The address is read more often than it is clicked
Think about where your bio address actually appears. In a profile line somebody scrolls past. At the end of a video, spoken aloud. On a flyer in a cafe. In a search result under the title.
In most of those places nothing is clicked. The address is simply read, and it either communicates something or wastes the space. A domain that names you, or names what the page is, does the first. A string of random characters does the second.
Recognisable addresses get tapped more
People have learned to be careful with unfamiliar short links, and reasonably so. A generic shortener domain has been used for enough spam that it now carries a faint warning with it.
An address that matches the person or brand it belongs to does not raise that question. There is nothing sophisticated about this. Somebody sees a name they recognise attached to a link and taps it without a second thought.
Where the links point
When other sites link to your bio page, they are linking to whatever domain the page sits on. If that is a platform domain, the value of those links accumulates against a page you do not control and cannot move.
On a domain you control, the same links point at an address that stays yours. That matters less for a page with five links on it than for a brand building a presence over years, but it costs nothing to get right at the start and is expensive to fix later.
You can change tools without changing the address
Tools change. Pricing changes, features get removed, companies get acquired. If your address belongs to the tool, every one of those events becomes your problem, and the fix involves updating every profile and reprinting anything with the old address on it.
If the domain is yours, moving is a configuration change. The address in your profile keeps working, the QR code on the poster keeps working, and nobody has to be told anything.
Registering your own, or picking a ready made one
Registering a domain gives you the most control and the most work. You pay a yearly fee, you keep the registration current, and you point it at whichever tool you use.
A ready made domain offered by the tool is the middle path. You do not own the registration, but the address is still short, still readable and still says what the page is. Something ending in .bio, for instance, announces the page as a profile before anyone taps it.
- Register your own when the brand name matters more than the ending, or when you already own the domain.
- Pick a ready made one when you want a short address today and the ending itself does useful explaining.
- Use both when a campaign wants its own short address separate from your permanent page.
Three practical checks before you commit
First, say the address out loud to someone and ask them to type it. If they get it wrong, the address is wrong.
Second, look at it in a profile line at phone width. Long domains get truncated in exactly the place that matters.
Third, check that the tool will let you keep the address if you change plans. An address that only works on a paid tier is not an address, it is a subscription.