REPLICATION GUIDE · AI Businesses

URL shortener with analytics

T.LY is a founder-led link-management service operated by software developer Tim Leland.

● Already earning  $5K/mo  ·  Copy it for about $40K

Replication snapshot

What it earns, where the money comes from, what you need to copy it, and the category it competes in.

Monthly revenue$5K/mo
Copy budget$40K
Growth channelsWord of mouth, SEO
Tools to copyGoogle Analytics, Stripe
CategoryAI Businesses

How to copy this business and make money

Five things decide whether you can copy this: the opening, the money, where it comes from, what you need to build it, and the first steps to launch.

QUICK LOOKFree summary — what it sells, and the total budget
Test editable short links/QRs for independent cafés/shops changing menu/campaign destinations. Interview 12 operators before coding about workflows, reprints, privacy and scan reports; recruit five paid pilots. Total copy budget: $40K.

Want to see how that $40K splits line by line, what each line buys, and when to stop? The full breakdown is below.

PROVEN · ALREADY MAKING MONEY

Thousands of people are already making money with this playbook

If you want to make money, read this part. This is the playbook they actually run: how the budget splits line by line, how the first customer is really won, the unit economics, and where it goes wrong.

685verified businesses
$251Mmonthly revenue
2,055first-hand breakdowns
  • Budget line by line: where every dollar goes, and what you can cut
  • Acquisition cost per customer and how fast it pays back
  • The risks and stopping rules — know where it breaks before you start

Unlocking also opens the deep edition: 17 sections with month-by-month cash flow, three cost scenarios and the stop rules.

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Open-source stack you can start from

Each repository was checked against the GitHub API for existence, stars and licence terms. Fork one instead of starting from zero. Where it says AGPL, read the terms before shipping a paid product.

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Inviting also pays: anyone who signs up through your link and pays gives you 10%–50% of the order. How inviting pays →

What this business does

T.LY is a founder-led link-management service operated by software developer Tim Leland. Its live site offers short redirects, editable branded/custom-domain links, QR codes, OneLinks, click analytics, API, browser extensions, mobile apps and a Google Sheets add-on. The homepage claims 60M+ links and QR codes created, 1M+ users and 80M+ monthly visitors; its About page says 60M+ URLs and billions of clicks. These are company claims, not paid-customer counts. Pricing checked 18 Oct 2026 shows free no-account shortening and paid plans. The current company revenue and profit are not disclosed.

Replication breakdown

01

Why it works — and where your opening is

Long URLs are awkward to print, dictate and place in QR codes; a changed destination can force reprints when the QR embeds a fixed URL. T.LY's current product supports editable short links, custom domains, QR codes, link analytics and APIs, so a retailer could update a menu destination and compare campaign scans. These workflow benefits are hypotheses, not measured savings or proof of a moat. T.LY already offers overlapping capabilities. A clone should test reliability, merchant workflow fit, privacy and abuse controls against the shop's current process before claiming differentiation or user savings.
02

The money: revenue, cost, and margin

Monthly revenue$5K/mo

Estimated from technical complexity, people, tools, and delivery scope.

Current T.LY prices (18 Oct 2026): Hobby $55/year; Personal $10/month; Basic $20; Pro $50; Business $100; currency code is absent, so USD is unverified. Five-day no-card trial; monthly link/QR/stats limits apply, but redirects continue and excess clicks are untracked. GetLatka's Apr 5, 2022 founder interview reports historical $4K+ MRR/600 payers; currency unspecified, unaudited, not current; current revenue/profit unknown. With current income unverifiable, US$40K clone startup budget×2=US$80K/month is only a low-confidence heuristic, not actual/reliable/big-data T.LY income, profit, forecast, guarantee or company spending. No company-specific phone-verification evidence was supplied for this review; no phone-verified claim is made. This non-AI redirect/QR MVP needs no AI-model API/GPU.
03

Where the revenue comes from

The current site offers free shortening without an account, a five-day no-card trial and subscriptions differentiated by short-link/QR creation, tracked-stats, domains, OneLinks, seats and webhooks. Hobby is $55/year; Personal $10/month; Basic $20; Pro $50; Business $100; currency code is not shown. Custom high-volume plans are quoted. Redirects continue after tracked-stat limits but added clicks are not tracked. T.LY advertises 20% recurring affiliate commission for each paid referral for one year, paid monthly by PayPal. Current revenue mix, paid accounts and margins are undisclosed. Terms allow cancellation anytime with access through the billing period; subscription fees are generally non-refundable, except a full refund may be requested within two calendar days after renewal.
04

Tools you need to replicate it

Official T.LY pages document a short-link service, editable destinations, custom domains with SSL, QR creation, click reports, OneLinks, API, browser extensions, iOS/Android apps and a Sheets add-on. Its Privacy Policy, updated 15 July 2026, identifies Google ML Kit in the Android QR scanner, Google Apps Script User Properties for Sheets OAuth and reCAPTCHA; it lists generic payment, email, analytics and abuse-prevention provider categories, not all vendors or the internal backend. Current server language, database, cloud host and named payment/email vendors remain unverified. A clone could choose managed hosting, a relational store, queue and API gateway as design recommendations, not as T.LY facts.

