announcement Introducing ads for guests

[Ryn]

Hey folks,

It's almost the end of August, which means we're starting the next admissions cycle as we enter into the new school year. OCIs are also on the horizon, starting early September. So, lots will be happening here in the next few months, no doubt.

I've been very pleased with how we've grown over the past year and a bit, as I touched on in my post celebrating our first birthday. With this growth has come increased costs, which we've been able to offset somewhat thanks to our generous supporters. (Thanks again!)

I'll take this time to say that if you found this forum in any way helpful throughout your journey as an applicant, law student, or lawyer, and you have $5 (or more!) to give to help us keep the lights on, we would greatly appreciate your donation.

All that being said, unfortunately our donations are not enough to keep up with our costs. I have said before that I hate ads and everything that comes with having them foisted on me. I am still committed to keeping ads off the forums as long as I am able. In that vein, in an effort to bridge the gap between the contributions we receive from supporters and the cost of running the forums, in the next several days, we will start displaying Google ads to guests (that is, to users who are not logged in). A huge chunk of our traffic comes from guests, usually popping in off of Google searches to get information as they research law school, the LSAT, OCIs, associate salaries, or any of the hundreds of topics of interest, with information contributed by all of you. In my view, the value this group receives without giving back (i.e., contributing to the site in some form) is something I am comfortable trying to turn back into value for all of us.

So, I presume the vast majority of you reading this will have an account (guests don't tend to care about our announcements!). For you, nothing in your Canadian Law Forum experience will change. And I hope we can continue to keep it that way. Thanks again for being a part of our community.

[Jaggers]

Good idea. 

[hiccups]

Will it help if we click on ads? 

[Turtles]

40 minutes ago, hiccups said:

Will it help if we click on ads?

 Advertising networks design their systems to detect intentional clicking to garner revenue and will refuse to pay in such cases and eventually kick off clients where it becomes too common. Repeatedly clicking ads in an unusual way will just lead to wasting your time and/or the website getting demonetized. They don't want people using bots or paying people to click ads, for example, as the brands paying for the ads expect a certain percentage of click throughs to lead to sales and the brands will leave if the ratio gets skewed.

[Ryn]

Yeah Google is pretty good at figuring out real interest from fake interest. But I appreciate the sentiment regardless.