A video shows up in your feed claiming you can earn $22 for every YouTube Shorts video you watch. You click it. The steps look simple. But something feels a little off, and you want to know if anyone actually tested this before you waste a Saturday afternoon on it.
I ran the test. I walked through every step the original video recommended, spotted five separate reasons this method collapses in real life, and came out the other side with something much more useful than a shortcut that does not work. Here is the full breakdown.
What You’ll Walk Out With
- The exact steps the “$22 per Short” method tells you to follow
- Why the payout math falls apart before you even post a single link
- What actually happens when someone clicks a shrinkme.io link
- Why Facebook will not even show a video preview for your shortened link
- What happens if you post these links in Reddit or Facebook groups
- The real, longer-term alternative that Alston has used to get a video with 251,000 views on a channel with fewer than 1,200 subscribers
- Three specific income streams that do not require any subscriber count or watch hour minimums
- A quiz to help you figure out what you should actually be building at finder.platformproof.com
What the Method Actually Claims
The original video making the rounds says the process works like this. You go to a website called shrinkme.io, shorten a URL pointing to a YouTube video, drop that shortened link into Facebook groups, and collect $22 every time someone watches the video through your link. The specific claim is $220 per 10,000 views, which breaks down to $22 per 1,000 views.
That number sounds low enough to be plausible and high enough to be exciting. A hundred thousand views and you are looking at $2,200. And all you have to do is share links. Simple. Passive. What could go wrong?
Red Flag #1: This Exact Video Has Been Posted Before
Before even testing the method, notice something about the video itself. About halfway through watching the original, there is a familiar feeling. A quick search confirms it: this is not a new idea. The same method, the same website, the same promise shows up roughly every two months under a new thumbnail. Each time the creator publishes it, the income claim goes up. A few months ago it was $10 per video. Then $15. Now $22.
That pattern alone is a red flag. If the method worked, the creator would be too busy using it to keep remaking the video. The business model for the person making the content is the views on the debunk video, not the URL shortener.
Red Flag #2: The Payout Rates Depend on Where Your Viewers Live
The $22 per 1,000 views figure is technically accurate under one specific condition: the people clicking your links must live in Greenland.
That is not a joke. Greenland has roughly 56,000 to 60,000 people. Out of the four billion humans with internet access, Greenland represents a fraction of a fraction of a percent. The odds that a thousand Greenlandic residents happen to click your Facebook link and click all the way through to the YouTube video are essentially zero.
After Greenland, the rates drop steeply. Ireland is lower. Most of Western Europe is lower. The countries where you are most likely to actually gather eyeballs, countries with enormous internet populations like India, pay out around $4 per 1,000 views on this platform. To make that same $22, you would need 5,500 views from Indian users instead of 1,000 from Greenlandic ones.
The math is not a math problem. It is a logic problem. The person building an audience in Facebook groups has no control over where their viewers live. The odds are stacked heavily toward low-CPM countries, and the $22 headline assumes the single highest-paying country on the platform.
Red Flag #3: Clicking the Link Is Not Enough
Here is something the original video does not tell you. A click on your shrinkme.io link does not count as a view. The person clicking must click all the way through to the destination page. That sounds like a minor detail until you see what actually happens when someone clicks the link.
When you paste a shrinkme.io URL into a browser, you do not go to a YouTube video. You land on a page that immediately fires multiple pop-up windows. There are ads, redirects, permission prompts, and install requests. The person who clicked has to close every single one of those and actively hunt for the actual link to the video underneath.
Ask yourself honestly: if a friend texted you a link, and clicking it opened three pop-ups and a prompt asking you to install something, would you keep going? Or would you close the tab and go directly to YouTube yourself?
The conversion rate on links like this is extremely low. Most people bail before they ever reach the content, which means most clicks never turn into the qualifying view your payout requires.
Red Flag #4: Facebook Strips the Video Preview
The original video claims that when you paste your shortened link into a Facebook group, it will show a video preview and people will click because they see a thumbnail that looks like actual content. That is not what happens.
When you paste a shrinkme.io link into a Facebook post, no preview appears. The post shows a bare URL and nothing else. No thumbnail. No title. No description. Just a raw link that looks like spam, because it is.
Facebook’s link scraper does not generate previews for URL shorteners that route through ad-redirect pages. The result is a post that looks exactly like every phishing link or spam post that people have been trained to ignore. Nobody clicks a naked shortened URL from a stranger in a Facebook group, especially one that leads somewhere unpredictable.
