Make Money Watching Youtube Videos (YES, You Can Make Money With This Method… But)

Make money watching YouTube videos.

It is easy.

Just take your phone, watch some cool videos, and earn money by doing almost nothing.

A dream?

An idea or a waste of time?

In this article, I want to show you one of the methods many YouTube creators are teaching, and I will try to convince you why this method is not the best.

This article will focus on one technique that uses a combination of a YouTube video and a link-shortening site.

To make things simpler, let me explain what link shortening is.

What Does Shortening Links Mean?

Shortening links is one of the most common practices when doing marketing on the internet.

Link shortening is a technique for turning long URLs into shorter ones. This is done by taking a URL and adding a service such as Bitly to it.

It is used to make the link easier to read and share on social media platforms.

And a cool thing is that these tools can shorten any URL, and they can track how many clicks the link receives.

This is great for analytics to see how successful your marketing campaign is.

While many people know about different ways to make money online, few know that they can make money by shortening links and sending the traffic that is generated to them.

Can You Make Money By Shortening Links?

Firstly, yes, you can earn money by shortening links.

It is a legit method, I can’t argue about that.

But, there are a lot of things you need to consider before you even sign up for sites that offer you to make money by shortening links.

Shortening links is a relatively easy way to make some more money.

However, there are some things you need to keep in mind before starting. You should always ask yourself what you are willing to do for $5.

When I did my research, I watched a few YouTube videos about this topic, but the resulting methods were very similar.

All you need to do is to go to the gaming niche, find a new trending video, even a live stream works great, copy the URL of the video, and use any of the shortening sites to shorten the link.

Then you go to gaming forums, Steam, or any website or blog that is gaming niche and post a comment with this link.

This is the method in a nutshell.

It is a legit money-making technique, but there are a few things you should know.

To earn any money you need to sign up for shortening sites that will pay you to shorten links and send traffic to them.

There are two biggest players on the market with quite a good reputation, decent payout rates, and a long time in business. I’m talking about Adf.ly and Shorte.st.

More or less all link-shortening sites that will pay you to shorten links work the same.

What is eCPM

The performance of each shortener is defined by eCPM.

eCPM is calculated by dividing total earnings by the total number of impressions in thousands. In other words, eCPM is an effective cost per thousand impressions.

You see, sites that offer this kind of opportunity will only pay you when your shortened link was viewed at least 1,000 times. That’s the bare minimum. While that may seem like a trivial number, it’s not an easy task.

As an owner of many websites and an SEO expert with over 10 years of experience, I can say one thing. You have to have a solid strategy to attract views to these links.

And the views have to be from real people. So, you cannot use strategies that are using automation tools to get views.

The question is, where to paste the links to attract views?

According to some videos I have watched, you need to find forums, and blogs in the gaming niche, and then post a valuable comment with a link.

And here comes the issue.

Why You Shouldn’t Use URL Shortening Sites to Earn Money

Firstly, most shortening sites that will pay you are services that are making money from ads, so the shortened link will lead to a page with lots of advertisements.

Such behavior is considered spammy.

You should also take into account that most forums and websites have moderators or admins who will delete these links. Or they ban your account because of spammy behavior. They do not like this type of link.

The second problem is, that even the best-paying shortening services will pay you from 2 to 5 dollars per thousand unique views. And this is only the truth when the traffic comes from high CPM countries. This means, from richer countries around the world.

So, while you can earn money by shortening links and sharing them, the real question is, if this is a good way of earning extra money.

I would say that it’s not and let me explain. The biggest challenge you will face with these kinds of sites is to get views from actual people.

You cannot pay for ad campaigns, because they will not be profitable. You need free traffic with real people.

A Better Way To Make Money With Sharing Links

Let’s assume, you can convince 1000 real people to click a link.

So why send such great traffic somewhere where you make a few dollars? Why not think in the long run?

Create a website, put ads there, and put affiliate links somewhere in the article.

This will make you much more money.

And don’t be afraid.

Creating a website with WordPress is insanely easy, and all you need to pay is around 5 dollars per month for hosting when using a cheap hosting provider.

Then write a few articles about topics you like, put there for example Ezoic ads, send traffic to these articles and you can make a significant income.

What’s more important, you can make a secondary monthly income.

When done correctly, it can be a game-changer.

Just take a look at my Ezoic account.

A few months ago, I built a niche website from scratch, a small website with few articles, but… This small website is earning me 2 dollars per day with just 100 unique daily visitors. All this from placing a few ads on the website.

And each month, I’m adding more articles, which will attract more visitors to the website and earn me more money.

This is a long-term investment.

A business.

When you are so good that you can convince people to click on a link, then create a business around it.

Do not send traffic to websites that are paying a few dollars when you can make 10 times more with the same effort.

Do not believe in quick success, start a long-term business.

It is worth your time, it can be a life-changing choice.