Admin
Admin - Webmaster
Quick Shopping Links: Amazon (please bookmark!) and Amazon.ca | Target | eBay | Wayfair/CSN | Walmart | Kohl's | Albee Baby
Please Support Car-Seat.Org
Unlike many popular online community forums and websites, Car-Seat.Org is privately owned. It is operated primarily by volunteer moderators who are parents and child passenger safety advocates themselves! Many forums are owned by large corporations, have been purchased by "vertical forum integrators" or were sold long ago by the original founder to another party who simply monetized it for profit. These entities often care little about the topic or community beyond its potential for financial gain. We mention this because Car-Seat.Org is now big enough to be very expensive and time consuming to maintain. We rely on our visitors and members to help us continue with our mission, so we can avoid selling out or moving to facebook, like many other online communities have.
The forum and related websites are now primarily supported by advertising. We do not directly sell any products or services. The easiest and best way to support Car-Seat.Org is to use our links to sponsors and advertisers, including Amazon, when you make a purchase. It doesn't cost you anything but a few extra seconds to use our links or to bookmark our Amazon link or to use our links below!
As many of you know, our websites continue to grow and require increasingly expensive hosting services. As of September, 2013, just the forum alone generated around 5 million page views a month from over 200,000 unique visitors, transferring 100 GigaBytes of data, according to Google Analytics. Based on Quantcast data, our forum and blog combine for over 10,000 unique visitors on an average day. Our forums have nearly 20,000 registered members, of which 750 visit on a typical day. Well over 1000 members and visitors are browsing the forums at most times during the day. The growth in the last few years has put the server resources used by our websites beyond the limit of most standard hosting packages. The database that is over 2GB and is approaching 2 million posts alone puts our forums beyond many e-commerce hosting service capabilities, let alone the 300+ concurrent visitors that visit the forums at any instant during peak times. Combined with the cost of the software and chat room, the additional costs of a very high end dedicated server needed to host our database quickly and reliably has increased the cost to operate the forums to a very significant amount. Until mid-2007, the costs had been much lower, so it was not necessary to accept subscriptions, sponsors or advertising of any kind. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case.
Finally, I ask that you please consider NOT using advertisement-blocking software/settings here, or at the very least put www.car-seat.org into your whitelist. While many of us don't like ads, the reality is that our sponsors and advertisers track who visits their websites from our forum and that affects if they will continue to advertise and how much they are willing to pay. You will see fewer advertisements over time if you register and become an active member, and almost no ads appear for subscribers. Car-Seat.Org does not use any type of pop-up, pop-under, intra-page or other intrusive ads that force you to interact or close them before you can read the content on a page. So, if you must use an ad blocker here, please consider supporting us in other ways listed below.
Please contact Admin by email at webmaster "at" car-seat "dot" org, by private message, or use our contact form for advertising rates, details and how to arrange payment.
How to Support Car-Seat.Org:
Please Support Car-Seat.Org
Unlike many popular online community forums and websites, Car-Seat.Org is privately owned. It is operated primarily by volunteer moderators who are parents and child passenger safety advocates themselves! Many forums are owned by large corporations, have been purchased by "vertical forum integrators" or were sold long ago by the original founder to another party who simply monetized it for profit. These entities often care little about the topic or community beyond its potential for financial gain. We mention this because Car-Seat.Org is now big enough to be very expensive and time consuming to maintain. We rely on our visitors and members to help us continue with our mission, so we can avoid selling out or moving to facebook, like many other online communities have.
The forum and related websites are now primarily supported by advertising. We do not directly sell any products or services. The easiest and best way to support Car-Seat.Org is to use our links to sponsors and advertisers, including Amazon, when you make a purchase. It doesn't cost you anything but a few extra seconds to use our links or to bookmark our Amazon link or to use our links below!
As many of you know, our websites continue to grow and require increasingly expensive hosting services. As of September, 2013, just the forum alone generated around 5 million page views a month from over 200,000 unique visitors, transferring 100 GigaBytes of data, according to Google Analytics. Based on Quantcast data, our forum and blog combine for over 10,000 unique visitors on an average day. Our forums have nearly 20,000 registered members, of which 750 visit on a typical day. Well over 1000 members and visitors are browsing the forums at most times during the day. The growth in the last few years has put the server resources used by our websites beyond the limit of most standard hosting packages. The database that is over 2GB and is approaching 2 million posts alone puts our forums beyond many e-commerce hosting service capabilities, let alone the 300+ concurrent visitors that visit the forums at any instant during peak times. Combined with the cost of the software and chat room, the additional costs of a very high end dedicated server needed to host our database quickly and reliably has increased the cost to operate the forums to a very significant amount. Until mid-2007, the costs had been much lower, so it was not necessary to accept subscriptions, sponsors or advertising of any kind. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case.
