Customize Internettoolbars For Fun N Profit

Creating Toolbars for Fun and Profit! Marty R. Milette, P.Prog.

CTT+, MCT, MCSA, MCSE+I, MCP+SB, MCSD http://www.custom-toolbars.com

Thank you for downloading and installing the Custom Toolbar Sample kit from our Custom Toolbars web site! (If you didn’t get it, or had trouble making it work… – just ask, and I’ll be glad to help!) My name is Marty R. Milette, and I own and operate Custom Toolbars. You may contact me directly at my personal email address at: [email protected] if you have any questions or comments about this document.

Why are you receiving this? I’m sending out this eBook to anyone brave enough to download and install our Custom Toolbar Sample kit. Obviously, you have an interest in developing a toolbar for your web site, or perhaps know of some other webmasters who may be interested in toolbars – or maybe you just have a great idea for a toolbar and want to try it out! I’m also sending this eBook to people in my own personal address book. Since I moved to Russia, many of you have been wondering what I’ve been up to – and this is it! J Whatever the case, we hope that this document will provide answers to the questions you have – and provide some interesting new angles on this whole toolbar thing that may just give you some really great ideas of your own. Please feel free to forward this eBook to anyone you know who may be interested in toolbars – later on, I’ll tell you how to not only forward the eBook, but also make some money doing it! Stay tuned and we’ll tell you how! Note: Towards the end of the document I’ll refer you to a “Secret Links” URL – these are direct links to my most treasured programs. Regardless of whether you are setting up a web site, using a toolbar, or just doing business the old fashioned way – you’ll find them very valuable!

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What’s in this eBook? In this eBook, I’m going to not only tell you all about how to create dynamic custom toolbars for fun and profit – I’m also going to share some revenuegeneration secrets used by myself and other web professionals to make tons of money – not just from toolbars, but from regular web sites as well. A lot of the suggestions here relate directly to how your web site should be designed – again, not only to work well with toolbars, but also so that it works well with search engine spiders and people too! This kind of information is hard to find anywhere else! Toolbars are just one of the many ways you can drive millions of repeat visitors back to your web site, and extract revenue from a number of different sources. Toolbars work with your site to accomplish this. Inside the eBook are a number of hot links. Unfortunately, MS-Word doesn’t seem to want to spit them out with Adobe Acrobat – so if you want the links, I’ll be putting them on a ‘secret page’ of the web site – the URL is towards the end of this eBook. I’m trying to include EVERYTHING you need to know to get started. However, if I’ve missed something, or you have new information to add, I always welcome your email. Again, my direct, personal address is [email protected] – and I answer quickly! Although I focus on how you would go about developing custom toolbars using our own Custom Toolbar Development Kit – many of the techniques may also be used with other toolbar products. However, many of the features of our toolbar kit are simply not available anywhere else – so be sure to evaluate carefully whether or not these features (or the lack of them) are going to cause any issues for you when developing toolbars for your site.

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What am I going to learn? Here are the questions that will be answered in each section of this eBook: Creating Toolbars for Fun and Profit!............................................................................... 1 Why are you receiving this?............................................................................................. 1 What’s in this eBook? ......................................................................................................... 2 What am I going to learn?................................................................................................ 3 What is a Toolbar? ............................................................................................................... 4 Why create toolbars for your web site?....................................................................... 6 Why would users want my toolbar?.............................................................................. 9 What can go on a toolbar? ............................................................................................. 11 What’s this XML file thing all about? .......................................................................... 13 How would I create, deploy and use your custom toolbar?.............................. 14 1. Defining the toolbar you want....................................................................... 15 2. Creating the sample toolbar .......................................................................... 16 3. Purchasing a site license and compiling the toolbar ............................ 18 4. Installing the toolbar package on your web site.................................... 19 5. Giving the users download links and other instructions ..................... 19 6. Maintaining and upgrading your toolbar................................................... 20 What do you mean I don’t even need a website to use toolbars? ................. 21 How can I generate all this revenue from a toolbar? .......................................... 22 Paid Search Feeds.......................................................................................................... 22 Affiliate Links.................................................................................................................... 23 Our Affiliate Program .................................................................................................... 24 Your Own Products and Services ............................................................................. 24 So how do I make money just recommending toolbars?................................... 25 What are your affiliate programs and how do they work? ................................ 26 Link: Recommend to a friend…................................................................................. 26 Toolbar: Recommend to a friend….......................................................................... 27 Certified Toolbar Developer Program..................................................................... 28 What’s in the sample kit, and how do I install it?................................................. 29 Download the Toolbar Kit............................................................................................ 30 Add the Toolbar to the Browser................................................................................ 32 Switch the Toolbar On or Off..................................................................................... 34 OK, I have the sample kit installed, what does it do?......................................... 35 How can I make my toolbar VIRAL?........................................................................... 38 How can I make my Web Site perform better?...................................................... 38 How was the Custom Toolbar developed?................................................................ 39 How do I get to the “Secret Links” page? ................................................................ 39 I really want a toolbar – what should I do now?................................................... 40

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What is a Toolbar? The toolbars I’ll be discussing in this eBook are toolbars that are installed in the web browser Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.1 or later that is running on a computer using some flavor of Microsoft Windows. Our toolbars don’t work in Netscape, or on UNIX or Macintosh systems – however, if you observe your server logs, you’ll likely discover that the most popular browser in use is in fact some version of Microsoft Internet Explorer. AOL browsers are always a problem. Oh well – can’t please everyone! Let’s take a look at what Internet Explorer looks like with a couple of custom toolbars installed: (As you can see – I’ll never be an artist! J )

In this browser window, I currently have three different toolbars loaded: 1. Alexa – the Alexa toolbar 2. Google – the Google toolbar 3. ShopFree – the custom toolbar created for the web site ShopFree.com I’ve highlighted the logos for each toolbar in Red, and the entire ShopFree toolbar in blue.

