Today I was looking around to see if I could find a way to make money using my blogs. Writing good things is one way to get people to come back time and again. Getting people to come to the site, however, is another thing entirely. While I'm not sure if this solution will work, I created my own toolbar plugin that you should be able to see at the top of my blogs. The toolbar works with both IE and
Firefox. And I didn't even need to write a lick of code.
Here is a capture of the toolbar plugin download link that I added to the top of my blogs. Just click to install:
If you head on over to
Conduit, you can sign up for free and create a customized toolbar that points back to your web site or blog. I created one to bring people to
my primary blog, but I added to all of my others blogs the download link for installing the toolbar.
One of the cool things is that you can create and add your own logo, or use create your logo (text only) by selecting from a list of several graphical styles. Their choices aren't very good, but they do the trick in a pinch.
Now, I have noticed several bugs with the toolbar. When I originally created the toolbar, it contained an internet-radio
gadget. I decided to remove it from the bar using the Conduit online manager and when I decided to add it back (I discovered that I could also add podcasts to it), it no longer shows up on the one I installed in my firefox. But if you look at
badges that links to my toolbar installer, it is there. Oh, another cool feature is that whenever you insert or remove toolbar gadgets, all of the badges change, too. This is how I know that the radio gadget has been added.
There are a number of live gadgets that allow your toolbar users to receive updates from you in real-time. For example, using the Messages gadget you can send out a message and your users will see it. There is also a built in
feed reader (which is also buggy) that gives quick access to the
rss feeds you have configured. And there is also a horizontal scrolling ticker that will show a message that you create. But I think that the ticker is too ugly. While you can set the width of the ticker, you cannot adjust it's height, so it looks fat.
Despite these problems I recommend giving it a try. It's really cool to think that people are so interested in your blog or web site that just have to have a toolbar!
