Bug Hunting: A Practical Guide to Finding Vulnerabilities That Actually Pay

A beginner-friendly breakdown of recon, payloads, and vulnerability discovery.

Monika sharma

3 min read

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1 day ago

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Introduction

Bug hunting looks exciting from the outside hackers earning thousands of dollars by finding a single mistake in a big company’s website. But once you step in, the reality hits differently: noisy scopes, endless recon, confusing tools, and hours of digging with almost nothing to show.

I’ve been in the same space, reading reports, learning from failures, and discovering patterns. Today, I’m breaking everything down in the simplest way possible, so even if you’re a complete beginner, you’ll understand how bug bounty hunters really discover vulnerabilities.

Let’s go step-by-step.

1. Start Small: Choose the Right Target

The biggest mistake beginners make is directly jumping on Google, Tesla, Facebook and failing.

Instead, follow this:

• Pick VDP programs (no rewards, but easy to practice).
• Choose small scopes with fewer subdomains.
• Hunt on niche SaaS tools, blogs, marketing domains, WordPress sites, etc.