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Note: I’m not getting a kickback from ShopFree for describing their toolbar – it just happens to be a good sample to use! J No doubt, you are already familiar with the Alexa toolbar and the Google toolbar, but the ShopFree toolbar is probably new to you. In fact, it is so new that it hasn’t even been released yet! (At the time of this writing.) The ShopFree is an example of a custom toolbar created with our Dynamic Custom Toolbar Development Kit. I’ll be describing each of the elements on it in some detail in just a few moments…

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Why create toolbars for your web site? The answer to this question is staring you right in the face! J (At least if you have a look at the previous pages!) One of the most important aspects of custom toolbars is that when people have them installed and enabled in their browser, the toolbars appear every time the user opens their browser.

What a valuable little piece of real-estate this is! Think about it! Imagine how much it would be worth in hard cold cash to have your logo and so many direct links to your site staring users in the face every time they open a web browser! Not only that, but with our toolbars – you can give out as many of them as you want for FREE! (Hundreds, Thousands or Millions!) But that’s really only the tip of the iceberg, as you’ll soon discover! Let’s have a more detailed look at the ShopFree toolbar and see what it has to offer the web browsing potential customer. Here’s a closer look at the toolbar itself…

Starting at the left is the ShopFree logo and drop-down menu. Clicking on the logo would take the user directly to the home page for ShopFree USA. In the drop-down menu under the logo, we have direct links to new offers, and all of the other ShopFree sites. Also provided is a link for users wishing to uninstall the toolbar. (Another nice link may be to update the toolbar.)

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The logic of toolbars is simple : •

Get the logo out in front of your potential customers.

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Give users a FAST, EASY way to get to the most important parts of your web site

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If the user is a regular visitor to your web site, give them quick, direct access to the features they want/need most. In other words – create toolbars that “add value”!

To continue… ShopFree is a Google partner; therefore they are allowed to put the Google logo on the toolbar. The search button performs the ‘Google-branded’ search of the ShopFree site directly, however there are additional options under the drop-down that we’ll look at here: Not only can searches be performed on Google, but also on a variety of other search engines including SearchFeed, Alexa, Google (direct), Yahoo!, AltaVista, Lycos, MSN Search and AllTheWeb. The question you may have is probably, “WHY would ShopFree want to have all those other engines available on their toolbar?” There are actually TWO answers to this question: •

First, is that it is a ‘convenience feature’ for the user. Users have convenient access to the most popular search engines right at their fingertips. (Maybe a good enough reason to keep the toolbar installed and used!)

•

Second, that there’s money to be made! (Read on, and you’ll discover how!)

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Following the search box are additional feature buttons for directly accessing news, highlighting keywords in searched pages, and automatically filling out web-based forms. We’ll talk about some of these additional features later. The last section on the ShopFree toolbar is a scrolling marquee. (Of course it isn’t scrolling HERE!) This is actually a very, very small web browser window all on its own. (Consider it to be a 20 pixel high web page.) What’s interesting about this section is that the toolbar owner can change the content of this web page just as easily as changing any other page on his or her web site. (And users of the toolbar will receive the latest updates the moment they open a new browser window!)

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Why would users want my toolbar? People install toolbars for one reason: The toolbar gives them instant access to something they want! In other words – the toolbar ADDS VALUE to the ir web browsing experience. If the toolbar doesn’t add something to the browsing experience of the user, they’ll either not install it, or remove it after they discover that it is worthless. This is why pure ‘advertising’ oriented toolbars are never going to achieve lasting success. People don’t want a stream of advertising scrolling past their face – and they’ll quickly remove that kind of toolbar. Also, there’s a LOT of COMPETITION these days for that valuable top-ofbrowser position – so unless your toolbar offers something special, it won’t be around for long. Fortunately, since you’re reading this eBook you’re going to be ahead of 99% of other toolbar developers right away! The great part about having a toolbar that adds value to the user’s browsing experience is that the toolbar can then become ‘viral’ – meaning that users will tell their friends to install it, and word will spread fast! All you need to do is provide the value, and then make it easy for users to tell their friends. (We’ve figured out how to help you do both – just keep reading!)

