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Make Really Short URL with XR.com

written by John Chow on November 13, 2008

How one lazy bum made $176,697.50

I received an email from Richard Lau about his new URL shorting service, XR.com. Richard said XR.com will be a tinyurl killer and will offer the shortest URLs out of any URL shortening services. XR.com does have an advantage in that its URL is very short to begin with – just two main letters.

What makes XR.com unique is it will be built with the help of its users. New features will be add based on feedback from you. And this was why Richard contacted me. He wants you to try out the service and tell him what you like and dislike about it.

A short URL comes in handy for services like Twitter, where you’re limited to 140 characters, and affiliate marketing, where it helps to mask the affiliate link. Affiliate marketers will like XR.com over other services because it has the ability to track clicks.

XR.com Vs. TinyURL

To test if XR.com really does provide the shortest URL in the industry, I tested it using my last miscellaneous rambling post, which has 73 characters in the URL. Here’s the URL created by the two services.

XR.com was able to shorten my URL down to just 10 characters, significantly shorter than the 18 characters it took for tinyurl.com. If you don’t need a super short URL, you can use XR.com to create a custom URL – instead of xr.com/eap, it could be xr.com/misc-ramble.

XR.com is entirely free to use. You don’t have to sign up for an account in order to use it. However, if you do set up an account, you’ll get access to a bunch of added features like click tracking and management of all the URLs you create.

Set up an account, give XR.com a try and let Richard know what you think.

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Ha ha ha. LOL

Mines shorter than yours!

An Internet anomaly.

cool. I see those urls on twitter all the time, but never knew why they were like that.

There are so many URL shorteners out there now.

my only issue with the short urls is you cant tell where your traffic is coming from, traffic reports says xr.com

only issue

There are many sites on short url but this one looks easy to use.

I do know a few different websites that have short urls but ta.

XR.com? ehm..interesting. I only know about snipurl and tinyurl only.. :D

I've been using this for a little while now and it's worked out great so far. In fact John, the other day I was thinking of emailing you a couple different blog related topics that I haven't seen you cover, and this was one of them.

Is this site still new?! i hope they didn't shut down their site just because they got lack of people from using it

XR.com has been doing the tiny url type service for about 2 years. Just enhanced it recently.

k.9hz.com <- 9 characters!!!

k.9hz.com = 9 characters
vs
x.bb/mh7 <- 8 characters! ;^)

XR

Hey XR,
I don't see any advertisement on your site and it states that you will not reuse provided emails.

If you read john's blog, I believe that you are interested in making money online.
And as you have told us contributing time and a 2 letters .com domain is an investment in itself.

Can I ask how you are expecting to monetize it? Advertisement, donation, paying account... .
Why don't you already use any of these solutions since you are probably getting a peak in your traffic now?

Hi Hamac,

Great question. Yes, I read john's blog, but we've been really conservative on our sites. Here's some examples:
www.FreePhotos.com = adsense ads
www.OnlineRadioStations.com = ppc ads
www.DomainManager.com = great for networking with other domain owners

As for XR.com -- the revenue model isn't a top priority. Though there is some discussion about allowing users who are setting their own domains up on our system to be able to have their own logo appear in the top frame, as well as to run their own ads in the top frame. Maybe that could be a 'paid' feature, or a revenue share on ads? Like I say, it's just a discussion point.

We come from the "free" side of things. We love free. The internet loves things to be free. Money is important, but we're lucky to have other revenue streams (from other properties) such that XR.com can afford the luxury of not knowing its monetization plan.

We're open to ideas, so send them in. btw, I'm richard at XR dot com

Thx

XR

Did Richard had to pay you for this? :D Hopefully XR.com won't start gaining a lot of users, which would force the characters to be longer.

-Mike

Hi Mike,

XR.com is worth in the low six figures for the domain name alone. There are lots of tiny url services out there, but most are seemingly weak in that they fall into one of two categories: short ccTLD, or long .com. XR.com tries to tackle both by being the only two letter .com tiny url service out there. If it gets a ton of users, then we will add additional short domains, though that will likely be short ccTLD domains (like x.bb)

Thx!

XR

Awesome system, clean and easy to use…

Thank you for making a new nice tool for shortening URL. It was really interesting. Hope to see more details about it soon.
Thank you

Great Service!!

Thanks XR ! :)

XR seems to have had a tough time answering readers here..

Really? Having a great time. Hope that you aren't meaning that my answers are coming across the wrong way. When I was running mydomain.com and had 500,000 domains with free email/dns/url forwarding, that was tough. This is just fun!

Thx

XR

very smart tool, does a good job of shorten urls...shortenurl or something similar would be been an ideal domain...

hopefully that wont b the case

Been there, done that. Good luck with fighting all the spam and authorities knocking on your door when someone uses it for phishing.

90% of URLs generated will be for some bad purpose, just remember my words

XR, why don't you recycle the URL? Keep a stat somewhere, and recycle URL that hasn't been accessed for...say...3-5 years? A lot of people who uses tinyurl are using them as throw-away URL anyway, right?

- William

Man bloggers are ungrateful :(
Hey XR dude Thanks you kicked ass best to you
Thanks John Chow also

Oh yeah ivyurl.com also allows you to MASK your tiny links. PERFECT for my affiliate campaigns. Gone are the days of losing sales.

ivyurl.com has been doing something very similar for a few months now. I love using their service. Very reliable and my urls ALWAYS work!

good point on the .com end....i know personally i would not click on a link with any other ending, again nice find john!

just tried it with a 50 character article i rote the other day! NICE!!

this is a cool app, always have articles that are a mile long!

Interesting I don't mind using it will give it a shot

we will get the shortest url with this service... ha!

Does XR.com allow registered users to see the statistics? If not, i'd prefer cli.gs. That said, i do like the custom alias feature of XR.com, which is also available on tinyurl.com.

Yes, if you have an account, you can see stats. Cli.gs has got great stats though. Something to consider when we are defining what the xr stats should look like...

XR

definitely a tinyurl killer... best of luck to XR
nice tool :D

Any comment with "Paris Hilton" in it should be flagged as spam imo.

Great find. I wish tweetdeck would allow you to "plug in" your own url shortening service. This will be great for twitter. Before I started using Twitter I thought these services were pointless. Now I understand the need.

xr.com is pretty cool site but I do thing tiny url will always be the best!

ha! i guess your spam plug in isn't working john?

problem with url shortening services is that you don't know how long it is going to last. there are many that have come and gone... it's a saturated market out there.

this is great but i will stick with tinyurl or snurl, just for the main fact that i don't need to worry about it going away and losing all my links. tinyurl and snurl are companies that actually are established(have been in the market the longest), have big funding,investment and have the support of the major players in the market like twitter etc..

Yea, that would be a drag if you set up several affiliate campaigns and then lost all your links, bummer.

Hey guys,

Well, let's see..... I've had xr.com for 8 years. Had it running as a full time redirection service starting in April 2006. Granted we're not as established as tinyurl, but we've committed more than just a $10 domain name to this, so we hummed and haw'd a long time before committing since we know that once launched, you can't shut down.

Thx

XR

do the following: make a file ‘index.php’ in writing-----------------"
then make a folder: ‘johnchow’ in which copy the file index.php.
URL will look like this: http://www.xxxxxx.com / johnchow

I do the following: make a file 'index.php' in writing

then make a folder: 'johnchow' in which copy the file index.php.
URL will look like this: www.xxxxxx.com / johnchow

hey money blog

wat should b there in index.php file..
pls elaborate..

php
header ("Location: AFFILIATE URL");at the beginning and the end to put< ?

Seems like it might be useful. Maybe...