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Conduit Toolbar

Conduit is a free toolbar platform for creating and monetizing your own web browser toolbar.

To create a toolbar, click Get Started Now at
http://www.conduit.com/

To download the toolbar directly, use the link
http://$toolbarname.ourtoolbar.com/exe

Issues

Conduit offers a promotional period where they claim you get more money per install.

This is misleading.

What they create is a debt; they promise you more money, but in order to get it, you need to reach a high balance after the promotional period to cash out the bonus.

For example, The Cafe Toolbar got 7,000 installations during the promotional period at 58 cents per install ($4000). 9 days after the promotional period, Conduit said we really have only $293 available for cash-out. To cash out the $3700 promotional bonus part, we need to reach a $10,000 balance!

This is not a "promotional" bonus. It is better described as a "get your hopes up and wait 6 months before you can cash out" bonus.

Patent

Conduit's patent

Strengths

  1. Easy-to-use web interface for creating and editing toolbars
  2. Multi-language: Supports right-to-left languages
  3. Conduit add-ons: radio player, facebook, twitter, email notifier, weather
  4. 3rd-party add-ons: Thousands of free toolbar add-ons, like Dizzler

Weaknesses

  1. No easy way to uninstall
  2. No clue why you the PPI is what it is (starts at 58 cents during promotional, drops to 19, then to 9, then slowly rises to 13, suddenly drops to 4, slowly rises to 7, seems totally random)
  3. Conduit's reports are 10 hours old, always in a GMT -2 day (hard to compare against Google Analytics which is in the user's day)
  4. Slow publishing: changes can take 24-48 hours to appear in user's toolbars
  5. No development toolbar: all changes are always live
  6. No personalization: Users cannot change the toolbar, or even re-order the icons (some may want the weather first)
  7. No templates: Need a template toolbar to base a lot of toolbars on, change template all toolbars change
  8. No toolbar group reports: Need to sign in to every toolbar individually to see reports
  9. Cannot merge menus (must manually copy-and-paste each menu item if moving content between menus)
  10. Cannot install more than one toolbar at a time: browser locks up after restarting firefox
  11. Adding a toolbar to an existing toolbar yields no PPI (only the first-installed toolbar gets revenue)
  12. Annoying search take-over (see two-checkboxes-install-box.png)
  13. Existing toolbars do not get some new components, like radio station (must uninstall and reinstall)
  14. Inconsistent display on different browsers (IE is much wider, only mac firefox gets a Privacy menu at the end (how?))
  15. Cannot know which components will be hidden at different screen resolutions (their ruler is not accurate)
  16. Some components work only in Windows, like the radio station
  17. Some components do not allow customization (like the animated Chat bubble and the text "E-mail Notifier")
  18. Weather add-on does not change icon based on weather (must click it to see the weather)
  19. Weather add-on does not know where you are based on your IP (just use the free maxmind ip database)
  20. Need better reports, like seeing how many people can see which components (based on their browser width) 

Bugs

  1. Stops asking to add a new toolbar to the list of existing toolbars, typically if you have more than one toolbar
  2. Some days custom menus do not appear
  3. IE: the logo is not clickable if it is a menu and not a link (works in Firefox)
  4. Menu text does not line up if icons are different widths

Delays

Conduit delays payment for about 10 days after you ask to cash out.

Conduit also delays 10 days after the promotional period before telling your promotional cash out balance.

PPI

Conduit pays you per install (PPI).

To maximize your PPI, target US, UK, Australia and Canada. Users from these countries are worth far more than other countries, and Canada is the least valuable of the four.

PPI is also related to user lifespan. The longer they keep your toolbar installed and active, the more they are worth.

Legal

Conduit does not allow use of copyright material and trademarks without permission from the copyright owners.

See their license agreement

Radio Stations

Conduit offers a great radio player with thousands of radio stations!

Unfortunately, many just do not play all the time.

From my experience, the most reliable radio stations are from Radio IO.

Dizzler

Dizzler is a great component from the Conduit Marketplace.

Users can search for any song and it starts playing instantly!

Uninstall

To uninstall the toolbar:

Firefox

  • Open Tools | Addons

  • Click Uninstall next to the toolbar name

Internet Explorer (IE)

  • Click that big X on the left to remove the toolbar

Safari
  • Open Finder

  • Press Command+Shift+G

  • Go to the folder
    /Applications/Toolbars/

  • Open the toolbar you want to uninstall

  • Run "uninstall"


Competitors

Who competes with Conduit?

Dynamic Toolbar is one competitor by http://software.visicommedia.com/en/

iMedix is a new Israeli company that offers a toolbar platform

Best Toolbars is another, but with a completely different business model

Other competitors include
W3i

Google allows custom buttons in their toolbar

Tab Tab is another toolbar company, but does not allow publishers to create their our own toolbars.

See
WebToolbars used to allow anyone to create their own toolbar, but is now just an ad-page

This article describes WebToolbars while they were still in business

Conduit Notes

Highlights
  • Best to target USA, UK, Australia and Canada (every USA user generates 30 - 50 cents a month for Conduit)
  • Show live data, like the number of contestants entered, in the toolbar (eg: Zynga shows your Mafia Wars stats in their toolbar)
  • Co-brand the toolbar, as a MMO Life toolbar or a THEGAMENET toolbar + the game name instead of just the game name
Details

What makes a successful Conduit toolbar?

Lifespan is the most important.
  • Does the toolbar provide value to the end user?
  • Will they keep it for a long time?
The second-most important is geography
  • Are your users in the USA?
  • Are they in India?
10,000 USA users are worth 100,000 Indian users.

But, 1000 daily installs from the USA with a lifespan of two weeks is not as valuable as 20,000 daily installs from India with a lifespan of six months.

A good daily volume rate is 1000-2000 installs. The most popular toolbars get 50,000-60,000 installs daily.

Zynga and Playdom have migrated to the Conduit platform.

Add unique and ideally exclusive features into your toolbar, not just links to websites. For example, Zynga integrated their Facebook game into their Conduit toolbar.

Other toolbar companies will give you 50 cents per USA user. Conduit has no limit.

Every USA user generates 30 - 50 cents a month for Conduit.

The Major League Baseball toolbar has an average lifespan of 18 months and is on a revenue share model, not PPI

The revenue share model adjusts, but PPI is a set formula.

Use a co-branded logo, not just the game logo. This way, if the game company asks to remove their logo, it is less shocking to your users.

If you are not allowed to link to a website directly, you can link to a page that links to the website.

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