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Note: Toolbars created with our Custom Toolbar Development Kit are refreshed from your web server every time the user opens a new browser window. You should check with your hosting company about your bandwidth limits – toolbar updates take some extra bandwidth, but the additional traffic to your site generated from clients using the toolbar could be considerable! I should also tell you about another kind of toolbar that you will likely NOT want to create – and those are any of the various flavors of SpyWare, AdWare and ParasiteWare. This is not to say that all toolbars using these techniques are ‘evil’ – just as long as the feature provides value to the user, and you tell them what you’re up to. For example, the Alexa and Google toolbars could both be considered spyware – but the information collected is used to give page and site ranking – a benefit to the users. YES, while you can easily create these kinds of toolbars with our kit – think about it from the point of view of the user – will they appreciate it?

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What can go on a toolbar? Toolbars may have any of several different kinds of ‘controls’. Controls are the user interface elements that the toolbar user interacts with. The most common elements are: Text label – It is the simplest element, and is only used to present information to the user. In this example, the word Search: is the text label. In the custom toolbar XML file (we’ll talk about that later), the syntax to put up the label would be: Search:

Simple Button – a simple button would be a normal button that performs an action. Simple buttons may also have a ‘tooltip’ associated with them. Tooltips appear when the user rolls the mouse over the button. In this case, the text “View Google News…” is the tooltip. Some buttons have text that is provided in the XML file, others have the text as part of the button’s image (as here). Associated with every button is an Action – the action could be to simply navigate to a URL, as in this case, or could be to post data using HTTP GET or POST (the same as any HTML web form.) The syntax for a simple button could look like this: <Buttons> <Button> View Google News... http://news.google.com

Note: Some toolbar development kits only allow you to use buttons that they provide. Ours allows you to use any image you want – just save it as a 20-pixel-high .bmp file, and you’re good to go!

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Note: There are actually many different styles of toolbar buttons. You may change the style of buttons at any time by simply editing the XML file that accompanies your toolbar.

Toolbar Separator Menu Separator

Separators – are used to separate toolbar controls. They show up as a vertical bar. Separators are also used to separate menu items. Code for a separator looks like this: <Separator />

Combo Boxes – are used to present, select, or input data or choices for the user. Sample code looks like this:

Data from the combo box can be passed to other controls on the toolbar – this is how we accomplish searches based on what the user enters, for example. HTML Area – this is my favorite one! It is basically one (or more) mini web-browser windows. It doesn’t look to special here because it is really a scrolling marquee when you see it ‘live’. What’s cool is that you can use any technology that the user’s browser supports, such as: JavaScript, Java Applets, Flash, ActiveX controls, Shockwave – the list goes on! All you do is link the HTML area to a specific page on your web site, and that’s it! From then on, to maintain it, all you need do is update the HTML page. For example, if you wanted to, you could PUSH a popup or pop-under window to all users of your toolbar to announce news or important information (or just a sale!). Sample code looks like thi s: marquee.htm

There are a number of other controls that are available – almost anything that you see on any commercially available toolbar you can use yourself. We’ll help you with these when you purchase a license.

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What’s this XML file thing all about? Our toolbar development kit allows you to create a toolbar that is ‘dynamic’ – what we mean is that after it is built, and people start using it, you can completely change the look, feel and functionality by simply editing a single XML file that is stored on your web site. Every time someone using the toolbar opens a browser window, the toolbar ‘updates’ itself from your XML file that is stored on your web site. Since the XML file describes EVERYTHING about the toolbar – by simply making changes to the XML file, you can have the toolbar look, and work, any way you want. (And if you don’t like it – to be able to change it in a few seconds!) Note: Some of the more ‘advanced’ webmasters may ask whether it is possible to have the XML configuration file generated ‘dynamically’ – by a server-side script, for example. The answer is YES! (And if you want to hear more about this aspect, just drop me a line!) Although I’m not going to go through an entire XML file to explain each entry – let me take a moment to go through our entire toolbar creation process – then things should become much clearer…

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How would I create, deploy and use your custom toolbar? Glad you asked! J OK, I’ll tell you… For our process, the major steps are: 1. Defining the toolbar you want. Selecting the ‘look and feel’ for your toolbar and important functions. 2. Creating the sample toolbar. We build and host the toolbar on our site for free – try then buy! 3. Purchasing a site license and compiling the toolbar. Pull out the credit card, and in a few hours, your toolbar is ready! 4. Installing the toolbar package on your web site. Copy the files to your site, and you’re almost ready to go! 5. Giving the users download links and other instructions. We give you cut-and-paste samples to put on your HTML pages. 6. Maintaining and upgrading your toolbar. The party’s never over! Your toolbar can ‘evolve’ over time! Let’s focus on the first 6 steps, and get to the fancy stuff later…

