Last Updated on April 21, 2023 by Justin Su
Want to start your own URL shortener site? Then you are at the right place, in this article we are going to talk about the best URL Shortener scripts and how to use them to create your own URL Shortener site.
URL Shortener sites are one of the best ways to make money online. Starting your own URL shortener sites can allow you to shorten your own URL plus generate revenue for you.
There are many shortener sites that are making a good amount of money and it applies to you as well. You can either build a simple URL shortener site that focuses on marketing features like Bitly or can make a shortener site that allows you to put ads and earn money.
In this article, we are going to see how you can build a shortener site that can make money for you and we will also check out the list of top best URL shortener sites.
How To Create Your Own URL Shortener
To create your own URL shortener site you have to follow the below-given steps.
Get Your Domain & Hosting
The first step of any online business is to get the domain and web hosting, without a doubt, you should have a proper name for your site.
Always choose a short and easy-to-remember name for your business.
Bluehost is one of the best places to get domain and hosting. You will also love them because they are user-friendly and their customer support is also very useful, which helps the users. It provides a free domain with hosting.
Purchase Script
The next step is to get a script. The more high-quality script you use the more your users will be happy. Codecanyon is one of the highly known places to find URL Shortener scripts.
Purchasing a script will cost you around $40 to $60. Following is the best script.
AdLinkFly
You can start your own monetized shortener site using AdLinkFly. Nowadays most such sites are using this script because of easiness and its features. It always comes with new and unique features.
More than 2700 times AdLinkFly script was purchased by people and has 4.95 ratings out of 5 from 250+ users.
Key Features: API Tools, Captcha, Translation, Publisher & Advertiser, Withdrawal Method (PayPal, Payza, Skrill, Bitcoin, WebMoney, Wallet Money, and Bank Transfer), and Ads (pop, interstitial, banner).
Premium URL Shortener
Premium URL shortener is the PHP URL shortener script available on CodeCanyon. This script was first developed in the year 2012 and it’s getting updated continuously.
Already more than 5,000 people purchased this script on CodeCanyon. It has an average rating of 4.80 out of 5 from 620 buyers.
You allowed customizing links within a second. It has an integration facility for slack, zapier, Facebook pixel, and google tag manager.
Key Features: Social-Friendly, Saas, Custome Profile, Custom Domain, Add Team, Link Rotator, Splash & Overlay Pages, Hide The Site, Social Login, Translation, Anonymous User History, API, Captcha, Stripe, and much more.
There are many more scrips you can check out the list of top 10 URL Shortener Script here.
Install Script and Setup Your Site
If you think you can just install your script and start the site then you are a bit wrong. Because there are already thousands of people who have purchased the script but they all are not successful.
Do you know why? Becuase users do avoid joining any new site that they have seen already. If you are really interested to run the URL Shortener site as a business then you must use a unique template/design.
Fiverr is the best place to hire developers at a cheap rate, you can easily get developers to implement a new theme or template to your site for $10 to $20.
You can either use free templates or paid ones, ask your developer for suggestions on Theme else you can find templates on Codecanyon. Theme or template will cost you $10 to $15.
After getting a new look it’s time to add general details like payment methods, site details, keywords, captcha, payout rates, ads & banners, and other important details.
You are good to go now.
Promote Your Site
Your site is now ready to use by users. But how users will know that your site exists? Definitely, you have to promote it, right?
Don’t worry, you can promote your site for free, but where?
I personally know two highly effective ways to promote your site.
- The simple method is to contact each site owner manually and ask them to use your URL shortener sites. Most crypto faucets are using URL Shorteners and they have thousands of users daily.
- Use forums to promote your site, forums like BeerMoneyForum are some best forums for micro earning sites to promote.
Else you can also contact us, I will try to promote your URL Shortener by contacting my friends who own crypto faucets.
How To Monetize Your URL Shortener
If you want to create your own URL Shortener site then definitely you have planned to make money from it.
There are several methods to monetize your site like you can use advertising networks like Adsense or you can get a direct advertiser (some script allows pop-under, banner, and interstitial advertising method), add your own referral link, or promote other sites.
Adsense doesn’t accept shortener sites directly but what you can do is get approval on the blog site and then use it as an internal page of the shortener site.
How To Create Your Own URL Shortener For Free
Creating your own site is a bit hard, but if you can spend on domain and hosting then there are some scripts that you can use to create your own “simple” shortener site.
User Liya Thomas on GitHub shared the code which you can use to install and create your own URL shortener free site.
There are many free scripts available on GitHub that can be used for free but they don’t have extra features or I can say they are just “simple” URL Shortener scripts.