TinyURL.com

[Gilby]

My new tiny site... check out http://tinyurl.com

I created it as an offshoot of the newsgroup <-> forum gateway that I am
rewriting and I needed a way to shorten URLs for output to the newsgroup
so that they wouldn't wrap and wouldn't take up a lot of space and this
is the solution I came up with.

Feel free to use it.

- Gilby

[Rodney Blackwell =?iso-8859-1?Q?=AE?=]

wow, that's pretty neat :-)

how long do the URLs last? You should sign up for fastclick
(http://tinyurl.com/e) :-). That seems like a service that could generate
some good impressions (and end up with high google rankings)

Gilby wrote:

> My new tiny site... check out http://tinyurl.com
>
> I created it as an offshoot of the newsgroup <-> forum gateway that I am
> rewriting and I needed a way to shorten URLs for output to the newsgroup
> so that they wouldn't wrap and wouldn't take up a lot of space and this
> is the solution I came up with.
>
> Feel free to use it.
>
> - Gilby

[Gilby]

Rodney Blackwell ® wrote:

> wow, that's pretty neat :-)
>
> how long do the URLs last? You should sign up for fastclick
> (http://tinyurl.com/e) :-). That seems like a service that could generate
> some good impressions (and end up with high google rankings)


Well, the links will last forever... however, I am thinking of a couple
ways to turn the traffic into profit. One thing I am thinking is to have
the links directly redirect for a month or so, then change it to be
either a framed page or a page that states that the URL is old and then
allow them to click a link on that page to continue. I am not sure
exactly what I'll do yet. Currently it is only able to handle just over
4 million URLs until it'll no longer make working TinyURLs, but if it
comes to that, I'll easily be able to change it. And with 4 million
URLs, the longest length of the tinyurl will be 26 characters (ie.
http://tinyurl.com/1234567).

Once it reaches the 2500 ad impressions per month, I'll sign up for
fastclick. :)

Any ideas how I can promote it initially? Once it gets going, I would
assume that it'll promote itself as people use the URLs.

- Gilby

[Rodney Blackwell =?iso-8859-1?Q?=AE?=]

Well, there is a similar service at http://www.linkcounter.com/ that requires
you to login and have an account. This creates more impressions, but some
people shy away from having to login. But with the login comes stats that a
user can use to see how many time their "tinyurl" has been clicked.

As for ways of promoting it. I would suggest writing a small article for
popular webmaster resources newsletters and using your service as an URLSI.
Maybe an article about the necessity for hiding affiliate urls, and smaller
urls. Find webmaster and domain name owner resource sites (like
http://www.domainjunkies.com, http://www.cgi-city.net, thefreesite,
associate-it, linkexchange digest, and even your own site coolwhois.com) and
write them a personal email to offer exchange links with them (giving them a
little blurb about your system...I'd focus on the part about not having to
login or provide an personal information). Keep working along those lines and
work the search engines...

You could also make a 468x60 banner for people to use (or work out some
exchange with our esteemed banner makers of the group) so that people could add
your banner to their rotation ;-)

Gilby wrote:

> Rodney Blackwell ® wrote:
>
> > wow, that's pretty neat :-)
> >
> > how long do the URLs last? You should sign up for fastclick
> > (http://tinyurl.com/e) :-). That seems like a service that could generate
> > some good impressions (and end up with high google rankings)
>
> Well, the links will last forever... however, I am thinking of a couple
> ways to turn the traffic into profit. One thing I am thinking is to have
> the links directly redirect for a month or so, then change it to be
> either a framed page or a page that states that the URL is old and then
> allow them to click a link on that page to continue. I am not sure
> exactly what I'll do yet. Currently it is only able to handle just over
> 4 million URLs until it'll no longer make working TinyURLs, but if it
> comes to that, I'll easily be able to change it. And with 4 million
> URLs, the longest length of the tinyurl will be 26 characters (ie.
> http://tinyurl.com/1234567).
>
> Once it reaches the 2500 ad impressions per month, I'll sign up for
> fastclick. :)
>
> Any ideas how I can promote it initially? Once it gets going, I would
> assume that it'll promote itself as people use the URLs.
>
> - Gilby

[Gilby]

Gilby wrote:

> Once it reaches the 2500 ad impressions per month, I'll sign up for
> fastclick. :)


Doh! There's always a catch to limit me out:
Fastclick doesn't accept sites that:
"* Are hosted by a free service, are personal home pages, provide free
URL redirection,or do not own the domain they are under;"

I suppose tinyurl fits that url redirection thing.