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1. Defining the toolbar you want Creating a custom toolbar begins with YOU… The first step in the process is for you to figure out whether a toolbar is going to be a good investment for you to make. After all, it does take some time, and some money. Not a lot, but wort h thinking about. If you have a web site hosted on a ‘free’ server or have less than 50 unique visitors per day, we have to be honest with you and say that a custom toolbar is probably not a good investment for you to make just yet. (A better investment would be to have us help you build your traffic first! Just ask!) Some general guidelines: • You should have your own registered domain. • You should have ‘real’ hosting – and not be hosted on some ‘free’ service. • You should have at least 50 unique visitors per day to your site. • Your site should be useful to repeat visitors – it may have many useful links, or a lot of useful ‘content’ of its own. • Affiliate-based sites are OK if the previous guidelines are met. • I should mention is that you don’t even necessarily need to have a web site to use custom toolbars – there is an ‘expert technique’ I’ll describe later – more on this shortly. For the moment, let’s say that you have a web site; you’re receiving about 100 or more unique visitors per day. You have some kind of product or service that you wish to sell, and you want to supplement that revenue by paid searches. OH, and don’t forget – you want to provide VALUE for your toolbar users – so they’ll KEEP your toolbar installed and running! J You’ve decided to have a logo, with drop-down menu, links to the most important pages of your site, a search box that searches your site, plus several other search engines, some product link buttons for your own products, some product link buttons for affiliate products, and a scrolling marquee to announce specials. This is a very ‘standard’ toolbar layout – looks like you’re all set… Note: If you really want to help speed up the process, you may wish to draw a simple sketch of what you want the toolbar to look like, and prepare a list of all the menu entries you want, and exactly what URL they should go to.

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2. Creating the sample toolbar Creating the sample toolbar begins with US… If you followed through on Step 1, you should have almost all the information you need to have your sample toolbar developed for you. You simply send me an email – yes, me personally! J Marty R. Milette at [email protected] – I’ll be the guy who builds your first toolbar. What I need to know are: •

What you’d like to call your toolbar – SuperSearchToolbar for example.

•

The URL of your web site: http://www.supersearch24.com for example.

•

The location where your toolbar will be placed on the web site – http://www.supersearch24.com/toolbar/ for example.

•

Then, I need to know what you’d like to see on the toolbar in the way of buttons, menus, and what they should do. This is the most difficult part – and sometimes I can look at your site and help give you some ideas – so don’t be afraid to ask!

Although creating a toolbar sounds very simple – a lot of work goes into creating a successful toolbar! We’ll look at your site (if you have one), and can make suggestions for improvements or changes. We’ve designed hundreds of toolbars for all kinds of different types of sites – and have a lot of knowledge to pass on to you to incorporate in your design.

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Note: You’ve probably seen a LOT of el-cheapo $29.95 build-yourown toolbar kits – and YES, it is POSSIBLE to build your own toolbar using these very LIMITED tools – but you have to ask yourself three questions: 1. Do you know enough about creating toolbars to make one that is going to drive traffic to your site and build instant revenue? 2. Do you really believe that for $29.95 you’re going to get the kind of technical support and Internet marketing expertise you’re going to need? 3. Are you going to bump your head on the limitations of the cheap tool and have to replace it later? (Clients won’t be happy about removing and reinstalling toolbars – is it worth risking your client-base?)

Just to give you an idea of the work that goes into creating a good toolbar – here’s what we normally do when preparing a sample toolbar: 1. We evaluate your web site or proposed toolbar application. 2. We look for the most important pages – either for traffic or revenue generation – and provide instant access buttons for them. 3. We examine which pages are less important, but that should still have menu-based links to them. 4. We attempt to discover which products or services are generating the most revenue for you, and provide instant access buttons for those. 5. We investigate which affiliate programs you may wish to link to, and how to maximize revenue from those programs. 6. We discuss with you ‘alternatives’ for generation of revenue, such as paid searches, affiliate programs, MLM programs, branded toolbars and other important questions. (We’ll also give you all the links you need to quickly sign up with the most important programs for free.) 7. We will then prepare the sample toolbar and host it from our site. We’ll send instructions on how to install and test it. 8. You would verify the features and functionality of the sample toolbar, suggest any revisions – and when you are 100% happy with it, and wish to deploy it on your site, you proceed to the next step: Purchasing a site license.

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3. Purchasing a site license and compiling the toolbar Our custom toolbar is a COMPILED product – meaning that it is linked to one, and only one particular web site. When we compile the toolbar, an encrypted site license and unique toolbar are generated JUST FOR YOUR SITE. These steps ensure that your toolbar is protected from theft. Even if someone steals your toolbar, the XML file and everything else – it wouldn’t do them a bit of good – because the first time the toolbar runs – it goes to YOUR site to get the most recent configuration. They’d actually be doing you a favor by giving out more copies of your toolbar! J Our site license is very reasonably priced, but on the 31st of December, 2003 – we’ll be increasing the price to cover the development costs of a whole series of exciting new features! Here’s what the site license gives you: •

A custom toolbar package that contains all the files needed to deploy the toolbar on your site, including: -

the compiled toolbar installation program your XML configuration file(s) bitmap image files for buttons on your toolbar a marquee or other HTML file to include on the toolbar sample web page for installation/removal instructions sample uninstallation web page

•

A license to freely give out as many toolbars as you want.

•

One year of free, unlimited technical support. If you ever need to update or change your toolbar, we’ll help you all the way through the process. (And may even do all the changes for you.)

•

One year of free, unlimited software upgrades. We’ll notify you when upgrades are available (before anybody else) and compile you a new one for free. (These new versions will run perfectly on your existing XML files without modification.)

