Building Zlynks: Why I Built My Own Global Link Manager

I’m a voracious reader. If you follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter, you’ve likely seen me share insights from the books I’m currently devouring.

Usually, I’d drop a link to the book on amazon.in. But there’s a problem: my readers are global. When someone in London or New York clicks that link, they often land on a page that says “Product not available” or forces them to manually search their local store. It’s an unnecessary friction point.

I wanted a better way. And, to be honest, I wanted to see if I could recover some of those lost commissions while I was at it.

So, I built Zlynks.

Building the Foundation

The core idea was simple: detect where a reader is and send them to the right store. I built this using a high-performance Go backend for fast redirects and a SvelteKit dashboard to manage links.

Early on, I focused on making my development experience smooth, standardizing the tech stack and moving everything to a monorepo so I could manage it more easily.

Smarter, Faster, Better

While solving the “regional link” problem was the initial spark, building Zlynks revealed other benefits:

• Local Links: I now route every click to the right Amazon marketplace. This means my readers in London or New York land directly on the book page instead of an error message, and I don’t miss out on international commissions.
• Clearer Insights: I can now see exactly where my global audience is coming from and which topics resonate across different countries.
• Trustworthy Links: Using a custom domain like zlynks.me creates a clean, consistent experience. Readers are more likely to click a link that looks professional compared to a long affiliate URL.

I also added features that saved me a lot of time, like integrating book APIs to auto-fetch covers and metadata, and implementing bulk imports.

The Digital Bookshelf

I use Astro to keep this site fast and lightweight. This foundation supports the “Bookshelf”—a compact, high-density way to browse my book recommendations that feels like a clean digital library instead of a cluttered list of links.

Upcoming Roadmap

I’m just getting started. Here’s what I’m working on next:

• Automated Compliance Scanning: An auditor that ensures my blog stays compliant with Amazon’s rules by checking for mandatory affiliate disclosures.
• Link Health Monitoring: Real-time checking to ensure links never lead to a 404 or an out-of-stock page.

Check it out at zlynks.com.