I run M.academy, an online education platform for software developers. Marketing it means creating content constantly. YouTube tutorials, LinkedIn posts, email newsletters, blog articles. Dozens of videos. Hundreds of links pointing back to the platform.
To understand what was actually driving enrollments, I tried every attribution tool I could find. Some were decent. But they all had the same fundamental limitation: they could tell me "YouTube drove 40% of revenue this month," but not which video, which link in the description, or even whether the link at the top of the description outperformed the one at the bottom.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. When you're publishing across dozens of videos and experimenting with link placement, knowing the channel is not enough. You need to know the exact link. Is it the YouTube tutorial from March that keeps converting? Is it the email newsletter link that points to the free course? Is the LinkedIn post from last Tuesday actually worth your time?
I couldn't answer any of those questions. Every tool I tried could tell me the channel. None of them could tell me the link.
So I built qklnk as an internal tool for M.academy. Short links that auto-generate UTMs, first-party click tracking that works even with ad blockers, and conversion attribution that traces a sale all the way back to the exact link that started the journey. It worked well enough that I decided to turn it into a product anyone can use.
The Pro plan is $9 a month. For that you get the attribution insights that other tools charge $99 or more for, with link shortening and automatic UTM generation built in.
qklnk was built by Mark Shust, a software engineer with 25+ years of web development experience and a LinkedIn Top Voice, a distinction held by fewer than 0.0002% of users on the platform.
Mark founded M.academy in 2019. qklnk is the tool he built to solve his own attribution problem, developed with AI-assisted development using Claude Code and shipped as a full SaaS as a solo founder.
qklnk is operated by Devtomic LLC, based in the United States.
Built by a content creator, for content creators.
Most attribution tools are designed around paid ad campaigns. qklnk is built for organic marketing. The kind where you're creating YouTube videos, writing newsletters, posting on LinkedIn, and publishing blog content.
First-party tracking.
Click data is captured server-side when the link is followed, so it works even when visitors have ad blockers enabled. You get accurate numbers, not sampled estimates.
Everything in one place.
Link shortening, UTM generation, and conversion attribution are not three separate tools stitched together. They are one integrated workflow, built from the start to work together.
Link-level attribution.
Not just which channel drove the sale. Which exact link. That is the whole point.