Being a Conduit Publisher: The Sean Duffy Story
Ever since I started using the web, I have looked for ways to promote my town (Whitehaven) and county (Cumbria) on the web. I published my first website back in the early 90s and have never looked back. I’m always searching for ways to utilize new technologies to help me connect to my web audience. Capturing their attention, though, is difficult — especially when you have lots of competition.
When I discovered Conduit in 2005, I felt like I finally found the perfect promotion tool. Conduit’s Community Toolbar solution meant that even I — who didn’t know the first thing about computer programming or codes — could create innovative software with content from my website. And not only was this a free service, but I could earn money based on my toolbar’s daily active users. This was, and still is, a perfect marriage.
I’ve created and actively promoted quite a few Conduit-powered Community Toolbars, but a couple of years ago I decided to concentrate my marketing efforts on my Streaming Internet Radio Community Toolbar, which has become my most popular toolbar. This toolbar’s main feature is the embedded streaming radio player, which gives users access to thousands of online radio stations via a user-managed database. The toolbar also offers users a Wikipedia search box, quick access to Google Earth, an email checker, a pop-up blocker, a cache cleaner, a chat room, and a weather forecaster. It also incorporates an RSS feed feature where all the latest news, sports, and entertainment are fed directly into the user’s browser.
This strategy definitely paid dividends for me, but I always felt that there was something missing from my campaigns. While I was glad to give users great radio options from around the world, what I really wanted to do is create my own radio station, with great music and a special program dedicated to musicians from Cumbria.
Until recently, I would upload the odd file or latch on to other services as a means of promotion. However, streaming can eat bandwidth and can also be very expensive. The expense of creating a radio station and the technical know-how made my dream seem like a non-starter. That is, until I discovered another great, free platform for non-developers: Radionomy.
Radionomy provides individuals and organizations with tools, infrastructure, and content libraries to create their own radio stations. These stations are broadcast on the web and are accessible anywhere. The service is entirely free. Radionomy pays for everything, including royalties and broadcast fees.
Four-minute segments of advertising are spread throughout your broadcast and, like Conduit, Radionomy shares their revenue with radio station creators like me, based on the size of their audience.
You may not yet have heard of Radionomy, but they are quietly growing in size, with over 30 million hours of radio streamed every month. Radionomy is the biggest online radio platform in Europe and is making inroads in the U.S. market as well, with a 30% share.
Creating my radio station was straightforward. I just downloaded Radionomy’s Radio Manager and started creating an audio library. I uploaded some songs from my own music collection, but mostly I used material from Radionomy’s vast 60,000-piece library. Radionomy also provides an embeddable code, which means I was able to easily add my radio station to my website and blog.
Now, thanks to Conduit and Radionomy, I can share my love of music through my very own radio station: Rock and Pop Radio. I recently added a 20-minute segment dedicated to local Cumbria recording artists to help them get their music heard across the web and, potentially, by recording studios. I would love it if through Conduit and Radionomy I could turn a local radio celebrity into a global superstar.
I am very proud of my radio station and urge everyone to give Radionomy a try. Within half an hour, you could be streaming your own content across the web to thousands of listeners worldwide.
Technology has come a long way since the early 90s, and so have I.
