Did you know many startups use scraping to retrieve thousands of leads every day? Scraping is the process of “crawling” through a website to collect data from different pages. This data includes name, email, images, and almost any other element on a web page. Manually, this process can take days or even weeks to complete. You can get your hands on data at scale from online directories, social networks, and e-commerce websites with only several clicks. Many scrapers require custom code. If you’re not a developer, then a couple of scraping tools can help you get up to expert speed. Before we dive into the tools, know scraping is a powerful way to retrieve leads but can sometimes result in negative outcomes. For example, if you scrape a site for too much data, they may ban you. This is a common practice. If you’re ready, begin with Import.io. This tool increases in price as you perform more search queries, but retains a bulk discount. Import.io is a quick way to setup your scraper to pull from not just a single page on a website, but thousands. You can even set the scraping to take place at different intervals in time and to pull image URLs. With this tactic in your toolbox, you could begin scraping pages of Airbnb or Eventbrite tomorrow to create spreadsheets of rent deals and the latest events.

The Magic of Scrapebox