Which URL Shortener Will make you more Money? – A Comprehensive Case Study by Tanvir Zafar
Whether you are a blogger, a social media expert, Marketer or a common person like me, If you will ignore reading this article then I damn sure your are leaving a bed of money by ignoring this article.
If you want to be rich or make some extra money, then let me Introduce a great opportunity to monetize your traffic by URL Shortener method.
Let’s dip in it, If you have a website with good traffic and having inbound or outbound links too, then you have a great opportunity to monetize those inbound and outbound links. Even you can earn by sharing url with your friends or family :). Is not it too much easy!
In this article I will explain, What is URL Shorteners are, and how to earn with URL Shrinking or Shortening Techniques. And the Objective Part, Choosing the Best Link Shortener To Earn Money. Keep in mind the case studies has been conducted in last week on 18, December 2015, and it was mixed traffic.
What are URL shorteners:
URL or link Shortener is a way to short a long URL into a short URL. It uses redirect technique. Here is an example of a long URL that points to the Amazon store.
amazon.com/Star-Wars-Signature-Lightsaber-Removable
/dp/B003I86C8U/ref=sr_1_1?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1430138565&sr=1-1and here is its short version:
There are many Websites which provide the facility to short a URL. You just need to enter the url into the shortening bar and slink on short button as shown in the picture bellow (Amazon Example).
![What is URL shortener - case study [howpk.com]](https://howpk.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/What-is-URL-shortener-case-study-howpk.com_.png)
What is URL shortener – case study [howpk.com]
Why we need to use a URL shortener:
- Beautify the link: A long URL is difficult to read and usually not look beautiful. Short link looks more beautiful, Friendly and easy to understand.
- Save Space: Short URLs save space as compared to lengthy URLs. By shortening long links you have a opportunity to save the space to add more data.
- Tracking and Statistics: In many cases we have to track a URL or need its statistics like, how much clicks the specific url get? how many impression a link will get etc. Link Shorteners provide facility to track the statistics of each shortened link.
- Hide the Target URL: IN many cases we don’t want to show the targeted url. you can use shortening to hide the target url.
And the most important and charming Benefit, Ladies and Gentleman, May i have your attention please:
- Making Money: You can earn money by shortening url. Whenever a person click on the link or proceeds the link, you will get paid.
Making money with Paid URL Shortener:
Not all link shortener websites allow you to make money by shortening links. Only Paid URL shorteners allow their users to generate revenue by shortening the urls.
How it works:
- Visitor clicks a shortened link (shortened URL).
- The ad is displayed on an intermediate page – you earned.
- After a short while, the visitor is redirected from the intermediate page to a destination page.
The best part of URL shortening is, you can use it anytime, anywhere. No worry, if you don’t have a website :). You can use it to your social networks i.e Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Emails etc.
![how to make money by url shortener [howpk.com]](https://howpk.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/how-to-make-money-by-url-shortener-howpk.com_.png)
how to make money by url shortener [howpk.com]
How to Select best URL shortener to Earn money:
No doubt there are many big players in the market, who are earning $xxx daily or may be hourly like a ghost. When i go deep into the case study. I decided to have a try on my own ends. So, the first challenge is to select the best shortener. I google and pick up 2 most poplar and reputed brands to test.
- Adf.ly
- Shorte.st
Adf.ly and Shorte.st seem to be the biggest players on the market: quite good reputation, decent payout rates and a long time in business.
Now i have my Target companies to test. i need to make a landing page and drive traffic to test.
Building Page and Driving Traffic:
For benchmark purposes, I built a landing page based on Cricket event. When a visitor clicked a Cricket cover on my landing page, a shortener displayed an ad and then the visitor was redirected to a desired page to see a movie trailer.
To test this fast, because i have 4 targeted companies to test, I bought some traffic and displayed my landing page as a pop-under advertising.
I drove traffic for from different countries (mixed traffic) on my landing page.
- 18th of December, 2015 – mixed traffic: US + other countries
Countries included:
- United States (USA)
- Indonesia (ID)
- India (IN)
- Thailand (TL)
- Italy (ITA)
- Spain (ES)
- Brazil (BR)
- Mexico (MX)
How i collected and analyzed the data:
- Unique click: i have checked the unique click i get on a specific url.
- Revenue: i checked the revenue generated on each click for specific country.
- Link Clicks: How many time my landing page links clicked.
- Visitors by shortener: how many unique visits the shortener fetch.
- Analytics data: I tracked the Link Clicks and the Unique Clicks on my landing-page with Google Analytics.