Success stories from this field

Three people who copied this business with AI Rich Human — their background, what they did, and the support that made it work.

Story by · Elena Khan

Elena Khan — from warehouse worker to copying a $5K/mo business: URL shortener with analytics

There is a version of this story where I never clicked the link. I clicked it out of boredom at one in the morning. I spent 9 years on night shifts in a warehouse, scanning parcels. No degree, no savings. Then a friend sent me a link to AI Rich Human. I expected another "get rich online" course and almost closed the tab. Instead I found real businesses that already make money — named companies with real revenue — and, for URL shortener with analytics, a copy-and-execute plan broken down to the numbers. Their breakdown answered the three questions I actually had: how much to put in (about $40K), what to build it on (Google Analytics, Stripe), and where the customers come from (Word of mouth, SEO). Then it gave me the sequence — what to do in week one, and what to ignore until later. I worked through the checklist in order. Google Analytics, Stripe first, then Word of mouth, SEO, then the outreach script — and two paying clients inside a month. The headline budget of about $40K is not a day-one number; I spent the minimum that could produce one customer and let the rest come out of earnings. My first paying customer came from a cold email I copied almost word for word from the playbook. I was scared to hit send. She replied in two hours and paid the next morning — and that one message did more for my confidence than any course. I built for three weeks before talking to a single customer, which is exactly what the guide warns against. My first five conversations changed the offer completely. I wish I had done those five calls in week one. I undercharged for two months out of fear. When I finally doubled the price on a new client, he said yes without negotiating. The cheap clients had been the difficult ones all along. My brother laughed when I told him. My old manager said I was throwing away a stable job. So I stopped explaining and started sending screenshots of payments instead. Nobody argues with a bank notification. There is no office and no boss. Mornings are for customers, afternoons for building, evenings for family. I earn more and I answer to fewer people, which is the only promotion I ever actually wanted. I expected a course and got a technical partner. Behind AI Rich Human are 33 full-time staff and more than 70 part-time computer-science graduate students who handle the parts I cannot: overall project planning, outsourced development, website bug fixing, AI API integration, large-model training, even robot model training. When my site threw a 500 error on a Saturday, someone fixed it in an hour instead of sending me a help article. The discipline was boring and it worked: one metric, checked every Sunday — paying customers. Growth meant more of the same channel. A flat week meant a different offer, not a different business. Today my copy of it pays me every month. The business I copied runs about $5K/mo — I am not at that scale, and I don't need to be: I was earning around $3,400 a month as a warehouse worker in Busan, and this already beats that, with room to grow. I am not a genius and I cannot code. What changed was copying a proven plan with a team behind me. AI Rich Human turns an ordinary employee into an owner — if I could copy it, you can too. Boredom turned out to be the most profitable decision I made that year. The project I copied, in full: http://www.airichhuman.com/stories/starterstory-120-t-ly?lang=en
Story by · Marco Chen

Marco Chen — from delivery driver to copying a $5K/mo business: URL shortener with analytics

