ShrinkEarn Review – Do You Want To Be A Spammer?

ShrinkEarn.com is - was - a revenue share service by way of using a shortened link. It allowed you to make money by sharing any webpages of your choice. Although the method was extremely spammy and the amount you would earn was very little, at least the setting up was easy and straightforward. Unfortunately it no longer works in the way it should. ShrinkEarn.com has become deceptive. The site is partnered with suspicious advertisers who potentially scam end-users with malware.

I wouldn't have particularly recommended it as a way of making money online, anyway. But it's a lot worse than you think. Today in my ShrinkEarn review, I'll explain why I think you should stay away from it, if you want to deceit your audience and protect your computer from security risks.

Who Owns ShrinkEarn?

As expected, the owner is unknown. A couple of payment options are restricted to India - ShrinkEarn claims to pay you via PayPal, Payeer, Skrill, etc, but if you live in India, it can only pay you via UPI or bank transfer. Therefore the site is likely to be administered in India.

Does It Actually Pay?

ShrinkEarn claims to pay via;

• PayPal, WebMoney Z, or Payeer (minimum threshold $5) 
• Skrill (minimum threshold $20) 
• UPI (Tez UPI/PhonePe UPI/Paytm UPI (India only, minimum threshold $5), or
• Bank transfer (India only, minimum threshold $10).

The slogan "Earn Up To $20 per 1,000 Visits", means it sounds like you will earn 2 cents. But it's actually misleading because according to the publisher rate plan, you can only earn that rate "for Greenland" - there is no supplementary explanation to this, but I assume that if a visitor is from Greenland, you will earn 2 cents.

If a visitor is from USA, you will earn 0.9 cents, if a visitor is from any of the T2 countries, you'll earn approx. 0.4 - 0.7 cents, and the rest of the world you'll earn 0.33 cents.

I'm not sure how accurate the rates are, because I've tested it myself - clicked my own link from an IP address in the UK. I received 0.6 cents while it should have been 0.8 cents...Not a significant difference, but I just pointed that out.

Spam Ads

This time once again, I tested my link by "sharing it" with myself and clicking it from a different IP address. Unfortunately the result I saw was appalling. What looked like a bridge page had a few unrelated ads, which was okay. But it also had a javascript notification over the page, which I couldn't get rid of - if I clicked "Allow", it would open up a new browser tab with an ad page. Then I clicked "Deny" and it would also open up another new tab. The notification message would never go away.

There are a couple of buttons and a couple of captchas in the middle of the page, but none of them works - as soon as I clicked any of them, a new browser tab with an ad would open up.

What's worse was, it automatically started to download a zip file named "set up" - I don't know what the file contains. It can contain malware, but that's not the point. It's a download that I didn't initiate, I daren't unzip it, and you wouldn't either.

Ironically, ShrinkEarn's terms of use state that it prohibits "transmitting files that contain viruses, spyware, adware, trojans or other harmful code." But they allow the advertisers to spread a suspicious file. Even if the file does not contain anything malicious, a site with an auto-download script is generally unacceptable, therefore I hope you agree that the advertiser's intention is malicious.

No matter how many times I clicked any item within the page, I was never directed to the page I had set up to.

It means essentially, ShrinkEarn has stopped serving its users. I guess it wasn't making enough money by displaying a couple of PPV ads per link redirect and it's now gone crazy. Shame because the original idea wasn't too bad.

Then What's The Point!?

With all the bad reasons explained above, you'd never want to share ShrinkEarn's short links with your audience. They'll never get to reach the webpage you want to share, anyway. But if you're wondering how you can get around it, perhaps working incognito purely to make a little pocket money with ShrinkEarn, the chances are also slim.

Because ShrinkEarn's terms of use also prohibit users from using traffic exchange or PTC (paid-to-click) websites. Nor do they allow users to bring fake/automated traffic of any kind to their links. 

Then what's the point in using ShrinkEarn? Nothing. Unfortunately there's absolutely no point. 

By all means, if you're looking for a sustainable way to make a regular income online, never consider oldfashioned "click & earn schemes" such as ShrinkEarn.