How to turn your link in bio into a QR code for flyers and market stalls

You are standing behind a folding table at a Saturday market. Someone picks up a candle, smells it, puts it down, and says they'll look you up later. Then they walk off, and you never see them again. They had no way to look you up, because your handle is a tiny line on the back of a card they did not take.

A QR code fixes that. It turns the link in your bio into something a phone can open in a second, with no typing and no spelling your username twice. This guide covers how to make one, how big to print it, and where to put it.

What should the QR code point to?

Point it at your bio page, not at a single product or post. A code on a stall sign has to work for the person who stops for ten seconds and for the one who comes back next month. A bio page can hold your shop, your Instagram, your email form and your market dates at once, so one printed code covers all of them.

With Linky, that address is lin.ky/ followed by your username. Because you edit the blocks on the page and the address never changes, you can print the code once and still change what people see behind it. Add this weekend's market, swap in a new product, take down a sold-out drop. Nothing on paper goes out of date. If you want to know how often to touch the page, the learn page on updating your link in bio has a short answer.

One thing to settle before you generate anything: the code should encode your plain page address and nothing else. Skip tracking add-ons and redirect services that you might stop paying for. If the service behind a code goes away, every copy you printed goes dead with it.

How do you make the code?

Linky does not generate QR codes, so use any free generator. Paste in your page address, choose a plain URL code, and download the result. If you can, download a vector file (SVG or PDF) rather than a PNG, because a vector stays sharp at any size. That matters when the same code ends up on a business card and a poster.

Your address is short, which helps. A QR code stores more data by adding more tiny squares, so a long link makes a denser pattern that is harder to scan at small sizes. Deloitte's help pages for its QR tool say the average code on that platform encodes about 60 characters. lin.ky/yourname is a fraction of that.

How big should you print it?

Print it at least 2 cm (about 0.8 inches) square. Bitly's size guide gives that as the smallest size most scanners read reliably, and Deloitte's help page says the same for a typical URL scanned from about 20 cm away.

For anything people scan from further away, use the 10 to 1 rule both companies describe: the code should be about one tenth of the scanning distance. A code on a table that people lean over can be small. A sign hung above your stall, read from 2 metres, needs to be around 20 cm wide. These are vendor guidelines rather than a formal standard, so treat them as a starting point and test with real phones.

Bitly also lists sizes by use:

• Business cards: about 2 cm square
• Event tickets: about 3 cm square
• Posters: at least 10 cm square

What makes a printed code fail?

Most failures come from the printing, not the code. Check these before you send anything to a printer:

• Low contrast. Use dark squares on a light background. Pale grey on white, or a code on top of a photo, will scan badly in poor light. Market halls and street corners are rarely well lit.
• No white margin. The blank border around a code, called the quiet zone, is part of how a scanner finds it. Do not crop it off or run text up to the edge. Bitly says to leave it clear but gives no exact width, so err on the generous side.
• Blurry printing. Bitly notes that low print resolution can blur or pixelate a code until it cannot be read. Send the vector file, not a screenshot.
• A logo in the middle. QR codes carry built-in error correction that lets a scanner recover when part of the code is damaged. It comes in four levels that recover roughly 7, 15, 25 and 30 percent of the data. Wikipedia explains that a logo in the centre is treated as damage and uses up part of that budget. If you add one, keep it small and test the result.
• Damage to the corners. The large square patterns in the corners tell a scanner which way up the code is. Wikipedia notes that if damage wipes out one of them, scanners can fail even when the total damage is small.
• Glossy or curved surfaces. Glare from a laminated sign or a mug can wash a code out. A matte finish is safer.

Where does the code go?

Put it where someone is already holding their phone or already waiting. The best spots are the ones you can see from where a customer stands:

• The front of your stall, at eye level, with a few words saying what scanning gets them.
• Business cards and packaging inserts, so the code travels home with the product.
• Flyers and posters, with the code large enough to meet the size guide above.
• Receipts and bags, for the person who bought and might buy again.
• Your window or door, for a shop that has hours when nobody is in.

Always write one line next to the code saying why to scan it. "Scan for this weekend's market and the full shop" gets more scans than a bare square, because a bare square gives people no reason to take out their phone.

How do you test it before you print 500 of them?

Test the code the way a customer will meet it. Print a single copy at the real size on the real paper. Scan it with two or three different phones, an older one included. Try it indoors, outdoors, and from the distance a person would stand. Then open your page on a phone with a weak signal, because a market is exactly where reception drops.

If you sell at an event you have not done before, glance at the lighting while you set up. A code that scanned perfectly on your kitchen table can struggle under a gazebo roof. Keep a card with your plain address written out for anyone whose camera will not cooperate.

What goes on the page behind the code depends on who is scanning. If you run a food truck, this post on food truck link in bio pages covers the page for someone standing in a queue. If you cut hair, the post on a hairstylist's link in bio covers the page for someone in the chair.

Your page is the part that does the work

A QR code only gets someone to the door. What they find once they scan decides whether they buy, book or follow. Make sure the first thing on your page is the one thing you want a stall visitor to do, and that it loads fast on a phone.

If you do not have a page yet, make one on Linky first. It takes a few minutes, and then you have an address worth printing.