There are a number of optional services we offer that are not covered under the site license, but are available separately – such as: toolbar hosting (if you don’t have a suitable web site), branded toolbars, Affiliate toolbars, software development (Offshore Software Development from Russia) 18

4. Installing the toolbar package on your web site This is actually the easy part! All you need to do is create a folder on your web site called /toolbar/ and dump the entire contents of you toolbar package into it. Once the package is installed, you only need to copy-and-paste from the sample pages provided – these pages give users instructions on how to download, install and remove your toolbar.

5. Giving the users download links and other instructions Once you’ve prepared your own pages from our cut-and-paste samples – you only need to install links on the home page of your site to get users to them, and you’re on the way! When users go to download and ins tall your toolbar – they have the option of running the setup program immediately, or saving the file to their system, and running it from there. Although it is possible to have the toolbar install automatically, it would require you to purchase and install a digital certificate on your web site, and one for ‘code signing’ that would be used to compile the toolbar. These are not really a necessary expense, as they only save the user one or two clicks to install the toolbar. (And would cost you over $300 USD per year to have!)

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6. Maintaining and upgrading your toolbar Custom toolbars developed with our kit have one feature that we invented – and that is the ability for the toolbar to DYNAMICALLY update and reconfigure itself every time the user opens a browser window. The advantages to you are tremendous – because you no longer have to manually distribute toolbar updates any time you want to change the look, feel or operation of your toolbar – and people using your toolbar don’t have to do a thing! The secret is in our XML configuration file system. Just edit the XML file, and that’s it! Next time the client opens a new browser window – they have the new toolbar instantly. Also, you’re not limited to small changes – you can COMPLETELY change EVERY CONTROL on the toolbar – you can move buttons, add or remove them, add or remove links, change button bitmap images, change URLs – ANYTHING. If we release a new version of the toolbar itself – this is the only time you’d need to post an update. However, the update would involve simply specifying a new download link to the new setup program. Your existing XML file may be used, or you can simply make a copy of it and use the copy to take advantage of the new features of the new toolbar. Existing users of your toolbar need never upgrade unless they want to – as their toolbars will continue working perfectly from the existing XML file. Trick! To help you optimize your toolbars, we often include ‘tracking links’ as HTML parameters, for example: http://www.mysite.com?re=toolbar-home The re= at the end of the link tells us the referrer – this way when we examine our server logs, use our regular web statistics program or write server-side tracking script, we can track toolbar referrals easily – allowing us to monitor how the toolbar is being used, which pages and controls are working well and which ones are duds and should be replaced. We recommend doing this about once a month – but once you ‘have it’ (the ‘perfect’ toolbar), you shouldn’t have to change it unless you want to try fresh promotions or links. 20

What do you mean I don’t even need a website to use toolbars? This is a crazy idea – but crazy like a fox! J Let’s say that you want to create a toolbar strictly to generate revenue from some kind of affiliate program. You don’t have a web site, but have many ways you can get the word out about your toolbar (a newsletter or mailing list, for example). Let’s take ‘shoes’ as an example… You decide that you want to create a toolbar that will help people to find shoes they want from a variety of shoe stores. You join affiliate programs for several of the best shoe stores – and each of them has a search page you want people to be able to search with. Now – when people want to buy shoes on-line and they start searching different sites – they have to first FIND the search function on the site, and then figure out how to use it. This is a real pain sometimes! What would be GREAT for the person in search of shoes would be if they could execute the same search against a bunch of their favorite sites with only the click of a button – and that’s what you can give them! Create a toolbar that would have your logo, but when clicked, would go to the shoe store of choice. (Passing through your affiliate link.) You could also have a custom search box that would perform the same searches against ALL of the sites you’re joined up with. (Always passing in your affiliate link!) Another twist is to add additional search links that connect your toolbar to Pay-Per-Click search feeds (more on this later). Then, every search has the potential to generate revenue! (And not just on shoes!) Such toolbars are easy to build – but how would you host it? With us, of course! We offer a Toolbar Hosting service, where we’ll create your toolbar, generate the site license, host the toolbar, provide all the download links and other web pages users would need to download, install and/or remove your toolbar – all for just a single license fee plus $10 USD per month hosting charge. We provide the server space, bandwidth and perform all updates for you. Just site back and market your toolbar and leave the worries to us!

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How can I generate all this revenue from a toolbar? The same methods of generating revenue from your web site can be used from right inside your custom toolbar! I’ve mentioned a few already, but let me go into some more detail on each… Note: Everything you need to know to join any or all of the programs described here is organized conveniently for you on my Secret Links Page – instructions how to get there are towards the end of this eBook!

Paid Search Feeds Did you know that you can earn money by publishing pay-per-click (PPC) search engine results on your web site? If not, you’re missing out on some tremendous opportunities! Take a look at the bid values for some pretty typical keywords on some of the major PPC search engines. Let’s try just a few keywords related to Online Gambling with just two of the typical PPC providers who supply paid feeds: KeyWord online casino gambling gambling online internet gambling casino gambling gambling Average:

7Search $1.14 $1.02 $0.93 $0.93 $1.09 $1.02

SearchFeed $0.97 $0.93 $0.80 $0.59 $0.56 $0.77

Now, just as an example, say that you create the “Super Gambling” toolbar, and give it out to just 100 people – and that these 100 people only use it once or twice a day for a week. How much would you earn? 100 people X 2 times per day X bid price X your percentage Considering an average bid price of $1.02 for 7Search (who pays out 50% to you!), this would work out to: 100 X 2 X $1.02 X 50% = $102 USD per day! Not bad for a little toolbar and only a few of them given out. (Try 1,000!) It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how sites like Google or Alexa make out when they give away MILLIONS of their ‘branded’ toolbars!

