Cool, good to hear. They don't bring in much money at all though. At least on impressions alone, they bring in about $0.05 per day. I think they would be more profitable if people clicked on them, but they aren't always that relevant.
I think the ads are a good idea, if they help to support the site long term. Thanks for your efforts in keeping the site up and running over the years. I would be happy to provide a one-time $ support for the web site. Have you considered putting up a PayPal donation link? Having a paywall/subscription for this web site would be okay, but it would likely discourage others to join? There is a small great group of regular contributors to this site which is great, but similar to newspaper web sites, many potential readers/contributors would seek out "free" news sources.
Yeah, clicking on an ad helps but clicks have to be "real". If people click on them just to give money to the site, Google will start to notice unusual patterns and doesn't pay for them.
@MichMatters I agree that there should be a cutoff somewhere but I do think that something like the Neogen expansion falls on the worthy side of that cutoff, it's $75 million and 175k sq ft. In a case like this maybe make a Neogen thread so it could theoretically capture any of the future news and developments? If that proposal for the 10 floor building in old town moves any further forward that should certainly get a thread and in the future I'd just make one right out the gate for something like that. Stadium North is borderline but I still think should have had it's own thread, particularly if it had started with the early news and everything got put there. I'd argue even Walter French should have gotten a separate thread, City View falls clearly into the "deserved its own thread" category.
IMO the general threads are way, way too long and cluttered and has made it virtually impossible for myself, much less any new member or lurker, to go back and see the history of any particular project or make sense of the conversation around it. So yeah, I'd really like to see more individual threads.
It's obviously not worth starting threads for everything that's already halfway through its process but for now I think a thread should be started for Neogen projects and the Old Town mid rise. It's tough to come up with any useful arbitrary line by dollar amount or size, if it's a decent sized "urban" styled project then it probably gets a thread (maybe over four floors or 100k sq ft or something clearly notable), otherwise it'd have to be something of clear regional importance.
To continue rambling, I also think pinning a few more of the long running threads might be a good idea to keep them from getting lost (some or all of these: General Lansing Twp, MSU Development, Lansing area photos & Construction updates, Natural Lansing (parks thread), General Westside...development , Okemos & Haslett, Lansing History). Also maybe making and pinning a metro business news thread to post non-development related business openings, expansions and what not that may be of interest to people?
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@MichMatters I agree that there should be a cutoff somewhere but I do think that something like the Neogen expansion falls on the worthy side of that cutoff, it's $75 million and 175k sq ft. In a case like this maybe make a Neogen thread so it could theoretically capture any of the future news and developments? If that proposal for the 10 floor building in old town moves any further forward that should certainly get a thread and in the future I'd just make one right out the gate for something like that. Stadium North is borderline but I still think should have had it's own thread, particularly if it had started with the early news and everything got put there. I'd argue even Walter French should have gotten a separate thread, City View falls clearly into the "deserved its own thread" category.
IMO the general threads are way, way too long and cluttered and has made it virtually impossible for myself, much less any new member or lurker, to go back and see the history of any particular project or make sense of the conversation around it. So yeah, I'd really like to see more individual threads.
It's obviously not worth starting threads for everything that's already halfway through its process but for now I think a thread should be started for Neogen projects and the Old Town mid rise. It's tough to come up with any useful arbitrary line by dollar amount or size, if it's a decent sized "urban" styled project then it probably gets a thread (maybe over four floors or 100k sq ft or something clearly notable), otherwise it'd have to be something of clear regional importance.
To continue rambling, I also think pinning a few more of the long running threads might be a good idea to keep them from getting lost (some or all of these: General Lansing Twp, MSU Development, Lansing area photos & Construction updates, Natural Lansing (parks thread), General Westside...development , Okemos & Haslett, Lansing History). Also maybe making and pinning a metro business news thread to post non-development related business openings, expansions and what not that may be of interest to people?