Thought I'd share this with everyone -- free custom (i.e. your own domain, not Bitly, etc) short URL
I thought I'd share this with everyone. I imagine some of the people who have been here a while know about this already, but for the newbies, this may be a great deal: You can use the .tk domain, which is from a small chain of islands called Tokelau (they're technically under the protection of New Zealand, though they're way out in the middle of nowhere, halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii and the entire country is 10.8 square km spread over three islands with just 1,433 residents) for a short URL.
Anyway, the thing that's pretty cool is that they offer both paid and free short URLs. You can register a 4 character URL with them (and yes, blog.tk is taken) for free if it's not a URL which has value under their system (for instance, when I tried mony.tk I was told I'd have to pay around $300, but the URL I did register ultimately, dolr.tk for my personal finance website -- just say it out loud and you'll understand why I took it-- was available free). If you want less than 4 characters, you have to pay no matter what you order.
Now, there is a catch with free domains. You must have at least 25 unique visitors in a 90 period or you lose your domain. This means you'd better make sure you're getting at least 25 clicks in the course of three months.
You can also register your domains for a fairly modest fee. I have not seen anyone else offering short URLs for so little -- it's $19.90 for two years or you can get up to 9 years for $62.55. By comparison, I paid a little under $100 for my .com address for 10 years and thought I was getting a steal -- most of the ccTLDs, if they are available at all for purchase outside the countries they are assigned to (many aren't -- I tried to register fina.nc but you have to be a resident of New Caledonia to do so) are insanely expensive, often costing as much as $100-$150 per year.
Oh and the other catch with the free version is that while you have full rights to use the free domain for whatever you want, you are not registered with whois as the owner.
Anyway, registering avoids the problems of needing to get 25 unique visitors and also avoids problems with their deciding at some point in the future to stop offering the freebies. However, if you're just starting out, it can be a pretty good deal to get a short URL of your own as long as you know you have 25 people who can use the link every 3 months. Or at the very least, you'll get the three months to decide if you want to continue to use them.
Also, for those with Wordpress blogs, there is a plugin (I'm still trying to test it) which should theoretically work with your new domain name to create customized short URLs. It's called la petite URL.
Anyway, I hope someone finds that helpful.
Edit: I forgot to mention where you got to get the free domain. This is what happens when you write something when you're tired: Dot TK - Renaming The Internet
Eric
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