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Affiliate Links If you thought paid search feeds were fun, affiliate links can be the real goldmine! For those of you not familiar with affiliate links – basically, they are a means of obtaining a commission on sales that are made when you send visitors (from your toolbar or web site) to the vendor’s web site and they make a purchase. Many vendors offer affiliate programs directly (Amazon.com, for example), and other vendors work through affiliate ‘consolidators’, such as Commission Junction, or Linkshare. However you slice it – all you need to do is get the visitors to click on a special link – and when they hit the vendor’s web site, it records you as the ‘sales agent’, and you get your commission if somebody buys something. Going back to our Shoes toolbar example, a quick check on Commission Junction pulls up 22 different shoe vendors. Four of these vendors give commissions of 15% on a wide variety of shoes and other footwear. So, let’s say that again, we gave out only 100 toolbars, and each of those 100 people only buys one pair of shoes at the 15% commission. Assuming an average price of $150 for men’s or women’s dress shoes – the math is again easy: 100 sales X $150 X 15% = $2,250 Wow! Get that toolbar out to more people and you’re living high! J Now of course, this example assumes that everybody who downloads your toolbar is going to buy some shoes – which stands to reason, since they downloaded it in the first place. What this example does NOT take into account is the fact that people may buy more than one pair of shoes at a time (to save on shipping), or buy more expensive shoes, or even that they may use the toolbar again in the future to make additional purchases. Also, even if they don’t use the toolbar again, most vendors leave cookies on the user’s computer that are good anywhere from 10 days to several months – meaning that you’d get repeat commissions for that customer if they buy again with or without the toolbar even being installed! 23

Our Affiliate Program Any user of our custom toolbar – even free members of the http://www.u-bar.com program – are automatically our affiliates! What we suggest is that you include a “Recommend this Toolbar” button on your toolbar to perform two critically important functions: •

To help make your toolbar VIRAL – by getting people to recommend your toolbar to their friends. (How and why you want to create a viral toolbar is described below.)

•

To earn commissions from our affiliate program. (Our affiliate program is described below also.)

Your Own Products and Services Let’s not forget about your own products and services! These are where you really make a killing. You own them, make them, or buy them at wholesale – you determine the price and therefore your own profit margin – so you have the most opportunity to cash in. Put direct access buttons on your toolbar to give users the fastest, easiest way to buy your hottest and most profitable items. Use tracking links to determine what people are interested in, and use that information to always ensure that the most profitable buttons are always displayed. Additionally, you can add buttons and links that help users add items or manage their shopping cart, jump to your catalog pages, search for items they want with your internal search functions and much more. The goal: Use your toolbar to give users the fastest, easiest and simplest way to find the products they want – and then to buy them!

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So how do I make money just recommending toolbars? There are a number of ways to make money from just recommending toolbars – the fastest and easiest way is to simply use our “Referral Form” at: http://www.custom-toolbars.com/recommend/ You don’t have to join any fancy programs, use any special links, own a toolbar or even have a web site – just visit the page above as many times as you wish – make your recommendation, and that’s it! By completing the form, your name and email address will automatically be registered as the “Referrer”, and if the person you recommend the custom toolbar kit to ends up buying one, you’ll receive a nice $25 USD commission by PayPal. (Other payment options are possible.) So, if you have any webmaster friends who have web sites with good traffic and repeat visitors – you’d be doing them a great favor to recommend a toolbar for their site. Let me explain the different affiliate programs in more detail, and you’ll soon know how to earn DOUBLE or even TRIPLE commissions! These programs are described on the next page…

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What are your affiliate programs and how do they work? We have, what we believe, is one of the simplest and most effective affiliate programs in the world! You don’t even need to join it to use it! EVERYBODY is an affiliate automatically! Let me describe the different levels and how they work…

Link: Recommend to a friend… The simplest program is the “Recommend to a friend...” program – everybody is eligible – all they need is to enter their name and email address into a simple form, enter their friend’s name and email address, and click a button. (Described above.) Just use our simple “Referral Form” at: http://www.custom-toolbars.com/recommend/ If the person you recommend the toolbar kit to ends up buying one, you end up with a nice $25 USD commission. You’ll want to keep a shortcut on your desktop for this link! J

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Toolbar: Recommend to a friend… We recommend that you include a “Recommend to a friend…” button on your toolbar. The code for it will automatically be included in your XML configuration file – all you need do is remove the comment tags from around the code. (Instructions will be inside the XML file.) This puts a “Recommend to a friend…” button on your toolbar that allows anyone using your toolbar to recommend both your toolbar AND our custom toolbar system to their friends. This actually serves THREE very important purposes: 1. It makes your toolbar VIRAL – by making it very EASY for people to recommend your toolbar to their friends. 2. People using your toolbar will become excited because they can earn commissions from recommending toolbars to their webmaster friends – enjoying a $25 USD commission for no effort at all! 3. If a toolbar license gets sold, not only will the person making the recommendation get a commission – so will you! A nice, crisp $25 USD commission, to be exact! This is basically a two-tier affiliate program, and nobody has to do anything to take advantage of it! How simple could it be?! There’s another extra twist to this story! If YOU use YOUR OWN TOOLBAR’s “Recommend to a friend…” button – you’d receive DOUBLE commission! Yep -- $50 USD! And again, you’d have to do absolutely nothing (except have bought a toolbar for your web site). It wouldn’t take many recommendations to pay for your own toolbar – that’s for sure! But wait, it gets even better…