Red Flag #5: Forums and Groups Will Ban You for This
Even if the link somehow worked, there is nowhere legitimate to post it. Reddit subreddits have rules against promotional links and will ban your account, sometimes permanently, for posting monetized shortened URLs. Facebook groups have moderators who remove spam and ban members who post affiliate or shortened links without permission. That goes for both public groups and private ones.
The only scenario where you are not immediately removed is if you own the group yourself. But if you own a group with enough engaged members to generate meaningful clicks, you already have an audience, and there are far better things you can do with that audience than trick them into navigating through pop-up gauntlets.
Why These Videos Keep Getting Made
The person making the “$22 per Short” video is not making money from shrinkme.io. They are making money from the views on their YouTube video about shrinkme.io. The topic gets search traffic because people are looking for easy income. The video ranks for those searches, collects ad revenue, and the creator publishes a new version every couple of months with a slightly higher income claim to refresh the traffic.
You are not the customer of this content. You are the product. Your click on that video is the income event, not anything you do with a URL shortener afterward.
That is not said to make you feel bad. It is said because recognizing the pattern is the first step to stopping the loop. If you have watched five or ten of these videos and nothing has worked, the videos are working exactly as intended. They just are not working for you.
Not sure what kind of content you should actually be creating?
The Platform Proof Finder asks a few quick questions about your existing skills, schedule, and income goal, then tells you exactly which platform and approach fits your situation. No subscription. No upsell. Just a clear answer at finder.platformproof.com.
What Actually Works: Create Original Content
The honest alternative is not as exciting to click on, but it is the one that actually produces results. Create original content on a topic you already know something about. It can be pickleball, basket weaving, basketball, cooking, woodworking, personal finance, or anything else where you have a genuine interest and other people have genuine questions.
A channel with fewer than 1,200 subscribers can have a video with more than 251,000 views if the content actually answers a question people are searching for. Subscriber count does not determine reach. Useful content does.
The short-form version of this still applies. YouTube Shorts, TikTok, Instagram Reels, all of these platforms have organic reach that URL shortener spam will never touch. A 60-second video where you show someone how to fix a specific problem, cook a specific dish, or understand a specific concept travels on its own. You do not need to trick anyone into watching it.
Real Ways to Make Money from Content You Create
Once you start creating content, even before it earns much on its own, multiple income streams open up. Here are the most accessible ones in rough order of how quickly you can get started:
Affiliate Marketing (No Minimums Required)
You do not need any subscriber count, watch hour total, or follower number to start affiliate marketing. Sign up for an affiliate program related to your topic, include your link in the video description or bio, and earn a commission when someone buys through it. Amazon Associates, ShareASale, and Impact all accept new creators. The commission is paid per sale, not per click, so the math actually works in your favor compared to a URL shortener that pays fractions of a cent per view.
Digital Products
If you know how to do something, you can sell that knowledge as a PDF guide, a template, a checklist, or a short course. A creator in the pickleball niche who knows the ten drills that improved their game can package those drills into a $17 PDF. They sell it directly from their bio link. No platform approval required, no watch hour threshold, no subscriber gate.
YouTube Partner Program
This one does have requirements: 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months for traditional long-form content, or 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views in 90 days for the Shorts-specific path. The ad revenue per thousand views varies by niche, but it is paid for content you created once, not per click you manually generate every day. It scales while you sleep.
Brand Deals and Sponsorships
Brands pay creators with small, engaged audiences. A YouTube channel with 800 subscribers in the woodworking niche can get a sponsorship from a tool company because the audience is exactly who that company wants to reach. Engagement matters more than size. Niche matters more than subscriber count.
Blog or Newsletter on the Same Topic
Content compounds. A video on a topic can become a blog post. A blog post can collect search traffic for years. A newsletter built from that audience can generate sponsorship revenue separate from anything platform-dependent. The same topic, the same expertise, three different income streams that reinforce each other.
Honest Drawbacks of Creating Original Content
Creating content is slower than posting links. There is no way around that. You will likely make nothing for the first three to six months. Getting on camera or writing consistently is uncomfortable for most people who have not done it before. You will publish content that nobody watches, and that is a real emotional experience that the YouTube shortcut videos never prepare you for.
The comparison is still easy though. The URL shortener method pays approximately $0 while also risking a platform ban and wasting several hours of your time. The content creation method pays $0 for a few months, then starts compounding. You have to pick your type of discomfort.
The biggest actual obstacle is the starting. Most people who never make money online do not fail because they picked the wrong method. They fail because they spend months researching methods, trying shortcuts that do not work, recovering from disappointment, and researching more methods. The cycle keeps them from ever actually publishing the first real piece of content. Getting out of that loop is the only real move.
