Vanity URLs: How I made aka.sb

Wait, an emoji URL? I’M SHOOK! aka.sb/🔥

URL shortening is the process of taking longer links and creating smaller, more aesthetically pleasing URLs that link to the same page. This can result in having friendlier URLs that are easier for people to remember, and can also be quite useful on social media platforms that limit the number of characters that can appear in a message.

What’s more, using URLs that appear friendlier and are easier to remember can boost the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. Many URL shortening services also offer analytics on those links so you can better understand your target audience, such as how many people clicked, who referred them to your site, and where they live.

Popular services

There are several popular URL shortening services that come in both free and paid versions. Some of them allow you to brand your links with a custom domain. Examples of URL shortening services are Bitly, Google URL Shortener, Rebrandly, and Buffer.

Creating your own

For this purpose, I was inspired by the branded short URL that Microsoft often uses (e.g.,aka.ms/netcore). Microsoft created their own vanity URL manager. I wanted to achieve similar results, so I set out to create my own branded short domain.

#1 Have an awesome name!

I found out that the Solomon Islands TLD matched my initials, so I decided to follow in Microsoft’s footsteps and register aka.sb.

#2 Choose your URL rebranding service

The next thing I needed to do was a find a URL rebranding service that would allow me to use a custom domain name. Sure, I could’ve created my own application that redirects users to whatever URLs I specify, but I also wanted to get analytics on my links such as how many clicks they got and where those people live. Wiring up all those different things, and then creating dashboards that I could easily use to view that information would take a while, so I searched for a service that would do this for free. That’s how I found Rebrandly.

Rebrandly supports custom domains and custom short URLs as well as randomly generated ones. Adding domains and creating new links is simple. Surprisingly, it even supports using emojis in your links.

#3 Profit?

It also has several extensions you can use that makes the service even more useful. The Goo.gl connector automatically creates a Goo.gl short link, which has built in analytics for free.

And with the Goo.gl connector, I get a simple view of information such as how many clicks the link got, who the referrers were, what browsers and OSs were used, and where the people are located.

The only thing left to do after that is sit back and watch the numbers grow.