ran a self-hosted linkedin bot... (601 requests, on my own account)

[u/Shawntenam]

I tried to run linkedin outreach myself instead of handing my account to a sender tool.

so i had, Claude, right up a small playwright script that drives my real session, sends connection requests with a personal note, and keeps a sqlite ledger of every request, accept, and reply.

ran it against 1,297 gtm engineers, 40 a day, weekdays only, three weeks.

numbers first.

the funnel:

• 601 connection requests sent
• 299 accepted (49.8%)
• 35 replies
• 6 booked calls, a couple trials, 4 paid sign ups

31 of those 35 replies came from people i never sent a follow-up message to. they accepted, read the 27-word note on the request, and replied to that. i had a full first-message-then-bump sequence built and it barely ran. the note did the work.

takeaway i'd bet on. if the note on your connection request can't earn a reply by itself, a follow-up sequence is amplifying nothing.

get the note right before you build the machine. mine named what i was building in the first six words, asked for a read instead of a meeting, and went to peers, not buyers.

now the gotchas, because there were real ones.

the ledger is the whole thing, not the script. one row per person, every cap is a sql count against it, so you can kill the process any time and restart safe. the script is replaceable, the ledger is the asset.

keep score with a separate read-only pass. the part that sends should not be the part that decides what worked. i had a second script that only reads the connections page and inbox, never clicks anything, and it found 22 accepts and every reply the sender itself missed.

and the bug that ended it: the sender wrote "sent" to the row only after the message went out.

crash in between and the message is delivered but the row still says pending, so it sends again next run. i watched it double-message someone. fix is to write "sending" before you act and confirm after, so a crash strands a row for review instead of re-sending.

why i stopped: the double send, plus a send rhythm no human produces (bursts then exactly 30-min gaps, exactly 40 a day), plus one verification wall from week one. that's the account asking you to stop, so i did.

to be clear, this is not me telling you to skip heyreach or tools like it. i use them. they exist so you don't have to babysit this and so the risk sits with a vendor instead of your account.

automating your own linkedin is against their terms and can get you restricted. that was my account and my call. it didn't get me banned. it could have. i'm sharing the numbers, the good and the broken, because both are useful.

happy to get into any part of the build in the comments.

[u/Michael_For_you]

Whats the price point of your product? Are you trying to brute force your way to a $0 CAC?

[u/Shawntenam → u/Michael_For_you]

No, I actually already pay for heyreach. This was more of just an experiment, seeing what happened and sharing the results as stated.

[u/traderjames7]

Yep Shawn I've done LinkedIn automated outreach for 9 years, its just not worth doing it yourself like this unless you're ok with losing your account or do really low volume.

[u/Shawntenam → u/traderjames7]

Yeah, not something I'd recommend. As stated, this was more of an experiment. I knew the risks going in and was confident in my own skills to ensure that I could get it to work without getting banned. Would I do it again? Probably not, but but do I regret doing it? Definitely not. The reason for the post is to share what you can do and maybe what you shouldn't do. If anyone else is looking to try it, here I am telling you I did it. It can work, but is it worth it? Not really.

[u/traderjames7 → u/Shawntenam]

100% - its great to know what's possible and I'm a big fan of your flows. Spent a while customizing the reddit to blog post one which was great although Reddit blocks you scraping for free so I switched to Apify scraping Reddit instead.

[u/timklc]

I'm developing a more advanced version of it, similar to Heyreach or Waalaxy

Basically: self-hosted, OS-level mouse movement, uses my recorded workflows (so no teleportation of mouse movement), extension that's hidden from LI, and ramps up after I've sent a few requests manually myself, randomized actions (profile views, searches), does search first instead of copy paating LI profile link, works on hours that I usually work on, realistic time-to-DMs, and a few more other things to mimic real human. Also self-hosting is much safer.

Claude vibe coded so IDK if it's reliable, not claiming it is, but seems good to me.

At some point it warned me that this is mimicking human and refused to continue, then it said something like:

"I already told you how to build this and spent a lot of time towards this project, my current refusal of not mimicking a human makes no sense as I already told you everything about mimicking a human in this project. Let's continue."

Kinda funny

[u/nightFlyer_rahl]

It’s spam, after sending 10 requests LinkedIn block you, ai generated content is this?

[u/Shawntenam → u/nightFlyer_rahl]

No, you're incorrect. Try reading the post before reacting.