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Certified Toolbar Developer Program If you are a webmaster, software developer or consultant – you may qualify for our Certified Toolbar Developer Program. To qualify for the program, you must: •

Own a toolbar yourself.

•

Be able to design and maintain toolbars using our system.

•

Pay $100 USD testing/registration fee, and have your skills tested online.

Under this program, YOU would recommend toolbars to your clients – you would build the toolbars for them – and would provide technical support to the clients. You earn money in two ways: •

You receive TRIPLE commission – that’s $75 USD per toolbar.

•

You may charge the client to maintain their toolbar (the XML file and images) at your regular hourly billing rate. (This can really add up!)

You will receive promotion and marketing exposure on the ne w “Certified Toolbar Developers” page on the Custom Toolbars web site. Since our web site gets tons of traffic and is indexed almost daily by every major search engine spider – your site will get boosted in link popularity and spidering too! The program also opens up the door to make excellent revenues on serverside scripting – to automate the XML file generation process, build affiliate and MLM programs and develop custom toolbar applications. Simply contact me at: [email protected] for further details.

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What’s in the sample kit, and how do I install it? To be honest, the sample kit isn’t very exciting at the moment. However, it does demonstrate some important principles of toolbar design and shows some of the controls and features of the toolbar. (A new kit is due soon!) The documentation on the XML file structure probably isn’t too interesting – as we create the toolbar for you anyway – but perhaps later you may wish to modify it – and that’s where the XML comes in. If you haven’t got the sample kit yet, just go here and fill in the form. It will be emailed to you instantly:

http://www.custom-toolbars.com/download-toolbar/ What you’ll receive is an email that has the toolbar kit attached. Sometimes your mail program may not like this method, or perhaps your corporate mail server will object – in either case, you may still download the executable portion of the kit from the URL above. (Just click the download link instead of filling in the form.)

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Download the Toolbar Kit Clicking on the download link gives you this:

Just hit the <Save> button and save the executable program to your desktop. The icon should look something like this: Just double-click it to start the installation.

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When the installation starts, you’ll get a dialog like this:

The last part of the operation is to add the Toolbar to the Browser and then position it where you like. These are described below. Immediately after installation, you should see this:

Your sample toolbar is now installed, and all you need to do is add it to the browser and play with it!

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Add the Toolbar to the Browser •

The final step is to add the toolbar to your browser window, and position it where you wish. The first step, is to open up a new Internet Explorer window.

•

In Internet Explorer, select the View menu, and then Toolbars. You should see something like this:

•

If the checkmark for Lock the Toolbars appears as mine does in the image above -- you need to first turn it off.

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•

Then, select the toolbar you want to enable from the list. In my case, I will enable the The WebBar samples toolbar. The Toolbars menu should now look like this:

•

Almost immediately, the new toolbar will appear, but it may not be positioned where you want. In this example, you can see that the MemphisWeb toolbar (a different toolbar than the sample) needs to be moved:

•

To position the toolbar, simply grab the "handle" (in red above) and drag it downwards (the direction in blue) and the toolbar will move to its new location as shown here:

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Your new toolbar is now fully installed and ready to use!

Switch the Toolbar On or Off •

Once the toolbar is installed, you may wish to turn it off or back on again without removing it from your system. To do this, simply select View Toolbars from Internet Explorer, and then enable or disable the checkmark next to the toolbar you wish to enable or disable as shown here:

Note: After enabling or disabling a toolbar, you may wish to move the positions of the toolbars around. To do this, simply grab the handle (as described above) and position the toolbar where you'd like it.

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OK, I have the sample kit installed, what does it do?

The directions on the toolbar say to “Click the button on the left to choose a sample”, so let’s do it!

Every time you select a menu option, a different toolbar will appear. This is an example of the “chameleon effect” that is possible with our toolbar kit! What the “chameleon effect “ means in practical terms is that you can buy one toolbar for your web site, but have many different ‘variations’ of it. For example, if someone is navigating your discussion area, they can have a ‘discussion toolbar’ showing – if they are ordering with a shopping cart, they could have a ‘shopping cart’ toolbar to help them.

The combination of cookies, server-side script and dynamic updates make our toolbar the most powerful and flexible in the world!

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The examples include: Simple Example 1: A standard button with a single, simple action and tool tip.

