Shrtn.co – Finally your shared links are worth the share!

 

I knew this was coming and it came with a little surprise to me.

Shrtn.co – A URL Shortening Service that makes you money via affiliate sales, or at least that’s what people are calling it. And in a more cooler way, we could just say “Shorten, Share, Profit” and it definitely looks promising to me.

I got an email from Tom Layfield, who’s the Director of Product at Shrtn.co (and happens to be the co-founder of AcquisitionEngine.com also) introducing me to this new startup. Frankly speaking, at first I was a little bit skeptical about this whole idea of mixing affiliate leads with URL shortening but soon after my first trial of the service, it all seemed meaningful…and fun! In Tom’s own words:

“Our product, shrtn.co, is a new, unobtrusive way to generate revenue whilst sharing links. It works by seamlessly adding affiliate codes to URL’s that we support, then sharing any revenue generated via that URL with the user. We think this concept is unique – from the research we’ve done, there’s nothing quite like it on the market. The only thing that comes close are URL shorteners which add pesky popup/frame advertisements to the target link.”

What Exactly Does Shrtn.co do?

The Shrtn.co works pretty much like any other URL shortening service except every time someone buys something via the link that is featured as part of your shortened URL, you get a commission. The thing I really liked about this service was that it completely eliminates the need of signing up with various affiliate programs/vendors and lets you promote the relevant product automatically.

How Good are they?

They’re good! With over 160 merchants registered and more coming everyday, these folks are doing a pretty decent job. There’s an affiliate section if you wish to promote the service and a pre-version of the API you can you with your blog/site. They seem to have a couple more of features rolling out later this year.

Why You Should Use Shrtn.co?

This is a very natural question and it was the first that came to my mind when I was firstly introduced with the service. From my most basic point of view, using this service has two benefits. Firstly, you get to make money, period. You share your links and get a small commission if you make a sale. The second and my favorite being, you can donate the revenue you generated from your sales to Support Charities directly from your dashboard. Imagine, you sharing link could help a child? Even the though of it is beautiful…praiseworthy!

What I didn’t like about them?

The websites interface. I’m not exactly a UI specialist or a design consultant but there are a couple of features that seem to be missing from the homepage (including a merchant signup page). This is a very blog-ish layout which is kinda outdated for the new decade. The landing page also doesn’t exactly do any justice to the service but leaves it to the viewer to understand everything. Apart from the UI and layout, I don’t really see a lot of issues with this service, it’s a go green for me.

Did you try Shrtn.co for yourself? Do let us know what you though about it in your comments.