With the coming of Twitter and Microblogging the growth of short url generators has spread like a wild fire. But with change there is always corruption and innovation. Therefore people who want to do bad and send out Spam links they can, because visitors won´t notice if the link is Spam. For instance image retweeting without knowing what kind of link you really are sending to your followers.
But as said before, with change there is also innovation. First there where the simple and “ugly” url shortener, like: http://bit.ly, http://is.gd and many more. Now there are generators like: http://twt.tc (looks great and does the trick just as good).
The only question remains do these Short URL websites generate money? This would really be the next step for URL shortener websites. I wouldn´t know how this would be possible, seeing as people are visting the website for a short time period, but where there is a will, there is a way. Maybe the following options are usefull:
- Put banners on the short url website (simple).
- Generate data, that can be used for market research, from the submitted “long” url´s (long period investment)
- Redirect to a short “commercial” (by generated short url) before connecting to final destination (quick win, but possible destructive for your website)
I can image that there are many more possible ways to earn money by starting a url shortener website, but is this a real money maker?
Just let me know what you think and maybe we can add some more ways to generate money with a short url website and start one together.
