Earn money with shortened link

I'm guessing you want to read this because of my title. Well you have read it right. This isn't a clickbait and I want to share with you a site or an application where you can earn just by shortening a link. I have drafted this on the 17th of February because I wanted to share it to all of you who wants to earn by shortening their links but please proceed with caution. I'll discuss it later as to why I have said it.

To start of, I have found out about this when I was searching for a money earning application on App Store years ago the same time with the other platforms that I have deleted. Well I have also deleted this app because I seldom use this. I didn't have any links to share that time. I don't know why I only remembered about it yesterday when I should have done it when I was promoting my Youtube channel or even my business. I might have had a few dollars by now or even more. 

Without further ado, I want to introduce you to shorte.st. So what is shorte.st? It is a link shortener tool just like bitly but the only difference is that it pays you when someone clicks on the shortened link that you have shared. That's it? Yes it's just that simple right? I am sure most of you are very familiar with bitly or may have seen it from someone. I used to see it before from some known celebrities when they used to insert their links in their Instagram bio. 

Along with shorte.st, I also looked into adfly but I don't know why I sticked with this one. Minimum payout for Paypal is $5 and $20 for Payoneer. Have I already made my withdrawal from them? No, not yet. Like I have said I didn't have any links to share back in 2019 so I wasn't able to reach the minimum payout. Is this a legit paying site? I read some reviews dated 2020 before making this article and they said that shorte.st is better than adfly in terms of rates and this has been running for years so yes I think this is legit. Great! So how does it works? When someone clicks your shortened link/s, they will be redirected to a page.

The visitor will have to wait for 5 seconds before a SKIP AD will be dislayed on top. For him/her to be able to direct to your site, he/she should click the SKIP AD. Just like when we are playing a game or watching a Youtube video where there is an advertisement. So it isn't really totally a direct click to our site? Yes because I think that the 5 seconds is what generates our income. As far as I know, in Youtube I know that you shouldn't skip the advertisement for the vlogger to earn from it and most advertisements there lasts from 5seconds or longer. But here in shorte.st, it is only 5 seconds. Though you can actually modify it in your settings but the shortest is really 5 seconds. 

What stopped me from publishing this before? I used the shorte.st links in 2 of my articles here on read.cash and I have noticed that my articles did not get that much attention. So I tried to send my shorte.st link to @Firenze through text message because I couldn't send it in Facebook Messenger and Instagram. I didn't try it through Telegram because my Telegram is installed in a different phone. I asked a favor from her to check out the link and what it says when she clicks it. So she sent me the screenshot after she clicked my link (see picture below). 

So I told her to click the SKIP AD which she did and then she was already directed to the sign up page of shorte.st. I shortened my referral link and sent it to her. 

After few seconds, she then notices that she had some notifications on her Brave browser and she sent me the screenshot. 

She asked me if there is a virus with the link and told her I don't know because I didn't encounter anything even before. I don't know if she had fixed the problem about it but I was really sorry for what happened. Do you think it was a virus? After that, I instantly removed all the links on my articles where I used shorte.st links.

Why am I still publishing this article? Not because to convince you to register but maybe you might know something about this platform. Whether if it is legit or not or if it was really a virus or not. Should I use it when I would include links on my Youtube channel or Facebook page or should I just stick to standard links? Though I don't know if both platforms would accept the shortened link since it didn't send on Facebook Messenger and even on Instagram. You might say that I am hungry for money. Yes honestly I am because I really need to earn some money since I can't go back to working in the food industry as of the moment because of my fear of contracting the virus. And I still have a lot of bills to pay and the goals that I want to achieve. 

Lastly, I don't want to waste this drafted article that I made. LOL. I still have a few listed topics to tackle in the coming days but I feel like sharing this one first. I also have one more article that I have drafted before. That one article that I have said that seems pointless to share. Anyway, what do you think? Should I use this link shortener in the future? Why or why not?

P.S. lead image is a screenshot from their site