Over the past couple of years, especially since the rise of Twitter, URL shortener services have been gaining their own spotlight. In a world where the character count matters, and where cash definitely matters, why not combine the both of them? That’s what Ucash.in lets you do.
Since it’s a monetary service, a signup process is involved. And while I’d like to say it was simple and easy and fast, it wasn’t — especially since it wouldn’t let me out without giving it my name and zip code! Anyhow, after the signup process is over, Ucash.in works like any other URL shortner service. You give it a link, and it gives you a shortner link back. The difference, of course, is only noticable to people who visit your links: they see a 10-second ad before being taken to the URL (although luckily, they can choose to skip it.)
For the owner of the link, there is of course an incentive involved for serving the ads. Ucash.in pays you $1 US for every 4000 top banner ad impressions, and $1 US for every 2000 intermission ad impressions. To give you an idea, if I were to share a link on Twitter with 6,000 followers and hypothetically every one of them clicked on it, that’d make me about $12.30.
But, is a cup of coffee worth the pain you serve to your link clickers, friends, family, and followers? There are obviously a lot of ethical issues involved with a service like Ucash.in, and I am not sure if the trade-offs are worth it. Additionally, you could say the more popular the links get, the worse their “value” gets — meaning most users might get tired of seeing of those links and choose not to click on them, and in that way, less people will use it as a shortener service and realize the negative connotation behind it. In any case, if a cup of coffee is what you want — Ucash.in will gladly give it you. After 10,000 or so clicks, and some angry e-mails.
