Back in April of 2007, I signed up with Conduit. They offer website publishers to quickly and easily create a completely custom browser toolbar that works with both Internet Explorer and Firefox. To make it even better, they pay the publisher when people use the toolbar!
To get me started, they gave me a $100 bonus, but the minimum payout was $250 (I could cash out earlier, but wouldn’t get the $100 bonus). I put the toolbar up on the Fake Name Generator and started to get users. I expected to quickly pull in enough to meet the $250.
I didn’t. I earned mere cents per day. It would take years to hit the $250 payout. So I gave up, took it off my website, and moved on to other projects.
Fast forward 2 years. I got an email asking me how they can reinstall my toolbar because they had to format their computer. I thought to myself, “what is this guy talking about? I don’t offer a toolbar…” But then I remembered Conduit! I pulled open my control panel and see $244.09 sitting in my account, only $5.91 from the payout!
I add the toolbar back to the Fake Name Generator, quickly get over 100 users, and about a month later have a pinch over $250 sitting in my PayPal account.
So what next? Well, the next day I get an email from a Conduit employee. They congratulate me on getting a payout, and show me a new toolbar for the Fake Name Generator that they put together and ask if I want to use it. I say “sure!” They then show me some updated code I can use to advertise my toolbar on the Fake Name Generator.
Did it work? Yes! Earnings from the day before the toolbar: $0.14. Earnings the day after: $0.72.
Am I going to get rich? No. Am I going to get paid every month? No. Does it matter? No!
With absolutely no effort, I’m going to get $50 every couple months. My users get a toolbar that they apparently enjoy. I get extra traffic to the Fake Name Generator that I might not otherwise get, perhaps increasing my AdSense or CJ revenue.
Want your own toolbar? Visit Conduit.