How I turned sharing other people’s articles into a way to grow my own list and traffic

Hey, random share from me today.

I’m the kind of person who’s always finding cool stuff online — articles, news, interesting blog posts and I love sharing them in FB groups, Reddit threads, or group chats.

But here’s what started bugging me: every time I drop a link, I’m basically sending people straight to someone else’s site. It’s great for sharing value, but I started thinking… is there a way I could also benefit a bit from all these clicks, without having to write my own blog or make my own content?

So here’s what I tried:

I built this little tool that takes any link I want to share and wraps it in a new link. When people click it, they still see the original page (the article, news piece, or blog post), but there’s a small popup or a banner with my own CTA — like “Check out my website” or “Subscribe to my newsletter.”

Basically, it lets me keep sharing cool content as usual, but also gently invite people to visit my own page, drop their email, or do whatever I want them to do.

And it’s not just about email popups. For example, my friend sells solar panels, and he recently shared a news article about rising electricity prices — but he used my tool to add a CTA leading people to his solar business website. So it’s super flexible.

Sometimes you don’t have the time (or the desire) to create your own articles or blog posts, but you still want to share valuable stuff and get some visibility in return. This kind of solves that.

Here’s a random example I made with a Wikipedia page about Elon Musk:👉 https://poplink.to/l/2s3fj3

I dropped that into some Facebook groups, and within an hour, people were not only reading the page but also checking out my own link. That felt like a small win because I didn’t have to create any original content, yet I still got extra eyeballs on my stuff.

It’s definitely not perfect yet. It’s totally free right now because it’s still in beta. Some sites block it, and I’m working on ways around that (I’ve got some ideas but need time to implement them). But overall, it’s been surprisingly fun to play with.

Anyway, just wanted to share in case anyone else here has ever felt like they’re sending free traffic to other people’s sites all the time — maybe this is a way to get something back from it. Curious if anyone else has tried similar hacks or tools?

https://poplink.to/