URL-shortening services such as Bit.ly, Is.gd, Ow.ly, the classic TinyURL and my personal favourite Tr.im have revolutionized the way Web links are shared across all forms of digital communication – particularly character-limited services such as Twitter. As demand grows, these services become expensive to host yet remain difficult to monetize. Ease is crucial, and as such, requiring a site visit, sponsored by ads, is often not feasible so how can money be made or costs, at least, covered?

In my opinion, the sale of extremely short, shortened URLs is the way to go. I realize that was probably a mouthful for some, so let me explain. Using Tr.im, http://ruraltechnocrat.com gets shortened to http://tr.im/A36R, but what if I could BUY http://tr.im/RT? It is something that I would definitely consider if the opportunity were posed. The pricing structure could be as simple as $100 for a single character, $25 for double character and $5 for three character (4-character+ would, of course, remain free). Assuming all single characters ($3600), all letter-only double characters ($16,900) and 25% triple letter-only ($21,970) URLs sold the company would have raised over $42,000. This is just an example of how it could play out as the prices and quantities sold would most likely be different.

Sure, the purpose of this is largely trivial and may appear to only remove a couple of characters from the end of a URL, but it also has potential to add to online branding with firms that routinely spread their Web presence using social media.

EDIT: It would also be cool to be able to have the right to the sub-folder URLs. This way all of my Rural Technocrat articles could be shortened to [URL shortener]/RT/[character][character]. As most URL shorteners are 4 to 6 characters, this would give me a 5 character shortener with 36+36*36 = 1332 custom short-URLS. It would also encourage me to login (*cough* ads *cough*) to create page-specific short-URLs.