- Gilby

[Peter N. Go]

Gilby wrote:
>
> Doh! There's always a catch to limit me out:

> I suppose tinyurl fits that url redirection thing.


You can write to them and appeal. If you have a "good" traffic ratio, I
believe they can allow it as a special case.

--
Peter N. Go - mailto:peter@icthus.net
------------------------------------------------------
http://CGI-City.net http://ArticleCity.com
http://ZenSearch.com http://BannerBuild.com
http://RegisterGuy.com http://BudgetWebHost.com
http://NewsCuts.com http://FreeMailWeb.com
------------------------------------------------------
Accept Credit Cards Online. Run An Affiliate Program.
http://www.icthus.net/cgi-city/clickbank.html
------------------------------------------------------

[Yevgeniy Leshchinskiy]

Awesome idea! If you can promote it well enough it can be big!

Yevgeniy

"Gilby" <mail@gilby.com> wrote in message news:3C58A451.7050007@gilby.com...
> My new tiny site... check out http://tinyurl.com
>
> I created it as an offshoot of the newsgroup <-> forum gateway that I am
> rewriting and I needed a way to shorten URLs for output to the newsgroup
> so that they wouldn't wrap and wouldn't take up a lot of space and this
> is the solution I came up with.
>
> Feel free to use it.
>
> - Gilby
>

[Rodney Blackwell]

plus you could signup under the coolwhois.com site or your gilby.com site
and then add on more sites as you create them (that's what I do...and I
think Peter does it too).

--
Rodney Blackwell - site owner/administrator
------------------------------------------------------------
http://T-ShirtCountdown.com http://TalkT-Shirts.com/
http://ihateclowns.com/ http://Globie.com/
http://DomainJunkies.com/ http://EmailSources.com/
http://GotPaintball.com/ http://CircleRPrinting.com
------------------------------------------------------------

"Gilby" <mail@gilby.com> wrote in message news:3C58B90D.9000403@gilby.com...
> Gilby wrote:
>
> > Once it reaches the 2500 ad impressions per month, I'll sign up for
> > fastclick. :)
>
>
> Doh! There's always a catch to limit me out:
> Fastclick doesn't accept sites that:
> "* Are hosted by a free service, are personal home pages, provide free
> URL redirection,or do not own the domain they are under;"
>
> I suppose tinyurl fits that url redirection thing.
>
> - Gilby
>

[Rodney Blackwell]

I think they are concerned about you just showing popups or ads when people
use your service (ie, give out a tinyurl [man that's a good name!]), because
people close those windows so quickly and they tend to be wasted
impressions. If you just used it for the content pages, I don't think they
would mind, but you could always ask http://tinyurl.com/e

--
Rodney Blackwell - site owner/administrator
------------------------------------------------------------
http://T-ShirtCountdown.com http://TalkT-Shirts.com/
http://ihateclowns.com/ http://Globie.com/
http://DomainJunkies.com/ http://EmailSources.com/
http://GotPaintball.com/ http://CircleRPrinting.com
------------------------------------------------------------

"Gilby" <mail@gilby.com> wrote in message news:3C58B90D.9000403@gilby.com...
> Gilby wrote:
>
> > Once it reaches the 2500 ad impressions per month, I'll sign up for
> > fastclick. :)
>
>
> Doh! There's always a catch to limit me out:
> Fastclick doesn't accept sites that:
> "* Are hosted by a free service, are personal home pages, provide free
> URL redirection,or do not own the domain they are under;"
>
> I suppose tinyurl fits that url redirection thing.
>
> - Gilby
>

[Tony Ranieri]

thats what i was thinking...
i was thinking about doing something similar, but never figured out how to
make anything out of a script that would do this

but that url is pretty sweet

"Rodney Blackwell" <circler@spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:a3ah5d$kn1$1@www.t-shirtcountdown.com...
> use your service (ie, give out a tinyurl [man that's a good name!]),
because

[Peter N. Go]

Yevgeniy Leshchinskiy wrote:
>
> Awesome idea! If you can promote it well enough it can be big!

