Why LEGIT URL shorteners are turning into SCAM?
Most legit URL shorteners eventually stop paying for some reasons, this is the time they turn into a SCAM. Why is that happening, well, there are few reasons:
1. Their adsense account is closed!
If you see an URL shortener with adsense ads on their ad pages – RUN AWAY! Since February 2019 adsense started closing accounts of people who use them on a shortener. Basically that was against adsense terms long before that date, but since then they started drastically blocking accounts. After that a lot of legit URL shorteners turned into scam, because all their money were lost and they were unable to pay the withdrawals of their publishers. I personally think, that this was unfair and google had other ways to deal with the situation, but why should they? I mean, why should they pay when they can just block the account and avoid a payment? Also they made profit out of those shorteners, but they didn’t pay the cut of their users. I don’t want to accuse google for “something”, but that’s how I see what happened. So the consequences were huge and like a domino it hurt all the publishers of the URL shorteners which first lost their adsense income. The scam in this situation was not intended and wanted from the admins, but most of them had no choice. Some of them, however, managed to take the loss and continue with other ad networks like an alternative to adsense, but the cost was huge. I really respect those admins, as the didn’t scammed even a single publisher and they still continue working an paying till now. You can send me a message at the facebook page of shortenerreviews to find out which are those URL shorteners!
You can still see some shorteners using adsense on their ad pages, but you should know two things about them. Those shorteners are new and their admins are without enough experience. They don’t know what happened in the beginning of 2019 and never experienced an account block. These owners will learn that the hard way and as history told us, they will scam their publishers without paying them. It is a matter of WHEN, not IF. The other part of URL shorteners which still use adsense are those run by experienced admins. These admins know what happened or experienced that bulk block of adsense accounts. They now try to cheat adsense, by doing tricks to manipulate their algorithms and avoid connection between their adsense accounts and their shorteners, but in my opinion they are failing, at least for now. Should you use the first ones – NO, they will scam you eventually 99% and it doesn’t worth it to risk. Should you use the experienced ones – MAYBE, but have in mind that at some point they will succeed in their endeavour, it’s all about cat and mouse game. If you are interested about what they currently do to cheat, send me a message at the facebook page.
2. They don’t get payment from their advertisers!
That’s the same like adsense, but in that case the admins don’t lose their accounts, just for some reasons their payment is late. That is why they late all their publishers payments. Well, some publishers can’t wait and report the shorteners on their youtube channels or at the web forums which discuss URL shorteners. After that the shortener is pretty much f**ked, because they start losing big publishers and money. At some point this goes out of control and they stop paying as they lose their future income and don’t see reason to pay, rather than to keep what they made so far. That’s a shitty situation, but shit happens!
3. They have to pay more than they earn from their advertisers!
Most admins want to force themselves and without testing their earnings first, they rush into advertising their shortener. With that, they start receiving too much traffic then they are able to analyze. That is why they set some payment rates, which they can’t afford to pay. The right way for them is first to analyze their traffic and set their payout rates accordingly. After that they should keep an eye on their everyday data and change their rates as soon as they have new traffic data, to secure them profit and ability to pay their publishers.
4. Their money are seized or frozen by their bank or payment processor!
Of course there is always the problem with banks and payment processors, which can make you big troubles. The reasons for such problems are of a wide range and can’t be included in this article. However, I will name some: too much small transaction for paypal, dirty money, bank policy change, police report from a scammed publisher etc.
5. The admin disappears!
Admins can be dead or abandon their URL shorteners for variety of reasons. He just decides to stop the business without announcing it and disappears. After that he continues to collect the earnings from their publisher’s links, even though they are not making new ones. Basically he only collects what is left from his dead business, until there is nothing left.
6. They are making the URL Shortener only to SCAM!
The last but not least, I’m going to mark the admins which makes shorteners only to SCAM, not making business. They usually set big payout rates just to catch inexperienced publishers. They never pay them or they pay once, after that the publisher start working harder, because he expects to receive second payment as well, but after lot of wasted time he realizes that he will never get paid. His payment is either cancelled with some reasons or postponed, and at the end he gave up. Yes, there are a lot of shorteners which are pure intended SCAM from the very beginning.