want to just let the running processes continue, especially on a Yeezy drop. A 403 server error means your IP address was banned at one or more of the sites. If you don’t have that many proxies at the moment, just spread the ones you have out the best you can (and maybe don’t go for so many sizes).

For reasons just stated, I prefer to use multiple bot instances and lots of proxies. For this setup I assign maybe a third of my proxies in each instance of the bot running. If I get the dreaded 403 error in one of the bot windows I can stop and swap without stopping the other three processes running. Also, this method ensures that the same IP address doesn’t get used at multiple sites by some technical glitch. Not every bot allows multiple instances running, so you may need multiple licenses of your chosen bot or you may want to run different bots simultaneously because usually at least one of them outperforms the others.

Let’s look at a Supreme example now. It’s a little different layout because the tasks are all at the same site.

Supreme Tasks

Box Logo Hoodie S Black - emailaccount1
Anorak S Gold - emailaccount1
S Cap Blue - emailaccount1
Gonz Camo Jacket S - emailaccount1
Rebel Forever T-shirt S - emailaccount1

Box Logo Hoodie M Black - emailaccount2
Anorak M Gold - emailaccount2
S Cap Red - emailaccount2
Gonz Camo Jacket M - emailaccount2
Rebel Forever T-shirt M - emailaccount2

Box Logo Hoodie L Black - emailaccount3
Anorak L Gold - emailaccount3
S Cap Black - emailaccount3
Gonz Camo Jacket L - emailaccount3
Rebel Forever T-shirt L - emailaccount3

Box Logo Hoodie M Red - emailaccount4
Anorak M Navy - emailaccount4
S Cap Black - emailaccount4
Gonz Camo Jacket L - emailaccount4
Rebel Forever T-shirt L - emailaccount4

Take a few minutes to understand the above organization, because this is the difference between knowing how to cook and simply owning the software. Again, each email account is a different identity with a different name, address, phone number, credit card, and assigned proxy – so for this setup only four total proxies are needed. I mixed up the product targets in a way that gives me a chance at getting easier-to-cop sizes and colors in case demand is super high on any size/color combo. But I also duplicated a few that I think will have the best resale value. At Supreme, each person is allowed to buy multiple items, but no more than one of any style. So make sure your cards are set to allow up to 5 check-outs with this set-up, and are not still set on 1 max checkout from the previous Footsite setup example. Here you want to try to buy multiple items on the same card, just not multiples of the same item. In the prior Footsite setup, you were only trying to buy one item per card because you were only allowed to buy one item per card. Get it?

In the Supreme setup, with all these tasks running on multiple threads the chances of copping 5-6 items is good. You can do this every Thursday at Supreme, hopefully for a $300+ payday each time (and occasionally a huge score on a super-hot item), as long as the bot is working. As always, stand ready to stop and swap the proxies if you get 403 messages.

Now is a good time for me to mention that the smart folks keep running their bot for several hours after a Supreme drop, because of restocks (failed verified transactions and cancelled orders due to multiple purchase attempts of the same style). You can get an extra item on a lot of drops doing this, even if you have to reset to go after something you missed. Use the direct link for restocks, and be prepared to burn through a little money with the Captcha services that the bot uses (usually 2captcha.com).

The above is an excerpt from the Hype Sniper cookbook. Learn how to become a sneaker reseller by joining Hype Sniper today.