Is Adfly Safe and Worth it? (What 5-Star Reviews Do NOT Tell)

Adf.ly claims to be a site where you can get paid to share links on the internet.

I am working full-time online myself so when I hear claims like this I always become curious and decided to put it to the test.

So is Adfly safe and worth the time or is it a scam to stay away from?

I joined to find out for myself as I found some positive reviews that did not seem completely transparent.

In this Adfly review, I will share all the details I found so you can see what it really offers – both the pros and cons as it has both.

What is Adfly and what does it offer?

Adfly (Adf.ly) is a platform that claims you can earn by sharing links online.

But it actually has two ways you can use it. You can use it either as a way to earn by sharing links or you can use it as an advertiser.

You have to choose which type of account you want to get when you sign up.

However, it does not really matter what type you choose because once you are inside, you can just jump from one type to the other so you get access to both no matter what.

In this review, I will be mostly focusing on Adfly as a way to earn and if this is worth it but I will also go over the options as an advertiser and what you have to consider before doing this.

Option 1 – Earn on Adfly:

What Adfly is most known for is as a way to earn by sharing links online. This might sound strange at first and you might be wondering if this is really a legit way to earn.

So let me start by saying that it is legit in the sense that you can actually earn (more about how much later). And it is not so strange once you understand how it works.

Let’s, therefore, go over exactly how it works.

Once you sign up and log in, you can choose any website address you want to and use the Adfly URL shortener.

In the image above, you can see I used my website OnlineZeroToHero.com to do a test.

Once you press the shrink button, you will then get a new URL.

You can shorten any URL you want to – it does not have to be your own website. So this makes it possible for anyone to use.

The idea is then that you can use this shortened URL and share it wherever you want to share it.

When people click the URL, they will not be taken directly to the original website. Instead, they will be taken to a full-screen ad / website.

When they come to this website they can see a counter.

They have to watch this ad for 5 seconds.

After this, a “skip ad” button will appear.

Once they click this button they are supposed to be taken to the original URL you first put into the shortener.

However, what I noticed is that another website will often open in a new tab as well so people clicking your link will be forced to see that also.

And in the browser window, they are in, they will after a few seconds finally be redirected to the original URL.

The way you then earn is because advertisers pay to have their sites displayed and you will in that way get paid to send traffic to their sites.

At first, it might seem like an easy way to earn since you just need to get people to click some links and then you will get paid.

But it is honestly not quite as easy as it first sounds. To find out if it will really be worth it, you also have to consider what you can earn overall and I will get to that very soon.

Let’s first go over what Adfly offers if you are an advertiser.

Recommended: Learn my #1 Way to Make Money Online

Option 2 – Advertise on Adfly:

Since I have this and other websites, it is always interesting to look into new ways of doing advertising.

You can create 3 different types of ads on Adfly.

You can create interstitial ads, leaderboard banner ads, and pop-up ads.

I am not going into all the details about every one of them as the things you need to consider is the same no matter what type you choose.

So if you, after reading this review, want to advertise on Adfly, you can find all the details on their website.

One good thing about advertising on Adfly is the prices. It is very cheap compared to many other types of advertising.

Below you can see price examples of the pop-up ads.

The prices are per 1,000 visits. As you can see, the price depends on whether you want worldwide traffic or if you want to target only specific countries.

But no matter what, the Adfly traffic is very cheap.

However, that does NOT mean it will be good traffic to get.

Mostly, people that will click the links will not be aware they will be taken to your ad. They are often expecting to go somewhere else.

Instead your site suddenly pops up. This can make your site look spammy and affect your reputation and branding.

Also, people will only be on your site for 5 seconds in most cases. So you would need a REALLY effective landing page to have any change of getting anything out of the traffic.

As Adfly mentions itself (you can see it at the top of the image above) “there are no guarantees of click-through rates”.

So if you want to test it, you can test it cheaply but you should definitely also consider the other aspects mentioned above and in the rest of this review, in my opinion.

How much can you make on Adfly?

A very important aspect to consider to find out if Adfly is a good way to make money online is, of course, how much you can earn.

On Adf.ly there is not much information about this. So you will not really know until after testing it.

But I can show you a couple of examples of earnings on Adfly.

I found one example on Quora. Here a guy was sharing his earnings after having sent quite a lot of traffic to his Adfly links.

As you can see, he earned $9.39 for sending 4,377 visits to his links.

This gives around $2.25 per 1,000 visits.

However, be aware that this will not always be the earnings you can make.

I did a tiny test myself – I did, however, not want to send much traffic as I do not find it worth it as I will explain more about later.

So it is only based on a couple of clicks. But it still shows something important about the earnings you need to know.

