What does the data extraction cost consist of?
22 January 2023
One cannot overemphasize the importance of collecting data for private and enterprise needs. The driver of progress, that is what the process is. Working with data is crucial to prevail, no matter if you are looking for a niche in the market, obtaining the best proxies for footsites in Chile or the United States, or checking the course of advertising campaigns. Astro, as a trusted proxy website, is necessary to collect the information smoothly and spare the budget.
Buying dedicated proxies is just one phase of many composing a tricky process named “data gathering”. Today we will describe the ingredients, which make up the total cost of extraction data from the Web, including free supreme proxies to be found.
Geo targeted proxies and data extraction
Collecting data means running automated software based on datacenter, residential and mobile proxies one buys to gather a preselected type of information from web pages’ structure. The extracted content is handled by parsers to present the data in the most appropriate for analysis and application form. Among the most popular reasons to use this method are:
- E-commerce
- Marketing
- Machine Learning
- Social media
- News feeds analytics
- Research
- Forecasts production.
According to Bernard Marr & Co, there is almost 97 zettabytes of information stored in the World Wide Web. Its amount is growing every second with files sent from Switzerland, Thailand and every other Earth’s corner. The demand for data extraction is growing respectively, so does the number of experts willing to buy residential IPs for their objectives.
The total price of every data collection case has the following items on the list:
- Research costs
- Technologies value
- Pricing on processing and applying data
- Related expenses.
Let’s examine every item in detail.
What does research cost include?
The first phase is important, because it defines the main objectives and tools needed. Before looking for ready-to-go solutions or selecting the best proxies for footsites, the company defines the goals.
The analysts formulate theses, and launch the future process according to the declared objectives. Now the marketing and technical teams can prioritize the data needed to be found and obtained. Here come first significant expenses on:
- Defying the target sites
- Exploring HTML structure or API to determine the elements of code one is interested in
- Constitute a toolkit needed to gain information, proceed it, output in a readable form and store it.
One of the tasks is to figure out which dedicated proxies to buy considering the issues of the minimal price and relevant quality levels. The chosen algorithm should have full compliance in a legal field to scrape data ethically. It means following the Terms of Service and “robots.txt” directions on every chosen site. Also the residential, datacenter or mobile proxy network must follow KYC and AML rules, as Astro does.
How is the technology value formed?
The data extraction needs an automated algorithm to inspect the HTML or JS of the page, find the necessary block of information, and download it. Then another script-kits process the information and save it as a database ready for further examination and resulting utilization.
There are three key methods similar for Israel, South Africa, Australia or any other country connected to the Internet. One can:
- Get a ready data gathering solution and customize it.
- Resort to previously collected data packets.
- Deploy its own program using Python, Ruby, Java, etc.
The expenditure depends on the choice, as the demand to buy residential and mobile proxies. All three methods may be combined if needed.
The first way involves utilizing existing solutions for data extraction. Scraper API, Medium, Scrapingdog to name a few items seem to be popular in 2023. It is a simple and affordable option, with expenses oscillating from $1000 to $5000 on the entry-level.
The solution usually includes a flexible interface, built-in crawlers to switch between URLs and parsers to convert gained data. A customer needs to adjust it to his needs, and decide whether to buy residential IPs or look for supreme free proxies to guarantee a trouble-free data retrieval.
The second way implies purchasing turn-key databases in the target sphere. It could be the amount of real estate prices, ranges of computing hardware or list of best footsite proxies. The disadvantages are inaccurate and outdated character of information. These ready-to-go products are known as representatives of Data as a Service method. We have told about it earlier mentioning the trusted proxy websites usage. The straight-forward method calling for material costs.
The third way is based on constructing your own algorithm for gathering data. It provides the most accurate result. As you take into account all the specifics of web pages you are going to obtain information from.
You select the programming language, its libraries and tools. These are Beautiful Soup and Selenium for Python, Jaunt or JSoup for Java, Cheerio for Node.js, etc. The choice of type, characteristics and geolocation of dedicated proxies to buy is also yours.
The advantages of developing your own automated algorithm is the confidence in:
- Data reliability
- Relevance of Information
- Precise orientation on API or HTML data gathering
- Ethical character of work, GDPR and CCPA compliance
- Stable data obtaining and choice of paid or free supreme proxies
- Full control on expenses.
The cons of the procedure are the amount of time, human resources and budgets needed during development, QA-tests, debugging, etc. However every stage could be double-checked, even trusted proxy websites can be tested.
Are there any related expenses?
The remaining expense column includes:
- Office space rent and utility costs.
- Additional software for CRM, marketing, accounting and other IT needs.
- Payments for the communication and Internet (expenditures to buy residential and mobile proxies were taken into account earlier).
- Expenses on employee or freelancer payroll.
Data extraction is a costly process. Especially if you want to buy reliable residential IP addresses from Switzerland, Chile, United States, Australia, Thailand, Israel or South Africa. But the expenses will pay for themselves in case of scrupulous planning and using reliable data gathering infrastructure on every stage of work. Astro offers reasonable pricing plans and supreme proxy free tests.