Good tagline: "TinyURL - it can be big!"
:)

--
Peter N. Go - mailto:peter@icthus.net
------------------------------------------------------
http://CGI-City.net http://ArticleCity.com
http://ZenSearch.com http://BannerBuild.com
http://RegisterGuy.com http://BudgetWebHost.com
http://NewsCuts.com http://FreeMailWeb.com
------------------------------------------------------
Accept Credit Cards Online. Run An Affiliate Program.
http://www.icthus.net/cgi-city/clickbank.html
------------------------------------------------------

[Peter N. Go]

Rodney Blackwell wrote:
>
> plus you could signup under the coolwhois.com site or your gilby.com site
> and then add on more sites as you create them (that's what I do...and I
> think Peter does it too).

Yes, FC allows you to manage different sites under 1 account. But they
do screen each and everyone of your site.

--
Peter N. Go - mailto:peter@icthus.net
------------------------------------------------------
http://CGI-City.net http://ArticleCity.com
http://ZenSearch.com http://BannerBuild.com
http://RegisterGuy.com http://BudgetWebHost.com
http://NewsCuts.com http://FreeMailWeb.com
------------------------------------------------------
Accept Credit Cards Online. Run An Affiliate Program.
http://www.icthus.net/cgi-city/clickbank.html
------------------------------------------------------

[Peter N. Go]

Rodney Blackwell wrote:
>
> you could always ask http://tinyurl.com/e


That would be the best move. If they say OK, then you have it in
writing. One of my clients operates a URL redirection service and was
OK'd by FC.

--
Peter N. Go - mailto:peter@icthus.net
------------------------------------------------------
http://CGI-City.net http://ArticleCity.com
http://ZenSearch.com http://BannerBuild.com
http://RegisterGuy.com http://BudgetWebHost.com
http://NewsCuts.com http://FreeMailWeb.com
------------------------------------------------------
Accept Credit Cards Online. Run An Affiliate Program.
http://www.icthus.net/cgi-city/clickbank.html
------------------------------------------------------

[Gilby]

Tony Ranieri wrote:

> thats what i was thinking...
> i was thinking about doing something similar, but never figured out how to
> make anything out of a script that would do this


I just wrote the script myself. Pretty simple in php.


> but that url is pretty sweet
>
> "Rodney Blackwell" <circler@spamcop.net> wrote in message
> news:a3ah5d$kn1$1@www.t-shirtcountdown.com...
>
>>use your service (ie, give out a tinyurl [man that's a good name!]),
>>

I was surprised the domain was still available... I kept trying other
domains but all of them were taken. Then I looked up 'short' in a
thesaurus and found 'tiny' in there and that was perfect (and shorter
than short :) ).

- Gilby

[Rodney Blackwell]

that really is a great domain name! very easy to remember

--
Rodney Blackwell - site owner/administrator
------------------------------------------------------------
http://T-ShirtCountdown.com http://TalkT-Shirts.com/
http://ihateclowns.com/ http://Globie.com/
http://DomainJunkies.com/ http://EmailSources.com/
http://GotPaintball.com/ http://CircleRPrinting.com
------------------------------------------------------------

"Gilby" <mail@gilby.com> wrote in message news:3C58A451.7050007@gilby.com...
> My new tiny site... check out http://tinyurl.com
>
> I created it as an offshoot of the newsgroup <-> forum gateway that I am
> rewriting and I needed a way to shorten URLs for output to the newsgroup
> so that they wouldn't wrap and wouldn't take up a lot of space and this
> is the solution I came up with.
>
> Feel free to use it.
>
> - Gilby
>

[Gilby]

I submitted the site to Yahoo, hopefully, I can get a free listing. :)

I love overture... because I fine tuned my description into:
"utility to make a short URL with free redirection to the website
address you submit."

Uses all the good keywords, so I hope they don't change it. I wish I
would've come up with that description last night when I submitted the
site to dmoz. Oh well.

- Gilby

[Rodney Blackwell]

what category did you submit your site to? You should add some contact
information to the page as well (to help get it listed in Yahoo!)

--
Rodney Blackwell - site owner/administrator
------------------------------------------------------------
http://T-ShirtCountdown.com http://TalkT-Shirts.com/
http://ihateclowns.com/ http://Globie.com/
http://DomainJunkies.com/ http://EmailSources.com/
http://GotPaintball.com/ http://CircleRPrinting.com
------------------------------------------------------------

"Gilby" <mail@gilby.com> wrote in message news:3C5A2414.6000103@gilby.com...
> I submitted the site to Yahoo, hopefully, I can get a free listing. :)
>
> I love overture... because I fine tuned my description into:
> "utility to make a short URL with free redirection to the website
> address you submit."
>
> Uses all the good keywords, so I hope they don't change it. I wish I
> would've come up with that description last night when I submitted the
> site to dmoz. Oh well.
>
> - Gilby
>

[Gilby]

Rodney Blackwell wrote:

> what category did you submit your site to?