![What is URL shortener - case study [howpk.com]](https://howpk.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/What-is-URL-shortener-case-study-howpk.com_-1.png)
What is URL shortener – case study [howpk.com]
I created a few links and sent them traffic, one link per country. Knowing that, I could observe how many views were generated from each country and correlate this data with shorteners stats.
What i derived from these Statistics?
![Which URL Shortener Will make you more Money[howpk.com]](https://howpk.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Which-URL-Shortener-Will-make-you-more-Moneyhowpk.com_-2.png)
Which URL Shortener Will make you more Money[howpk.com]
- Adf.ly
- Short.st
other two are coming new in the field and have less efficiency and payout rates. But I have to select only one, so i conduct some more test based on impressions, views, Revenue, vECPM with respect to countries. Let me explain each term briefly.
- Impression: Impression, sometimes called a view or an ad view, is a term that refers to the point in which an ad is viewed once by a visitor, or displayed once on a web page. The number of impressions of a particular advertisement is determined by the number of times the particular page is located and loaded.
- Views: When someone click on your shortened link and go to the resultant page then it count to be one view. The More clicks you will get the more views increased.
- Revenue: It determines, how much money you have made by those views as well as from impressions.
- vECPM: eCPM (Effective Cost Per Mille) is calculated by dividing total earnings by total number of vimpressions in thousands. It is a excellent performance measure for various ad units. It’s great to use eCPM to compare your experimental results.
Results with respect to Countries:
| Country | USA | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shortener | Impressions | Views | Revenue | vECPM |
| Adf.ly | 1189 | 405 | $1,20 | $2,96 |
| Shorte.st | 1225 | 429 | $1,54 | $3,60 |
Winner: Shorte.st
| Country | Indonesia | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shortener | Impressions | Views | Revenue | vECPM |
| Adf.ly | 2319 | 800 | $0,20 | $0,25 |
| Shorte.st | 2298 | 821 | $0,43 | $0,53 |
Winner: Shorte.st
| Country | India | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shortener | Impressions | Views | Revenue | vECPM |
| Adf.ly | 1804 | 629 | $0,30 | $0,47 |
| Shorte.st | 1832 | 632 | $0,69 | $1,10 |
Winner: Shorte.st
| Country | Thailand | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shortener | Impressions | Views | Revenue | vECPM |
| Adf.ly | 1675 | 578 | $0,18 | $0,32 |
| Shorte.st | 1720 | 597 | $0,17 | $0,29 |
Winner: Adf.ly
| Country | Italy | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shortener | Impressions | Views | Revenue | vECPM |
| Adf.ly | 1501 | 354 | $0,19 | $0,54 |
| Shorte.st | 1502 | 238 | $0,24 | $1,01 |
Winner: Shorte.st
| Country | Spain | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shortener | Impressions | Views | Revenue | vECPM |
| Adf.ly | 2022 | 670 | $0,40 | $0,59 |
| Shorte.st | 2048 | 656 | $0,85 | $1,30 |
Winner: Shorte.st
| Country | Brazil | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shortener | Impressions | Views | Revenue | vECPM |
| Adf.ly | 1432 | 301 | $0,06 | $0,21 |
| Shorte.st | 1433 | 277 | $0,15 | $0,55 |
Winner: Shorte.st
| Country | Mexico | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shortener | Impressions | Views | Revenue | vECPM |
| Adf.ly | 1189 | 405 | $0,10 | $0,26 |
| Shorte.st | 1225 | 310 | $0,11 | $0,35 |
Winner: Shorte.st
Result of Mixed Traffic (eCPM)
![What is URL shortener - case study [howpk.com]](https://howpk.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/What-is-URL-shortener-case-study-howpk.com_-2.png)
What is URL shortener – case study [howpk.com]
Again Shorte.st is the winner and Adf.ly is very close. LinkShrink again is a joke and Ouo.io looks very poor. It appears that with Adf.ly you can’t earn any money even if you send good quality traffic and there is no clear reason for that. But shorte.st is the king, you can earn good without having too much quality their rates are high then Adf.ly.
Final Thoughts:
According to my case study, There are two leading paid link shorteners on the market: Shorte.st and Adf.ly. Shorte.st performs slightly better when it comes to earnings and I didn’t have any surprises like with Adf.ly (when my traffic for US stopped to be monetized without any reason).
URL shortening is a good way to earn money. There are many websites which are banned by google due to poor content. They use URL shortener and earn good amount from them.
If you have any question regarding url shortening, feels free to comment us. We will love to help you in all manners. If you found my case study useful, share it with your friends and other bloggers too, so that they can also enjoy its benefits and came to know the true and the best Link shortener.