Here it shows the earnings are only $1.54 per 1,000 visits.

So the earnings can definitely vary depending on the country the traffic comes from, the ads they are taken to, and more.

But you can see it is possible to earn on Adfly even though it is not a lot.

How will you get paid?

Another thing you need to consider before joining is how you are able to get your earnings out and when.

You need to make sure any platform you want to join offers a payout method and conditions that fit you.

Adfly offers two payout methods – PayPal and Payoneer.

Both are very good ways to get earnings in cash, in my experience. So this aspect is at least covered.

You need to earn at least $5 before you can get paid through PayPal and minimum $10 if you want to use Payoneer.

Adfly sends out payments every month on the 1st of the month.

However, they do also offer daily payments. To qualify for this you need to have an account that is older than 30 days, have been paid on the monthly payday at least once, and a few other conditions.

But overall, the payout methods and conditions is one of the things I like the most about Adfly.

Is it safe and worth it?

So now to the real question – Is Adfly even safe to use and is it worth it?

When I first heard about Adfly, I saw some 5-star reviews online. This made me think there might be real potential here.

But when I started digging deeper, I also quickly realized that all the 5-star reviews I saw, were just trying to get you to join Adfly through their referral link.

This is another way to earn on Adfly. You can invite other people to join and earn a commission like that. This can be a great way to earn and using affiliate marketing like this can be really great.

However, it seems to also make some people willing to leave out a lot of important details when it comes to Adfly and when you see these overly positive reviews, you will not find all the details about the real potential and the important things to really consider before joining.

Therefore, I want to make it clear here what you really need to consider.

Let’s start by true earning potential. I have already shown you earning examples earlier.

If you do not have much experience with making money online, it might seem like easy money. But getting maybe $2 for sending 1,000 visits is extremely low pay.

Sending this many visits takes a lot of effort and work. If you are able to generate this amount of traffic and visits, you are much better off spending your time building a real online business as you can then get a lot more out of this amount of traffic.

But if you have no experience, it will be VERY difficult to even send 1,000 visits and you get no training on Adfly about how to build up sustainable traffic.

So from an earning perspective, Adfly is really NOT worth it, in my opinion.

Then let’s look at how safe it is to use. As someone promoting links, it is safe as it is a legit advertising platform.

But there are some potential issues, in my opinion.

I, for example, saw this statement on 2-spyware:

It says that even though Adf.ly is a legitimate advertising platform, it can be easily exploited by adware that inserts potentially dangerous ads into users’ web browsers.

This does not mean it will happen. But I think this is a fair warning as I have clicked several Adfly links myself and some of the websites and ads I was taking to look a bit suspicious, in my opinion.

I am no virus or malware expert, but I know that if I had clicked a link from someone I know that then took me to some of the sites I have been taken to, I would not trust any links from them in the future.

So this is also something you really have to consider if you want to build a long term business and build up a positive reputation.

Overall, I, therefore, think there are quite a lot of reasons Adfly is not a platform worth the time.

Final verdict

Adf.ly is a legit advertising platform where you can earn by shortening links and sharing them online.

However, it has some serious flaws you, in my opinion, seriously need to consider before joining and start spending time there.

So let’s finish this review by summing up the pros and cons so you can get a better overview before making your final decision about joining or not.

Pros:

• Free to join
• Open to all countries
• Good payout methods

Cons:

• Very low earning potential
• You have no control of the ads people are sent to
• No training about how to build up sustainable traffic
• Ineffective use of time

Even though Adfly is a way to earn and it offers good payout methods, it is really just not worth the time and effort, in my opinion.

I say this based on my experience as a full-time online marketer. First of all, the time you have to spend to get enough clicks on your links to just earn a few dollars really does not make much sense. If you send that traffic somewhere else, you will be able to earn a lot more.

Secondly, many of the ads I have seen on Adfly are what I would call spammy. It would not be something I would send people to as it interrupts them and it can ruin their trust in me.

So for these reasons, Adfly is NOT a platform I recommend as a way to earn online.

Are there more effective ways to earn online?

There are quite a lot of other more effective ways to earn online than Adfly, in my experience.

If you want to make real money online and potentially build a full-time income, this is definitely possible. It will take time and effort but it can really be worth it and it is possible to learn no matter your background.

Personally, I have had the most success with affiliate marketing and am now able to make a living from this that makes it possible for me to work from anywhere completely on my own terms.

So if you are interested in earning in a more effective way and are willing to put in the time it takes, you should definitely learn more about affiliate marketing.

 

If you have any comments, questions, or have any experiences with Adfly yourself, I would love to hear from you in a comment below.