Well, this is something completely different, a website for a change. That's right I haven't made any posts related to websites in quite some time. The last time I ever talked about a website was back in October when I discussed about Ifunny (which is also an application for your phone) which was plain terrible. Now we have another terrible website that's been around for a long time and that is Adfly; a URL shortener for people who want to get paid using specific generated URL's but unfortunately has fallen off the wheels in terms of the popup ads and malicious content as well as for better services like them that are much safer and easier to use.
Brief History:
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| Adfly on May 29, 2009. |
Adfly was founded in April of 2009 by a guy name James Simpson in California. James also worked on another company called GoldFire Studios (a video game/software company based in Oklahoma) which are a pretty unknown developer, and they only made a few video games since then (one entry says they were founded in 2008 but it says 2002 in Google). The concept and the idea for this site is pretty simple, it's a URL shortener that allows a long URL link to be shrunken up at a reasonable size with a random title added on to it. What Adfly does is something different. For people who signed up with an account on Adfly, you're able to make easy money, in other words get paid by the number of visits. You will get between $1 - $5 per thousand clicks and you will gain between $10 - $50 every day depending upon the location. It sounds great on paper, but in execution it's very devastating (more on that later). Adfly was considered to be popular right around 2010, 2011 and 2012 in the Minecraft Community. The players would end up creating mods and maps for a specific Minecraft version and then used the Adfly service for them to make money.
Why The Site is Terrible:
Terrible in 2023 / Constant PopUps & Redirects / Extremely Dated / Misleading Claims:
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| The bullshit that comes with Adfly. |
So, I figured I would start off with the most plain obvious one and that is the misleading claims they have on their site. When you go to their site and scroll down, you'll see that there is a section that says, 'Safe Advertising'. The statement reads:
"All advertising is strictly family safe with no popups. Anti-virus and malware servers are scanning the adverts 24/7."
None of that is actually true. Sure, it was like that back then when it first started, but this is 2023 where the advertisements are even worse in this day in age (almost to the point where they don't care at all). It also seems so strict that you have to meet the requirements of gaining $5 in order for you to get paid. It may be unlikely if the user has enough traffic going through all the steps to get it done. Another thing that caught me off guard is the fact that the website is extremely dated. It almost seems like a gimmick, and they just stopped updating the layout since 2012 cause that's exactly what it looks like. Also signing up with an account is tedious as you have to request it which is very annoying.
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| This is the shrunken URL for microsoft.com. Along with a random name. |
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| The same shrunken URL is now a different redirected URL. Right Click to view in New Tab. |
With Minecraft users creating mods and maps, everyone has switched to much better and safer services out there whereas Adfly is still considered to be dated and lost throughout the years. In fact, Adfly was heavily used in the Minecraft Community because they knew it can make lots of money in order for players to support them. Adfly is still around but not as prevalent as what it was back in the day and with that it shows. The biggest issue with the service is the constant redirects. Back in the day, Adfly would redirect you to one location and that was it. Now in 2023, it will redirect you to about 8 to 10 different sites with most of them containing Malware and Viruses (with the vast majority of them being popups). Eventually you'll get to the website but at what cost? The fear of your machine being infected? I'm not quite sure at this point. Now like I said earlier, the shrunken URL gives you a random name (an example is shown above is a link to microsoft.com). If you copy and paste the link, you will get redirected to a different URL and Adfly forces you to allow notifications on their site to further infect the PC and the browser. It's ridiculous.
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| The Trustpilot Negative Reviews. |
This isn't the first time that Adfly ever got into trouble. It was picked up on various different websites along with various reviews on TrustPilot and many people asking on various different forum posts is it safe to use. Many people still have mixed reviews about it with most of them like it and others not. That is up for you to decide. In my opinion I think it's terrible with the way it has gone downhill and like I said before, people had moved on to different yet safer services that gives you better money. What are your thoughts about Adfly?
The Solution:
There are solutions to help solve the problem with the ads on Adfly and I just noticed this today when I was making this post. Apparently, a user by the name of scarlettrobinson0001 created an extension titled Adfly Skipper. It basically skips all of the ads and redirects from Adfly links to the correct content you want to see or view. It is available to most browsers and it's still going to this day.
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