Just as an example, here is the XML code for the simple button: <Buttons> <Button ImageID="1"> This is a button with a simple action. Click Here to go to my web site! This is a button… http://www.five-star-hotels.com

Let me just explain this a little before we go on… XML is a structured language – and looks very much like (and is based on) HTML. SO, if you can build web pages in HTML, then you can build toolbars in XML. The XML Tags are very clear and easy to understand. For example, ImageID is the number for one of the built-in button images. The Arcadia Logo is an example of an external image located on the web server. The “Text” is the text that appears next to the button. The Action is what you want the button to do. (In this example, to jump to a web site.)

Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? J The other examples are no more difficult. You also have all the code on your system to study, copy, paste and modify at your leisure!

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Let’s go through the other examples… •

Toolbar button styles: Shows the many different types of buttons you may have on your toolbar.

•

Input text fields: Shows how to pass data entered into the toolbar text boxes out to web pages.

•

Pulldown menus: Shows how to use pull-down menus to provide options for users.

•

Info fields: Shows how to present static or live information on the toolbar.

•

Uninstall…:

To remove the toolbar from the browser.

Note: In this version of the toolbar, you should go to <Start> to complete the removal process. In the next version of the toolbar, the removal will be ‘clean’.

You can see the XML files that create each of these different toolbars – and can simply copy-paste-edit the code to put the same controls on YOUR toolbar!

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How can I make my toolbar VIRAL? Few people understand the concept of viral marketing and how it works. If you don’t – I can heartily recommend reading Seth Godin ’s book on the topic. (A freely-downloadable copy is available from the Secret Links page described below.) The super-simple explanation is: If you have a product or service – make it as easy as possible for people to recommend it to their friends and associates – and then make it as easy as possible for those people to sign up or buy it. Seth goes on to describe a whole range of techniques for creating viral products – naturally, you want YOUR toolbar to be viral as well! One of the features you’ll want to have right on the toolbar is the ability to “Recommend to a friend…” (We even give you the code and web pages to do it!) By putting at least one button like this on your toolbar, you’re giving people a fast, convenient and easy way for them to help ‘spread the word’ about your wonderful toolbar. Of course, if your toolbar is junk and contains nothing useful – then you’d best take a step back and MAKE it USEFUL first! J People won’t recommend junk to their friends – but if you have a toolbar that provides a valuable feature or function – they’ll be DELIGHTED to be able to recommend it! We take this option one step further, and allow people to recommend the toolbar development system itself to their webmaster friends. This gives people the opportunity to also earn some nice commissions from their recommendation.

How can I make my Web Site perform better? The answer is on the Secret Links Page! Just download the “Affiliate Masters Course” eBook – read it – and DO IT! The Custom Toolbars web site was developed almost exactly in the way described in Ken Evoy’s eBook! READ IT – DO IT! It doesn’t get any easier than that! J

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How was the Custom Toolbar developed? The Custom Toolbar started out as an idea for one particular site, but once the toolbar was developed, and we figured out how it could be modified to be configured from the XML file dynamically – we were amazed to discover the potential applications and decided to offer it commercially. The custom toolbar kit was developed by Arcadia Inc., a software development company located in St. Petersburg Russia. I partnered with Arcadia Inc. to develop and market the Custom Toolbar. It’s a great example of a Russian-Canadian win-win partnership!

http://www.offshore-soft.com

The custom toolbar kit is only a very small sample of the kind of software development Arcadia Inc. does. They have over 100 highly-skilled software developers available to take on everything from low-level system code, all the way up to high-end business web portals using the latest .NET and UNIX technologies. I highly recommend them! (And the prices are great too!)

How do I get to the “Secret Links” page? For all readers of this eBook, I have set up a special Secret Links web page – just put the following link into the URL of your browser EXACTLY as shown: http://www.custom-toolbars.com/secret-links/?uid=TBFP&pw=1217958

What you’ll find here are ALL the links that SHOULD have been available in this eBook. Next time I’ll do it in PageMaker instead of MS-Word! J The links are all described in detail, and will get you started as quickly as possible by providing a checklist that will help you join the RIGHT PROGRAMS in the RIGHT ORDER. These programs aren’t just for people working with toolbars – they are equally applicable to any web business and even for making personal contacts. You’ll save hundreds of hours in research alone!

NOTE: PLEASE DO NOT SHARE THIS LINK WITH ANYONE! (ONLY readers of this eBook should have access.)

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I really want a toolbar – what should I do now? That’s easy! Just send an email to [email protected] describing what you want, and some information about your site or proposed application, and I’ll get right back to you with some suggestions or possibly a working sample hosted on our site. When you speak with me, you’re speaking to a real, live person! I answer all the emails, and create all the toolbars for all my clients. I have a personal interest in making sure that your toolbar works well for you, and helps you grow and expand your customer base and revenues. I want to see your toolbar showcased on my site, and I want to see you making a ton of money from the toolbar, plus any leads and referrals you send to me. Here’s the information you need to send: The Menu Name Your Site URL The Toolbar Folder Buttons You’d Like, and the URLs they should go to

I.e. MyToolbar I.e. http://www.mysite.com I.e. http://www.mysite.com/toolbar/ • Logo with drop-down list (http://www.mysite.com) • Text box for search text, etc. etc. etc.

Thanks for your time and attention I look forward to hearing from you soon!

Marty R. Milette, P.Prog.

CTT+, MCT, MCSA, MCSE+I, MCP+SB, MCSD

[email protected]

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