Evaluating the "Link in Bio" Providers

For an author, having a "link in bio" for social media is useful, to the extent that social media is useful at all. I wrote yesterday about the whole profile issue in X and its measly 160-character limitation. By the time I got done spelling out in my bio that I don't "do" direct messages*, it really left no room at all to promote myself as a writer. 

*If I gain a follower on X, my inclination is to follow them back. That's only polite. So, after running the person's profile through Grok, if they seem legit, I follow them. Unfortunately, that has often led to the new person wanting an in-depth conversation with me. Aside from the weirdos who don't realize I'm an old lady (my profile pic is my dog), there are the inquisitive or starved for conversation folks who want to know where I live, what I'm doing right now (?), how's the weather, etc., etc. I've always been fine with exchanging greetings, but man...these conversations can go on and on, if I let them. I've never understood this need that some people have to, in essence, acquire a pen pal. I finally decided to head these exchanges off at the pass by making clear that I'm not going to participate. It's worked like a charm!  

Ideally, an author would want more than a simple link to their author site in their bio. My preference would be to include a link to my Amazon books page, as well as a direct link to the one novel I care about. Authors with newsletters would no doubt want a link to their signup page. 

I thought creating a link in bio would be a no-brainer. (I've thought a lot of things that turned out to be wrong.) The simplest and best known provider, of course, is Linktree. Google confirmed that Linktree does, in fact, offer a free membership, which is technically true. Immediately upon viewing the site, I was impressed. It seemed to offer exactly what I needed. So, I signed up and bypassed the paid options, choosing the free account instead. I dutifully pasted in the links I wanted to include, and its AI function even came up with a snappy 25-word bio for me. Cool. Next, I needed to choose my theme. Oh. None of its themes are available to free members. I kept clicking on various iterations, even the ugly ones. No go. I was stuck in limbo, unable to move forward without choosing a theme, except I was barred from selecting one. When in doubt, I generally switch to a different browser. Some sites don't seem to work well with Firefox, so I tried Edge. Nope. After about ten minutes of futile clicking, I gave up and deleted my account. It was a shame, because I did like Linktree's approach to its all-in-one link, but I didn't like it enough to pay a monthly fee to get it.

Back to Google I went. Its primary recommendation for creators was Bento. Bento is no longer in operation. (Thanks, Google!) Next in line was Bio Link, which ostensibly offered a free plan. It didn't. 

Okay, how about Beacons? Beacons does work, and even with a free account. Here's what I was able to come up with. I shouldn't quibble about some of its functionality not working, but I will mention it. When setting up a link in bio, it allows for adding an image to each link and also a subheading. These don't work. Apparently, not unless you pay. What I was able to do was edit the pre-formulated links to social media, because I don't care about most social media, and since my intent was to use this on X, I really don't need to add a link to X. Right? So I substituted my Amazon book page and yes, my Goodreads page. The final product is passable.

Before I became aware of Beacons' editing options, I moved on to about.me. About.me also offers a free membership, but what you get with it is one link. Yes. How that is better than just adding one link to my bio manually, I can't begin to imagine. Here is my result. I guess it's...big? Not really what I was going for.

So, after all my experimentation, my recommendation for a *free* link in bio is Beacons. Yes, it has its limitations, but every free service has limitations. That's something we Poors have to learn to live with. 

I spent far too much time playing around with something that doesn't matter (to me, that is) all that much, but that's kind of what I do. I suffer the pain so you can gain.