If I were to list the various ways of making money online, we would be here all day. You’ve probably heard that you can make money sharing shortened links, and that’s why you’re reading several Shorte.st reviews to determine whether they are shady or the real deal.
It’s okay to be skeptical, it means you’re cautious. Unfortunately, the truth can be shocking so you may want to read this Shorte.st review carefully. You’ve been warned!
Who Is Shorte.st?
Shorte.st is a company that claims to pay you every time you shorten your links using their tool and someone clicks on them. Shorte.st was founded by Polish webpreneurs Dawid Chomicz and Kornel Szwaja in mid 2013 and they are currently headquartered in Szczecin, Zachodniopomorskie, Poland.
How Does Shorte.st Work?
As a publisher, Shorte.st basically shortens your links, places them in a go-between ad page that a visitor, user or audience has to click through to view the intended page. The user will have to view an ad for 5 seconds, then a “skip ad” button will show up. Once they click the “skip ad” button your click counts as money earned.
Apparently you don’t need a website or blog. You can promote the links on social media and forums as long as the content you’re sharing is not illegal, offensive, adult or gambling-related. Shorte.st will then pay you a certain rate per 1000 counts or CPM.
Shorte.st Features
Shorte.st has a couple of features that make earning possible, besides giving you options to work with to improve your chances of making money. They include:
Advanced Website Scripts – This feature allows you to monetize your whole website. Shorte.st will add a line of code to your website, to maximize the chances of getting impressions and clicks for as many hits as you get.
Timings – The timing feature allows you to specify when you want an ad to be shown to your audience. You can choose immediately they land on your page, some time later or never.
Capping – Capping allows you to choose when you want ads to appear to a visitor. For example, you can choose not to show ads to a first time visitor, then release the ads when they return for the second time.
Custom Triggers – Instead of automating how ads appear to your audience, you have the chance of customizing them to avoid pissing off your visitors with annoying ads.
Exit Intent – You may have come across a website that asks you whether you’re sure you want to leave when you do want to leave. Well, this feature does exactly that.
Affiliate/referral program – Shorte.st pays you 20% of your referrals’ earnings for life. They’ll give you banners to promote, or you can choose to promote the link any way you want manually.
Mass Shrinkers – With this feature you can shrink up to 20 links at a go when you have several URLs to shrink and limited time to do so.
Additional features
- Advanced Developers API
- Real time stats
- Promotion banners
- Crypto-mining platform
- Social widgets
All these features sound great, especially for professional websites. In any case, you can always explore similar companies we’ve reviewed before like Adf.ly.
Although it’s cool to have all these great feature, but they work best for you when you have tons of traffic to your website. Fortunately, you can join Wealthy Affiliate and get access to proven strategies, tools and training that help you attract tons of FREE traffic to your website. Best of all it’s totally FREE to Start.
How Much Can You Make With Shorte.st?
English-speaking countries like the US, UK, Canada and Australia have the highest payout rates, between $8.61 and $14.04 per CPM. Other countries have a lower CPM, ranging from $0.1-$5 roughly depending on the native language and the nature of your platform’s traffic. They claim they pay for 5 views from a single IP within 24 hours from the first day of signing up.
That’s quite impressive compared to other link shortening tools. With such an attractive commission plan, loads of traffic can be golden. If you feel the same way, Wealthy Affiliate has proven tools, training and strategies you can use to drive more FREE traffic to your website. It’s free to join, so no obligations on your part.
How & When Do Shorte.st Publishers Get Paid?
Well, Shorte.st pays on the 10th day of every month. If it’s a holiday or a weekend you’ll get your money on the next working day after the 10th. Your options and methods at the time of this review are as follows:
- PayPal – Minimum $5
- Payoneer – Minimum $20
- WebMoney – Minimum $5
Shorte.st Requirements
It’s always good to be familiar with any company’s requirements and terms of use to avoid getting banned. Well, here are are shorte.st’s requirements in a nutshell
General requirements
- You need active internet and a browser with HTML, cookies and JavaScript enabled
- A publisher can hold only one account
- You can’t share offensive, harmful, adult, illegal or gambling-related content
- Things such as spoofing, phishing, sharing links to PTC and links promoting incentives are prohibited
Payment requirements
- An account with the three supported payment methods – PayPal, Payoneer and WebMoney
- An active and verified Shorte.st account
- You’ve met the minimum payment threshold
- Verified and approved user payment accounts
If you don’t qualify to make money with Shorte.st based on these requirements, don’t worry. You can check out Maxbounty.com, Traffic Jam Media, iGain.com or Ezoic as alternative options.
How To Log in To Shorte.st
You can go here to get started. You don’t need an account to shorten links, but you’ll need one if you intend to make money with them. All you need is an email address, a password and mode of payment. You’ll then fill out your personal details including name, country of origin and so on.
Shorte.st Support
You can hit them up by filling out this contact form. You can also visit their FAQs page if you need questions answered.
Shorte.st Complaints
If you’re gunning for monetization success, you don’t want to waste time on a shady company. So here are a couple of complaints against shorte.st site that may help you determine if it’s worth your time.
Limiting CPM Count Conditions
Remember, for a link to make you money, Shorte.st counts only the first 5 views for every 24 hours from a unique IP address. Some links present visitors with a captcha they have to solve before heading on to their destination. If they don’t do so the hit won’t count.
No BBB Listing
For those of y’all who rely on the Better Business Bureau to determine whether to trust a company or not, you’ll be disappointed to know that Shorte.st is not listed with the BBB at the time of this review.
Should You Join Shorte.st Network?
Shorte.st is definitely worth a try if you meet the requirements. They have a pretty decent CPM rate and a low minimum payment threshold. You also don’t need a website to make money there.
But keep in mind you’ll need tons of traffic to stand any chance of making real money with Shorte.st. With a minimum 5 views in 24 hours, you never really make money if your website doesn’t have the traffic.
With that in mind, there are lots of ways to add free traffic to your website. I mean, who wouldn’t be better off with more traffic? So you should definitely consider joining Wealthy Affiliate where you get access to training, tools and strategies that get you tons of FREE traffic advertisers will pay you for. Best of all it’s Free to start!
In any case, if you feel Shorte.st may not be the best company to monetize your traffic with, you can check out other companies like Maxbounty.com, Traffic Jam Media or iGain.com which may be a better fit for your monetization needs. It’s all up to you at the end of the day.
Well, that’s my Shorte.st review. Let us know what you think. Feel free to leave comments below. If you have more questions about Shorte.st, you can visit their FAQs page here.
Until next time
Eddy “with a Y”
Shorte.st Review
