How Linktree got its users

Find the one-slot surface your users already fight over. Linktree exists because Instagram gives a profile exactly one clickable link, so a creator promoting five things has to choose one. Make your output the thing that fills that single slot: bio link, email signature line, calendar invite location field, README badge. Then design the artifact to obey that slot's rules, which for a bio link means a plain URL short enough to read on a phone.

done whenYou can name the exact third-party field your artifact goes into, state its format limit, and say what your users put there today.

Give every user a public URL on your domain with their own name in it. Linktree hands out linktr.ee/username, and the creator retypes that exact string into every bio they own, so your brand rides along on profiles you will never see. Do not ship a random hash or a downloadable file. Let the user choose the name at signup so they treat the URL as theirs and repeat it everywhere.

done whenYour users' public URLs read as yourdomain.com/theirname, and you can list the outside profiles where those URLs are currently pasted.

Make that page open for a stranger with no account, no app and no download. A Linktree page renders inside the Instagram in-app browser, on a phone, for someone who has never heard of Linktree, and asks nothing before showing the links. Every gate you put in front of the recipient (sign in to view, open in app, get the file) deletes the entire audience sitting behind that one tap.

done whenOpen your own shared artifact in a private window on a phone and count the taps before the content is readable. Anything above zero is where the loop breaks.

Sign the free output with a button that names the person who shared it, not your company. A free Linktree page carries "Join [username] on Linktree" as a pill at the top and again at the bottom, and the logo is printed on the QR code the creator uses offline. It converts because the visitor already came for that creator. Put removal of the footer logo and the QR logo on the paid plans, so the free base advertises and the users who mind it pay to stop.

done whenYour free tier's public output carries one CTA naming the user who created it, and "remove branding" appears as a paid line item rather than a free toggle.

Wire the public pages into each other and let search engines crawl them. A Linktree profile shows a "Discover more" carousel of other members' pages and an "Explore other Linktrees" block, and the footer points to a Creator Profile Directory, so a visitor who came for one person can land on someone they never heard of. Add a share control on the page itself, the way Linktree puts a share icon in the top right of every profile, so the recipient can pass it on without the owner doing anything.

done whenA site: search on your domain returns your users' public pages, and any one of those pages links to at least one other user's page.