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Slaw and Sponsorship
After six-and-a-half years of daily publication, it’s become time for Slaw to accept sponsorship. As our body of past posts gets ever larger—a shade under 8,000 at the moment—and as the site becomes ever more developed, expenses rise. And because continual development is the watchword on the web, keeping Slaw relevant and responsive will mean financial costs as we work to stay abreast of the changes in technology.
So shortly after this post goes up, you’ll see the banners from those businesses who have agreed to help us keep Slaw going—and improving. Click on them to explore the products they offer you.
Thanks to them, we’re headed into the next six-and-a-half years of life. Stay with us. We’ll make it interesting.
Good work “Administrator”. Hugely grateful for the ad free past, but more than willing to accept that advertising makes the free web world go round.
I look forward to your doubling what you pay your contributors. Meanwhile I have to agree with Nick H above.
Actually, I’d rather not see the ads. To me, Slaw was better when it didn’t try to do so much. Now there are contributors, columnists, MLB case digests, Slaw Tips, etc. I found that the Slaw page was way too crowded before, and now with the ads it is even worse. If it was just one ad it would be better, but on this one page where I am writing my comment there are four; that is way too many.
One thing I tell students when they are using the web is to critique a website or blog to make sure it is a decent one to use. One of the criteria I use is the number of ads on the site, as it often shows a bias. Now Slaw just looks like a shill for publishers. I’d rather have a pared down version of Slaw and have no ads. I guess I’ll just read Slaw on Firefox with my adblocker in place so I don’t have to be bothered with them.
I can’t wait for those columnist royalty cheques to start rolling in. ;)
Even free information requires a framework for generating the revenue required to create and sustain it. There are no exceptions. From time to time, these models need to change in order continue and develop.
Free government services are paid for by taxpayers, free access to CANLII is paid for by the Law Societies who are funded by their members, and SLAW by the unpaid services of Simon Fodden and his contributors.
SLAW has not changed by the inclusion of a few advertisements. I do not boycott The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal because they carry ads. SLAW is no different.
…. knowing a few Slaw contributors I feel comfortable saying that the inclusion of ads is not going influence or affect what we post one iota.
I would rather see some ads than appeals for donations (see Wikipedia). Servers cost money to run, and that money has to come from somewhere.