Best Link Shortener: Why You Must Shorten Your URLs

Are you looking for the best link shortener? Well, I’ve got you covered because this post reveals my secret tool to shorten my affiliate links seamlessly.

And you can do the same as well. Link shortening, also called URL shortening, refers to shortening your links for several benefits. 

Also, this post will help you make your own link shortener and save bucks. All you need is to go to Codecanyon and buy the Premium URL Shortener for a one-time fee only. Are you feeling overwhelmed right now? Me too. So, let’s get started without further ado. 

What is a Link Shortener

A link shortener is a software or service that shortens the links. But what makes a premium link shortener? It takes a long URL and lets you shorten it into whatever URL you want it to be. Also, it means you can change the links and make them entirely custom. 

Now let’s explore some of the benefits of using a URL shortener for your website or online business. 

Why Use a URL Shortener?

What are the benefits of using a link shortener? In this section, I’ll help you understand the importance of shortening your affiliate links. 

Track Valuable Insights

An important benefit of using a URL shortener is being able to track what happens when you share a link. A link shortener helps you view the breakdown of visitors including their country of origin or gender. Also, you can analyze which of your social channels or posts are bringing in the most traffic. 

Make Your Links Look Clean & Professional

People skip over long links or URLs because they look clunky & boring, and they bounce even before clicking the link. Short links have the ability to increase the probability of the target post getting clicks. 

And it has become a common practice in the world of digital marketing. It's highly likely that your audience is accustomed to seeing content shared with shortened links. In fact, this practice is so common that they may notice if you don’t compress your links. 

Boost Your Brand Awareness

Offering custom short links makes your brand more visible. And prospective clients and existing ones can share and recognize the link with your brand name immediately. That’s why Amazon link shortener has come into existence. 

Amzn.to is the branded link shortener created by Amazon which is an easy abbreviation of the brand name itself. Yes, one of the most popular sites, Amazon, also shortens its URLs to promote brand recognition.

Drive Engagement to Your Content

Short links are more engaging, especially if they're associated with your brand. Rebrandly reports that shorter URLs increase engagement by 39%.

The benefit of a URL shortener is that it's easy to cross-promote your products, services, and blog posts. And you can do it without changing the links you share.

Shortening your links helps to drive traffic back to your website with features like:

• Badges 
• Channels.
• Cross-promotion
• Analysis of click timings 
• Splash pages and more

A link shortener helps you drive maximum engagement and potential traffic to your blog or landing page. And you never have to worry about changing your links across all the platforms. Now, I’ll share the best link shortener to avoid the hefty monthly costs you usually pay for such services. 

Best Link Shortener to Save Your Bucks

There are many link shortening services online. The free link shorteners offer minimum functionality. Opt for paid URL shorteners to hone all the benefits. Here are a few URL shortening tools available online:

1. Bitly (Min. $29/month for upto 1500 links)

2. TinyURL (Min. $10/month for upto 500 links)

3. Rebrandly (Min. $29/month for upto 5000 links)

4. Sniply (Min. $29/month for upto 5000 clicks)

5. Owly (Needs a Hootsuite plan which starts from $19/month)

Now let me reveal my choice for the best link shortener. 

L-ink.Me – Premium Link Shortener (5$/Month for Unlimited Links)

With Link.Me, you can use your long URLs to shorten them into shorter, smarter versions that you can track clicks on and market more effectively. It has tons of awesome features including device targeting, splash pages and link rotation.

I’ve made this link shortener to help you enjoy the benefits of shortening your links at affordable pricing. Thanks to its advanced features, L-ink.Me is an extremely powerful shortening tool. And you can do a lot of things here. Let me walk you through the dashboard.

1. Go to https://l-ink.me and sign up for free

2. Confirm your email address now

3. Explore the L-ink.Me dashboard offering you tons of features inside it. You can make use of splash and overlay pages.

Track your links using pixels. Connect your domain for custom links. And manage your links in ‘Archived’ and ‘Expired’ links. 

4. Enter your long affiliate URL just before the ‘Shorten’ button. And do the shortening in seconds. 

Branded Links

5. You can also enjoy sharing branded links, instead of just the shortened ones. For example, I’ve chosen “h-y.me” to be my branded domain. And after a slash, I enter my affiliate’s name for increasing brand awareness. 

All you need is to click on ‘Custom Domain’ on the left bar of the L.ink.Me dashboard. And then add your domain here.

For that, go to your domain registrar and paste your IP address (given in the L-ink.Me dashboard) in the DNS records. 

Go back to your L-ink.Me dashboard, enter the custom domain name and click on ‘Add Domain’. That’s just it! You’ve added your custom domain name to create branded links. 

6. Create One Universal Affiliate Link

There’s another feature called ‘Link Bundle’. It’s just like Linktree which offers only one link for sharing all your links. Linktree charges you $6 per month, while L-ink.Me offers this and tons of other features for almost $5 per month. 

Here’s how you create a link bundle. Choose ‘Bundle’ from the dashboard. And click on ‘Create Bundle’ now.

Go back to your main dashboard and add links to the bundle you just created. And then you can use the bundle link to share all your links. 

7. Create Splash Pages

Create your splash pages within the L-ink.Me dashboard. Splash pages are pages that appear before any page on your website.

Depending on the niche your business operates in, a splash page can incorporate promotions, disclaimers or warnings.

8. L-ink.Me also offers tracking pixels, which means you can retarget your audience on other platforms. Watch my video to better understand how ads retargeting works on Facebook. 

I believe L-ink.Me is the most premium link shortener because of so many useful features. Don’t believe my words because I own it. Try comparing all the best options for shortening your links. 

How to Make a Link Shortener Website Without Coding

You can start an online business by launching a URL shortening service. Or you can do it for your business without paying hefty amounts of money to bit.ly like companies. Here’s the video on how you can do it:

If you want to make your link shortener just like my Link.Me, you can do it with zero coding knowledge. Yes, that’s right. Isn’t it awesome? Let me tell you how you do it. 

1. Get a domain name from registrars like Namecheap

2. Choose from the top VPS servers – I recommend Contabo or DigitalOcean

3. Go to Contabo VPS page and set Ubuntu 18.04 as your VPS 

4. Select LAMP from Contabo’s ‘administration Panel’

5. Choose ‘individual reverse DNS’ from the Addons

6. Map your domain to your VPS server now

7. Create your MySQL database using SSH client like PuTTY

8. Install PHP Modules to publish your php site

9. Configure Apache and restart your service, connect it to MySQL

10. Set up cronjobs using WinSCP

Now that your server is ready for a php script, buy the code from Codecanyon. And install it on your newly setup server. I hope it helps set up your site seamlessly.

Visit this guide to create your SaaS business based on Premium Link Shortener or watch my YouTube video here:

Conclusion: Best Link Shortener in 2021

Link shortening can be an effective technique to track valuable insights from links and make them clean. Also, it helps you boost your brand awareness and engagement. And you never have to change all the inks shared across the web and social media. 

Because all you need is the best link shortener to help you enjoy all these benefits. I recommend L-ink.Me because I have made it to help you enjoy all the premium features at reasonable pricing. 

Or just buy Premium URL Shortener on Codecanyon, install it on your server and use your link shortening system. Of course you would need to manage everything as an administrator and link shortening entrepreneurs. What are you going to do?