Many people still believe that using Twitter is a waste of time. Perhaps those notions will change now that a company has come along offering to pay you for using their service to shrink URLs. Introducing Adjix. Adjix is a brand new company that is both an ad network and a service which pays people who shrink their URLs through their site. Adjix calls people who shrink their urls, linkers. Adjix places ads at the top of each page where a URL has been shortened without altering the original content. This is yet another opportunity for those of you who would like to advertise to the twitter audience as you can launch ad campaigns through the service.
Account Creation:
Creating an account on Adjix is simple. All you need is an email address and a password. You’ll also need to provide your first and last names. Once that is done, your account is created immediately. Once your account is created, you’ll gain access to edit your profile, the ability to shrink links and also to view your link statistics. As for shortening a URL, the practice is simple.
While shrinking your URL, there is one more option you can configure to go along side the link and that is, selecting the category of advertisements to display. This provides you the option to make the ad more relevant to the link. More on this later. Once you shorten your URL, there are two different ones from which you can share. There is the short url which looks like this: http://adjix.com/s8 and then there is the Ultra Short URL which looks like this: http://ad.vu/s8
Using Your Domain Name With Adjix:
Adjix does provide a way for you use your own domain name in conjunction with the links provided by Ajix. You can either configure your DNS settings to point to partner.adjix.com to allow home grown links or you can fake it by adding anything you want before the adjix.com URL. For example, http://blabla.ad.vu/s8. Considering this aspect of monetization may catch on, many Twitter users who don’t want to see advertising may bypass clicking on links which contain ad.vu or adjix text within them. So, using the complicated DNS route may be the way to go to really increase your success rate. If you are interested in going down this route, be sure to read the DNS instructions that Adjix provides.
All About Monetization:
Earning money for using the service:
Linkers earn $0.10/1000 unique link views (10 cents CPM per unique link impressions) and $0.20 for each valid, unique, click-through. In other words, Linkers receive $0.0001/link impression and $0.20/ad click-through.
How much does it cost to advertise on their network:
Advertisers can place ads for $0.35 per 1000 ad impressions (35 cents CPM for ad impressions) and $0.75 per valid click-through. Additionally, advertisers can review ad reports to detect click-fraud. Advertisers can create their ad campaigns for free and when they’re ready to go live they can just ad funds into their account. At any time they can turn ad campaigns on and off to test what works best.
Account Payouts:
Adjix states that at the end of the month, any Linkers with an account balance greater than $25 are mailed a check approximately 45 days later. This 45 day period gives advertisers an opportunity to review their ad campaigns for click-fraud.
Considering the earning amounts, it would take 25,000 straight unique views to earn $25.00. It would take 12,500 straight unique click-throughs to earn $25.00. Those figures make it seem to me like it would take an awful long time to receive that first paycheck, sort of like the situation with Google AdSense. However, maybe you’ll be one of the lucky ones who’s Twitter list will provide a good combination of both unique views and actual click-throughs.
Link Report:
Adjix provides a detailed link report which is initiated with the first shortened URL. The report includes information such as the link creation timestamp, the shortened url, the original url, which type of ad, and total amount of hits. You can also view at a glance what your earnings are.
When going into detail for a specific link, you can view the hit timestamp, IP address of the clicker, hos name, whether it was an impression or a click through and if it was a Valid (payable) hit.
Conclusion:
Overall, this is the first time I’ve heard of a company that has provided an opportunity for users of Twitter to make money simply by shrinking their URL’s. This task has typically been accomplished by using TinyURL, or URL Snippet but if you add on the ability to make a little coin while providing the same shrinking services that Tiny URL has provided, it may be enough to get people to jump on board. I’ve taken a look at how the ads are displayed and they don’t appear to be too intrusive into the browsing experience. The ads remind me of one line Google AdSense ads which rotate. I didn’t notice the ads at first because the Ad Block Plus FireFox extension ended up blocking them from the ad.vu web address.
As for the approach that Ajix takes, I find it to be better suited than having to deal with popups or some annoying flash ads. Will you become rich by using this service? Most likely not. The only people I can see making a decent income using a service like Adjix are the Robert Scoble’s and the Leo Laporte’s but those people are already making a decent amount of income without the need to place Adjix shrunken URL’s in front of their audience.
Performancing Experiment:
Considering this is a new way to monetize through using Twitter, I’d like you to participate in an experiment. I will be using this service until the middle of September and if you’re interested, I’d for you to do the same. Come back to Performancing during this time as I’ll report on my findings after using the service for a few weeks. I’d also like for you to post on your blog your findings and send us a link to your report in the comments.
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