Once upon a time, I thought the value in having a link shortener was to make it easier for readers of print books to access online information without having to type in 50 characters and a bunch of nonsensical scribble first. The first time I saw a shortened link in print, I thought, "Hey, that's cool, I should do that," then found that the only providers of shortened links wanted to charge me a monthly fee for the privilege. I mean, tech providers need to eat, too. Fair enough. But could I afford those prices when I wasn't really selling yet (and by not selling, I'm not implying unavailability)? And if I couldn't afford them, then did I really need them?

Fast-forward to modern times, and I learned that the value of link shortening is not simply to shorten but to include audience information, and analytics, and...well all the important marketing stuff that comes with selling anything. At that point, "That's cool" became "I should really consider this."

I've decided to make LinkJoy my "I should consider this." Yes, there are other link shorteners in the marketplace, some maybe even now. I'm sure they're all competent. So why LinkJoy? Well, it looks nice for one thing. But it also gives me the option to create a digital business card. And I can create subdomains that highlight categories of links, not just clump them all together. Instead of routing book links through my main site, I can now route them through a subdomain called "books" (thanks to a helpful video on the site that shows me how to create and use this subdomain), which makes them more "official" links than the random-looking third party universal links I had them connected to previously. Will these links generate more conversions? Time will tell. Will they at least look like the belong in my ecosystem? Yes they will.

I still have to create a Link in Bio, which is my other reason for purchasing LinkJoy. After watching the video tutorials, I'm confident this will be easy to do. I expect a few social media limitations, as there are hundreds out there, and I can't expect LinkJoy to link them all out of the box (Goodreads, anyone?). But the developers are eager to expand their reach, it seems, so it probably wouldn't be difficult to get those extra connections I want, if I just ask (and I'm asking for Goodreads and BookBub, for the record). And whether this can be done or not, just having a place to display my best videos or blog posts, or a means to connect to my book pages on my site, all on a single mobile-responsive page, AND be able to connect them to a QR code among other things, makes this the ideal "link everything" tool.

And this doesn't even begin to touch on the Instagram content, which I confess I don't yet have or use. But again, someday I might use Instagram. And guess what. I'll have a tool in my arsenal to make using it more effective.

Yep, my motto is "It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it." So now I have a link shortener.