Creating your own URL shortener

After reading some posts about problems with bit.ly and other URL shorteners I want to share this method. Obviously URL shorteners serve a purpose in controlling your links but giving over control of a link (say an affiliate link in an article you already posted on a major site) and then having bit.ly or any service decide to take it down sucks.

You lose. There are a couple of articles posted here on how to make your own but my solution is much simpler. Costs a few dollars.


Wordpress already has plugins for this. I use them. One that I can think of that integrates Twitter and other stuff is prettylinks.

I would never give over my valuable links to someone else.

Buy a .us or other 2 digit domain. There are still 3 digit names.

say you buy 8UP.US you can create shorties like http://8UP.US/X for your link

And you control it for life

Just grab a short .us domain>use it as an addon domain in Cpanel>Fantastico install Wordpress>install pretty links.

In an hours time you create your own private URL shortening service. It pays off down the road.

You have a control panel to control all your shortened links now and it doesn't cost.

Takes 20 seconds to make your own
Keeps it short
Make as many as you want
Hide your affiliate code
Change the destination whenever you want
Total control
No one can take it away or change it

Say you have a popular article or link out there but a better product comes out in the same niche? They have a better site and better selling copy?

Redirect the existing affiliate link in the article because its too late the change the article. You still have control of old content.

i was overthinking about using some url shortening scripts, you are awsome and gave me the best shortcut possible, thanks am going to do it with my
3 letter domain yapppy

these 3 letters domains are often expensive, anyway cool idea

You can also use yourls which gives you some nice features on the backend like tracking, etc.

and it isn't that 3 letter domains are so expensive, it's getting them when they expire before all the other blackhatters that takes some skill. hehe.

Well .info is $1.99 if you don't mind 2 extra letters....

.ca is fine too

domainers, who do business in buying/selling domain names, have just make it more complicated to get 3 letters domains, better go for 4 letters ones...

has anyone tried 404url . com ?

This is similar to something I've been doing for about a year. It's a FANTASTIC alternative to public shorteners. Plus, you can still implement other plugins to track the traffic to your shortened links.