This one: http://tinyurl.com/j

> You should add some contact

> information to the page as well (to help get it listed in Yahoo!)

How will contact info help?

- Gilby

[Rodney Blackwell]

I've read that contact information helps Yahoo see that you are a legitimate
business/service/entity. I don't know how true it is, but I put up a simple
link to an email address on domainjunkies.com before I submitted (I don't
know how well it worked, but it got in)

--
Rodney Blackwell - site owner/administrator
------------------------------------------------------------
http://T-ShirtCountdown.com http://TalkT-Shirts.com/
http://ihateclowns.com/ http://Globie.com/
http://DomainJunkies.com/ http://EmailSources.com/
http://GotPaintball.com/ http://CircleRPrinting.com
------------------------------------------------------------

"Gilby" <mail@gilby.com> wrote in message news:3C5A2B43.4080900@gilby.com...
> Rodney Blackwell wrote:
>
> > what category did you submit your site to?
>
>
> This one: http://tinyurl.com/j
>
> > You should add some contact
>
> > information to the page as well (to help get it listed in Yahoo!)
>
> How will contact info help?
>
> - Gilby
>

[Gilby]

Gilby wrote:

> Currently it is only able to handle just over
> 4 million URLs until it'll no longer make working TinyURLs


Oops... that should be 4 billion, with a b (4,294,967,295 to be exact).

[Rodney Blackwell]

are you allowed to say "only" and "billion" in the same sentence? ;-)

--
Rodney Blackwell - site owner/administrator
------------------------------------------------------------
http://T-ShirtCountdown.com http://TalkT-Shirts.com/
http://ihateclowns.com/ http://Globie.com/
http://DomainJunkies.com/ http://EmailSources.com/
http://GotPaintball.com/ http://CircleRPrinting.com
------------------------------------------------------------

"Gilby" <mail@gilby.com> wrote in message news:3C5A423E.5040208@gilby.com...
> Gilby wrote:
>
> > Currently it is only able to handle just over
> > 4 million URLs until it'll no longer make working TinyURLs
>
>
> Oops... that should be 4 billion, with a b (4,294,967,295 to be exact).
>

[Gilby]

Rodney Blackwell wrote:

> are you allowed to say "only" and "billion" in the same sentence? ;-)


Sure, who's going to stop me? That's the power of TinyURL! :)
Let's just say that if I get that many pageviews to my site, I'll be too
rich to care on it taking any more URLs. :) Alhtough for the small
amount of work required, I'd still do it.

- Gilby

[Rodney Blackwell]

plus, it gives people an email address to complain to incase there are any
abuse complaints that violate your TOS (makes your TOS seem more valid too)

--
Rodney Blackwell - site owner/administrator
------------------------------------------------------------
http://T-ShirtCountdown.com http://TalkT-Shirts.com/
http://ihateclowns.com/ http://Globie.com/
http://DomainJunkies.com/ http://EmailSources.com/
http://GotPaintball.com/ http://CircleRPrinting.com
------------------------------------------------------------

"Rodney Blackwell" <circler@spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:a3de4i$sjf$1@www.t-shirtcountdown.com...
> I've read that contact information helps Yahoo see that you are a
legitimate
> business/service/entity. I don't know how true it is, but I put up a
simple
> link to an email address on domainjunkies.com before I submitted (I don't
> know how well it worked, but it got in)
>
> --
> Rodney Blackwell - site owner/administrator
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> http://T-ShirtCountdown.com http://TalkT-Shirts.com/
> http://ihateclowns.com/ http://Globie.com/
> http://DomainJunkies.com/ http://EmailSources.com/
> http://GotPaintball.com/ http://CircleRPrinting.com
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "Gilby" <mail@gilby.com> wrote in message
news:3C5A2B43.4080900@gilby.com...
> > Rodney Blackwell wrote:
> >
> > > what category did you submit your site to?
> >
> >
> > This one: http://tinyurl.com/j
> >
> > > You should add some contact
> >
> > > information to the page as well (to help get it listed in Yahoo!)
> >
> > How will contact info help?
> >
> > - Gilby
> >
>
>

[thejdw]

Lol this thread is funny :D