A Simple Decision Framework: Logic Test Before You Try Anything
Before investing time in any online income method, run it through three questions:
- Who is actually making money here? If the answer is the person who made the tutorial video, not the people following it, that tells you something important.
- Would a reasonable person do the required action? With shrinkme.io, the required action is navigating through multiple pop-ups to reach a YouTube video they could find directly. Reasonable people do not do that.
- Does the income claim require an unlikely audience? If the best-case payout depends on viewers from a country with 56,000 people, the claim is not being made in good faith.
Three questions, sixty seconds, and you can filter out most of the noise before it costs you anything.
Find Your X
Knowing that shortcuts do not work is useful. Knowing what to do instead requires a little more clarity. The Platform Proof Finder is a short quiz that maps your existing skills, your schedule, and your income target to a specific platform and approach. It is not a sales funnel. It is a filter. Take it at finder.platformproof.com and get a concrete starting point instead of another list of options.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does shrinkme.io actually pay money?
Yes, shrinkme.io does pay for qualified views, but the rates are far lower than advertised for most audiences. The $22 per 1,000 views rate applies specifically to viewers in Greenland. For the vast majority of countries, including most of the countries where large online audiences actually live, the rates are a fraction of that amount. Getting 1,000 views from the right geographic audience through a Facebook group post is also extremely unlikely in practice.
Why does Facebook not show a video preview for shrinkme.io links?
Facebook’s link preview system scrapes the destination page’s Open Graph metadata. Shortened URLs that route through ad redirect pages either have no metadata or get blocked by Facebook’s spam filters. The result is a bare link with no thumbnail, which looks like spam and gets ignored by most users.
Will I get banned from Facebook groups for posting these links?
Most likely, yes. Facebook group moderators routinely remove posts containing shortened URLs that lead through ad-redirect pages. Repeat posting results in removal from the group and, in some cases, account restrictions. Reddit subreddits have similar policies and enforce them through automated spam filters as well as manual moderation.
How long does it take to make money creating original content?
The honest range is three to twelve months before most creators see consistent income. The timeline depends on niche competitiveness, publishing frequency, content quality, and how well the topic aligns with what people are actively searching for. Affiliate marketing links in your descriptions can earn commissions before any platform threshold is reached, so some income is possible within weeks if you get a piece of content in front of the right audience.
Do you really need 1,000 subscribers before making any money on YouTube?
To access the YouTube Partner Program and earn ad revenue, yes, 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours are required for long-form content. But ad revenue is only one income stream. Affiliate marketing, digital products, and brand deals are all available to creators with zero subscribers. Several creators earn meaningful income from content before reaching any platform threshold.
Can a small YouTube channel actually get a lot of views?
Yes. Subscriber count and view count are related but not the same thing. A channel with under 1,200 subscribers can have a single video with over 251,000 views if that video answers a question people are already searching for. YouTube’s algorithm distributes content based on what viewers engage with, not just how big the channel is. Niche search content especially can rank and accumulate views over months and years independent of subscriber count.
What is a URL shortener and how does it normally make money?
A URL shortener takes a long web address and creates a shorter one. Monetized URL shorteners like shrinkme.io make money by inserting an interstitial ad page between the click and the destination. When someone clicks your link, they land on an ad page first. If they wait out the ad or click through it, they reach your destination. The shortener pays the link creator a small fee based on how many people make it through. The problem is that interstitial ad pages have extremely low completion rates, especially on mobile.
What should I do if I have been trying quick-money methods and nothing is working?
Stop the research loop. The pattern of finding a method, trying it, failing, feeling discouraged, and searching for the next method is a cycle that uses up time without building anything. Pick one topic you genuinely know something about, commit to publishing content about it for 90 days, and track what resonates. The 90-day commitment to one direction produces more useful information than 90 days of method-hopping. If you need help figuring out which direction to start, use the Platform Proof Finder at finder.platformproof.com.
Read Next
If you are done with shortcuts and want to see what a real online income path looks like from zero, this one is worth your time.
How I Went From $0 To Making $20,000 Per Month Online walks through the actual progression, the income streams that came in at each stage, and what the early months really looked like.
Sources
- shrinkme.io publisher payout rate table (referenced in original video)
- Greenland population data: approximately 56,000 to 60,000 residents
- Global internet users: approximately 4 billion at the time of the original video
- YouTube Partner Program requirements: 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours (long-form) or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days
- Original “I Tried It” video: https://youtu.be/Y7eX8Ra7L0c
Helping 1 million working adults make their first $3,000 online with the skills they already have. Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof.