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Links

Your Instagram bio has room for exactly one link. A YouTube description gets skimmed. A podcast host has to read your address out loud. In all three situations you want something short, easy to remember, and on your own domain: emilio.co/youtube rather than youtube.com/@emilioabril?sub_confirmation=1.

That is what links are for. You choose a short address on your domain, you choose where it leads, and TinyPages sends every visitor there. If the destination changes one day, you edit the link and everything you already published keeps working.

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Creating and editing links requires a Pro plan. Deleting one is always possible, and the links you already created keep redirecting even if your subscription ends, so a link printed in a video description never stops working.

  1. Go to Web pages in your dashboard and open the Links tab.
  2. Click Create link.
  3. In Name, give the link a short label so you can recognise it in your list, for example Free session waitlist. It is optional and only for you, your visitors never see it.
  4. In Your link, type the part that comes after your domain, for example youtube. Your domain is already shown in front of the field.
  5. In Redirects to, paste the full address where you want to send people, starting with https://.
  6. Confirm with Create link. It works right away.

The name you give a link shows in its own column in the list, so a page of short addresses stays easy to read at a glance. Leave it empty and the column simply stays blank for that link.

Back in the list, move your mouse over a link and a copy icon appears next to it. One click puts the full address in your clipboard, protocol and domain included, ready to paste into a bio or a video description.

Move your mouse over a link and a small menu appears at the end of the row, on the right.

Edit reopens the same form. Changing the destination is the whole point of a short link: the address you published everywhere stays exactly as it is, and from that moment on everyone who follows it lands on the new destination. You have nothing to correct in your bio or your old videos.

Delete asks for a second click to confirm, because there is no undo. Once removed, the address stops redirecting and anyone who follows it lands on your home page instead. Deleting works even without a Pro plan, so you are never stuck with a link you no longer want.

What gets accepted, what gets refused

The address accepts lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens. black-friday works, Black Friday and black_friday don't.

The destination has to be a full address starting with http:// or https://. So youtube.com/@me is refused, while https://youtube.com/@me goes through.

Three more cases where TinyPages stops you:

  • The address is already taken by one of your web pages or by another of your links. Each address leads to a single place.
  • The address is one TinyPages keeps for itself: blog, forms, students, login, checkout, system and unsubscribe.
  • The link points at itself, which would send your visitors round in circles.

And one rule you will rarely meet: if a web page and a link ever share the same address, the page is what your visitors see.

Follow your clicks

The Clicks column counts everyone who took the link. Click on the number and your visit stats open, already filtered on that link. You see where people came from (Instagram, YouTube, your newsletter), which country they were in, and whether they were on a phone or a computer.

Two things to know so the numbers don't surprise you:

  • When someone pastes your link into WhatsApp, Slack or X, those apps fetch the page to build a preview card. Those previews are not counted, only real visitors are.
  • Each counter belongs to the address it was collected on. Rename a link and its counter starts again from zero, the old address keeping what it had gathered. Same thing if you delete a link and later create a new one on the same address: it starts clean rather than inheriting clicks that were never meant for it.

The most useful habit is to give every place you publish its own link, even when they all lead to the same destination. /yt in your video descriptions, /ig in your bio, /news in your emails.

Three links, three counters, and you can tell at a glance which channel is actually bringing people in. It is also the one method that holds up when a browser or an app hides where the visitor came from, which happens more and more often.

Anything you add at the end of a short link is passed along to the destination. Publish emilio.co/webinar?utm_source=newsletter and your visitor lands on the destination with ?utm_source=newsletter still attached, so whichever tool you use on the other side can see where the visit came from.

If the destination already sets that same parameter itself, its own value is the one kept.

Those parameters are also recorded in your own visit stats. Send ?utm_source=newsletter on one campaign and ?utm_source=instagram on the next, and you can compare the two from TinyPages, without opening the tool on the other side.