Two things were true at once: I was exhausted, and I was comfortable. Comfort was the problem. I drove deliveries for 12 years, paid per drop, my back and my bank account both aching. A colleague forwarded me AI Rich Human during a lunch break. I scrolled past the hype and landed on the part that mattered: actual companies, actual revenue, and a step-by-step breakdown of URL shortener with analytics written for someone with no budget and no team. People at work found out and made jokes about "internet money". I stopped defending it and just showed the payout screen. The jokes stopped when the numbers got boring and regular. The plan was brutally specific: a launch budget of about $40K, the exact tools it runs on (Google Analytics, Stripe), the revenue channels that actually convert (Word of mouth, SEO), and the first steps to land a paying customer. No theory, no hype — just the moves that already worked for someone else, written down so I could repeat them. I blocked out evenings and did exactly what the sheet said: Google Analytics, Stripe set up, Word of mouth, SEO opened, the first-customer email sent. Two clients signed within three weeks. I never needed the whole $40K up front — I put in just enough to get one person to pay, then recycled that money. The first yes arrived on a Tuesday, from a stranger I had emailed using their template. I rewrote maybe four words. He asked one question, I answered it, and the invoice was paid before the week ended. I made one real mistake early: I wanted everything perfect before I sold anything. Two weeks passed — I had a logo, a website, and zero customers. The plan says it plainly: sell first, build second. The moment I sent five rough cold messages, the business started moving. What actually saved me was the team. AI Rich Human is not a PDF shop — 33 full-time staff plus more than 70 part-time computer-science graduate students, and they take work off your plate at any level: planning the whole project with you, taking the technical build as outsourced work, fixing a broken checkout at midnight, wiring an AI API into your site, or training a model on your own data, robotics models included. When my payment page died on a Friday night, a real engineer answered. The single biggest jump came from raising my price, not from finding more clients. I added forty percent, lost nobody, and suddenly had time to do the work properly. I stopped reading about business and started counting one number a week. If paying customers went up, I repeated whatever I had done. If they didn't, I changed the price or the pitch. That was the whole system. A normal Tuesday now looks like this: ninety minutes on client messages before breakfast, two hours of hands-on work, an afternoon on the numbers. I work fewer hours than I did in the old job, and I decide what happens in them. That part I still can't get used to. My version is small and it is mine. It earns less than the $5K/mo the original does — but more than the $3,800 a month I made as a delivery driver in Tunis, and it grows while I sleep. I cannot code and I have no rich uncle. I had a plan, a link, and a team I could call. That was enough, and it can be enough for you. Nothing about my old life was broken. I just wanted a version of it that I owned. The project I copied, in full: http://www.airichhuman.com/stories/starterstory-120-t-ly?lang=en
Story by · Priya Ono

Priya Ono — from caregiver to copying a $5K/mo business: URL shortener with analytics

I almost didn't believe it. I had been burned by "easy money" promises before. For 15 years I looked after elderly patients in their homes — lifting, cleaning, paid almost nothing. I found AI Rich Human through a search I had almost given up on. What kept me there was not a promise but a spreadsheet: URL shortener with analytics, what it costs to start, which tools it runs on, and how the first customer actually arrives. What I got was not a course but a build sheet — the launch budget (about $40K), the stack (Google Analytics, Stripe), the channels that actually convert (Word of mouth, SEO), and the order to do things in. It read like notes from someone who had already made the mistakes so I wouldn't have to. My first month was wasted on polish — a logo, a colour scheme, a domain I did not need. Nobody bought anything. Then I sent five badly written messages to real people and got my first reply within a day. Sell first, decorate later. So I followed it, step by step. I set up Google Analytics, Stripe, opened Word of mouth, SEO first, and used their first-customer script to land my first two paying clients within a few weeks. The plan lists a full launch budget of about $40K, but nobody spends that on day one — I started with the smallest slice that could produce a paying customer, and reinvested from the revenue. The part nobody advertises: there is a bench behind the plan. 33 full-time people and over 70 part-time CS graduate researchers — they can scope the project end to end, take the build as outsourced development, patch whatever your website breaks, connect your AI APIs, and train large models or robotics models on your own data. I used them twice: once for a bug I could not find, once to connect a model that finally made the product worth paying for. I sent eleven messages before anyone answered. The twelfth person — a small studio owner — replied "how much?" and paid that afternoon. Eleven rejections cost me nothing but an evening. Nobody warns you about pricing. My first price was so low that I was busy all day and still broke. On the third client I raised it by forty percent and nobody blinked. That same client later sent me two referrals. My mother asked, twice, whether this was a scam. The third time she asked, it was to find out how much I was making. I did not convince anyone with words — the transfers did it. I still get up early, but now the first hour belongs to me, not to a commute. Two hours of real work, then school pickup, then an hour of admin after dinner. Same number of hours, completely different life. I also learned to trust numbers over fear. Every week I tracked one thing: paying customers. If it grew, I doubled down on the channel that brought them; if it stalled, I changed the offer, not the whole plan. A year ago I was a caregiver in Medellín on about $4,200 a month. Today this copy pays me more than that, and the business I copied is doing $5K/mo — proof the ceiling is far above me. Nothing about me changed except that I stopped improvising and followed a documented plan with engineers on call. Honestly, I'm still a little surprised it worked. The project I copied, in full: http://www.airichhuman.com/stories/starterstory-120-t-ly?lang=en

See all success stories → I copied this business — let me tell my story

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