YouTube is still a decent place for a paying shortener. The description is yours. People who want the thing you mentioned will scroll for the URL.
It is a bad place to get cute. YouTube already distrusts hop chains, and viewers skip anything that looks like a scam countdown.
Where the link goes
Put one https://kool.ink/CODE in the description, on its own line, under one plain sentence: what they get if they open it.
Timestamps first, then the link, then credits. Do not bury it under affiliate disclaimers nobody reads.
The first pinned comment is optional. A lot of viewers never open comments. Treat it as a spare copy of the same URL, not the plan.
End screens and cards should point at another video or a playlist. A shortener there looks like a trap and gets fewer taps anyway.
One destination per video
Shorten the page you named in the video. If you talked about a template, the template. If you talked about a newsletter, the subscribe page.
Do not stack KooLink in front of another shortener. Do not send them to a page that is itself a maze of downloads.
Guest links do not earn. Sign in, then create the code.
What YouTube counts vs what we count
YouTube's "cards and end screens" and description click reports (when you have them) are closer to the truth than our raw redirect logs. Telegram-style unfurls are less of a YouTube problem; YouTube does not sit in a chat drawing preview cards all day.
We still drop bots and repeat hammers. If you click your own description twenty times after upload, stop. That is not a test, it is a discard pile.
Will YouTube strike the video?
Not for a single clean short link to a normal destination. They will come for:
- Destinations that drop malware or fake "download this codec"
- Descriptions that are only links
- A pattern of deceptive titles plus a hop
If you would paste the raw destination in the description, you can paste the short link. If you would not, do not shorten it.
What the math looks like
$3.50 / 1,000 valid views. A video that sends 300 real description taps is about $1.05. A catalog of older videos, each leaking a few taps a day, is how people actually approach 10,000 views. One viral upload is luck. The library is the job.
Swap the link on old videos you still rank for. That is free inventory.
A habit that does not waste the upload
When you publish, add the short link before you hit share elsewhere. The first hour of traffic is the worst time to have a raw URL you meant to replace later.
More context on the category: URL shorteners that pay you.