Finally, I ask that you please consider NOT using advertisement-blocking software/settings here, or at the very least put www.car-seat.org into your whitelist. While many of us don't like ads, the reality is that our sponsors and advertisers track who visits their websites from our forum and that affects if they will continue to advertise and how much they are willing to pay. You will see fewer advertisements over time if you register and become an active member, and almost no ads appear for subscribers. Car-Seat.Org does not use any type of pop-up, pop-under, intra-page or other intrusive ads that force you to interact or close them before you can read the content on a page. So, if you must use an ad blocker here, please consider supporting us in other ways listed below.
Please contact Admin by email at webmaster "at" car-seat "dot" org, by private message, or use our contact form for advertising rates, details and how to arrange payment.
How to Support Car-Seat.Org:
- AMAZON.COM: Anyone can support Car-Seat.Org simply by using our link and then shopping at Amazon.com and Endless.com. You may shop for any Amazon.com item or bookmark using this link http://www.amazon.com/?tag=carseatorg-20. You may also shop for shoes and bags at Endless.com or visit our Amazon.Com Store .
- TARGET, EBAY, ETC.: Anyone can support Car-Seat.Org simply by clicking a link or banner from Car-Seat.Org before shopping at Target, shopping at eBay, Wayfair/CSN, Walmart, Albee Baby or nearly any other store linked from a Car-Seat.Org post (these links will not work as bookmarks like Amazon, sorry)!
- CAR-SEAT.COM: Shop for carseats and gear in the official store of Car-Seat.Org Forums powered by Amazon.com .
- SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS: Please support our advertisers and sponsors by visiting their websites through links and banners at Car-Seat.Org. Our forum sponsors can be found here.
- CAR-SEAT.ORG T-SHIRTS AND MORE: Also, $1 from each purchase at our new Car-Seat.Org Branded Merchandise Store will go to support our forums.
- SPONSORSHIPS: We are accepting a limited number of Premier Sponsors. This type of sponsorship may include text and/or banner advertisements. These ads may be static or rotating and may be visible to various usergroups depending on the type and placement. Please see below for more details or contact Admin for pricing and additional information.
- Premier Sponsor: In addition to features given to Car-Seat.Org Sponsors above in #3, premier sponsors will also receive a 200x53 static banner link in the premier sponsor section of the foooter on every page that appears to all visitors. They also get various link backs from our page rank 5 forums and static webpages at Car-Safety.org. This helps to improve search engine rankings and website popularity. As an optional upgrade, premier sponsors may choose to add top banner advertising or a sub forum sponsorship.
- Top Banner Advertising: This is an upgrade for Premier Sponsors. It includes a 300x250 top banner advertisement (to the right of the "Your Ad Here" text) that appears an all pages to 98% of visitors, with the main exception being subscribers who do not see most advertising. This banner may be rotated with no more than two other Premier Sponsors. For an additional cost, we can also arrange that this banner would be exclusive, such that no other banners in the same placement rotation would be from competitors in your specific area of business (child seat manufacturer, baby gear retailer, automobile brand, etc) and no more than one other Premier Sponsor could be rotated in the same placement.
- Sub Forum Sponsorships: This is a less expensive upgrade for Premier Sponsor. You may choose to have a static text link advertisement at the top of an individual sub-forum. This link will appear to guests and non-subscribers who browse that particular forum. The link may go to your website or to your sponsor sub-forum. You may also request a "sticky" post in that sub forum with information about your business. Both of these will appear in a manner such as, "This Forum Sponsored By Your Business".
- Home Page Text Link Sponsorships and Promoted Posts: This is a simple text link advertisement that appears only on the Page Rank 5 home page in the default style for all visitors and members that are not subscribers. It is limited to about 22 characters at bottom of the left sidebar column. Please Contact Us for Rates.
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