I use to use those ad link sites, then I stopped. You see, those sites may be legit one day, but then they turn bad. Happened to me numerous times, they would be safe and use google ads, but they all would keep cutting corners and eventually turn into virus laden or pornography. Eventually I just gave up, and I will never use link shortners again. I'm still trying to revert some links on my old projects, but it takes time. Take my word for it, just don't use link shortner sites for money.

Going beyond that, if you really do want to still make money, I did a cost-analysis on money earned from url shortners vs adrev from youtube, and I actually found I make more money from Youtube. So now when I post a project, I'll add a video that showcases it or shows a timelapse, etc. I do much better that way, and I don't annoy anyone.

I know this stuff is common place in the minecraft community, but I don't believe it's legal (not a lawyer) I would check mojans EULA first and even Microsoft's. You are basically making money of their product without paying them a percentage, but like I said it's common place in the community so it looks like Mojang/Microsoft are not to fussed about it (for now at least). Could be a better Idea to set up some sort of patreon or something instead, maybe?

Yes, completely yes, if you spend time on it you should have control over how it's used or even who uses it, how it's monetized, etc. If people get malware from a website, that's on them, technically you never told them to click on the ad, however it may be a good idea to have some sort of disclaimer that you aren't responsible for any malware that was gotten through that site, however you shouldn't need to because the site isn't owned or affiliated with you, however I'm no lawyer. Most of the people that'll call you a scumbag for that are communists and honestly I don't consider them people so does that really matter? We all start somewhere, and It's perfectly fine to ask for support, even if you think your creations are low-quality. Over time, you'll get better and better.

However side-tangent, on the same topic, personally the EULA for servers is a bit much, like servers shouldn't be told that they can't monetize their server unless it's cosmetics, the average person isn't going to want to buy cosmetics that do nothing unless they're trying to flex on their friends, and servers need funding to run. If your only microtransactions are cosmetic items, which some servers can't even do due to the nature of the server, it'll die out quickly because of lack of funds. Honestly if they got rid of those restrictions I would actually be happy for maybe a day before I remember that the world is a mess and reality sets in again. So if you ever plan to start a server there's that.

TL;DR: Maps, texture packs, etc. are ok, however on servers you need to be careful because of the commies at Mojang that don't like people having money.

It's always a fine idea to monetize your creations, however, the sad truth behind most of the ad sites is that they pay you money they got from companies that trick people into downloading unwanted malware and ad-ware.
Though, as bad as that sounds, you also have to consider that most people are smart enough to avoid those things.

A seperate solution that you might want to consider is setting up a paypal and connecting it to one of the "Pay what you want sites". That way, people can choose to donate any amount of money to you that they want, or they could simply download your creation for free. I have a friend who does this with his resourcepack, and compared to what he earned from his adfly link, he actually earned more from the donations, than he ever did with advertisment sites.

So for slow, but constant profit, you want to go for an ad-site.
For random influxes in profit, you want to go for the "Donate what you want" things :p

you are creating a product, if your creation is of good enough quality than there is no reason why you shouldnt make a little bit of money from your hard work, i would say go for it! just avoid things that would put viruses on peoples computer

Personally I think it's okay to monetize what you spent time to work on.

However those ad sites with potential viruses are pretty bad, and I straight up refuse to download if I see those.. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone with this too.

I'd recommend setting up a paypal or patreon. Probably less money to flow in from your work, but more user friendly, and won't drive traffic away from your page and creation.



To anwser the original question: Is it okay? Yes. Absolutely. The method itself is what you should be thinking of more.