Anyway I have recently launched setup my own personal URL shortening service (that I found instructions for while browsing Lifehacker). It was not only pretty easy to do, but it was also cheap.

Aside from a little setup time, you only need two other items, which are listed below;

• YOURLS, which is short for “Your Own URL Shortener”
• A short domain name. I went with GoDaddy and found several cheap 4 letter domains. Tip: they are currently offering 4 letter .me domains for $9.99 and 4 letter .us domains for $4.99.

Now that you have those two items, you will need some time. After you secure your domains (and have them hosted somewhere) you can download YOURLS and begin the setup. I would list the directions, but they offer a nice step-by-step listing in the downloaded folder and on their website.

A few nice features of YOURLS:

• Your shortener can be set as public or private.
• They offer a bookmarklet.
• They have a Wordpress plugin that generates a short URL for each post and can also automatically send that short URL to Twitter.
• You can easily track your clicks.

Additionally, the nice part here is that you are further branding your name and website, but perhaps most important is that the service is not going to disappear on you.