Advertising Disclosure

LAST UPDATED:

November 8, 2023

HomeAdvertising Disclosure

Who We Are

CounselingSchools.com is owned and operated by Sechel Ventures Partners, LLC, a small business founded in 2013 by Barry Franklin and Seth Restaino. From inception, and by design, the company has always operated remotely, but we are based in Half Moon Bay, CA.

The best way to reach us is through the Contact Us form on this site, or on our corporate site.  

Ten years in, the founders still own the business, and are still actively involved in its day-to-day operations. They were joined nine years ago by the now chief content officer, Jocelyn Blore, who rounds out the management team.

How We Make Money

This website is focused on higher education, and relies on advertising to make money. Our form of advertising is often referred to as “performance marketing”—“performance” being the key term because unless someone who visits performs a specific action, we do not make a cent.

The actions that may make us money include:

  • A CLICK-AWAY: Someone clicks on a sponsoring school or program advertised on our site and lands on a page hosted by the school or its representatives
  • A LEAD: After clicking away per above, someone then fills out a form to request information from or apply to a sponsoring school

That’s it.  

On rare occasions, we may be compensated for a school to simply appear on a site or sites, but this does not represent a material portion of revenue. In such cases, those placements will be labeled as “sponsored” or “ad” as well.

If a school link on this site does not have the word “sponsored” or “ad” or some combination of the two in proximity, then it is a natural link—not an advertising link—and we will not be compensated.  

Please contact us if you ever have any doubt about whether a link is sponsored.

What We Believe

BE TRANSPARENT – We are transparent about who we are as a company and as a team. We always have been, and we always will be. To the extent that it is unclear who owns one of our websites (see above), or what’s an ad (see above), or who wrote or reviewed a page on one of our websites, please contact us so that we can make it abundantly clear.  

DON’T INTERFERE – We build responsive, clear, and intuitive websites, and we consciously aim not to obstruct in any way. You will never find a pop-up promotional offer or an unsolicited email sign-up on this website or any of our websites.

LET THE VISITOR CHOOSE – On this site, you choose. If you browse or search for schools on our site, we show you a variety of matching results and you choose the ones you like best. We do not algorithmically choose for you. 

BE RELEVANT – We always show sponsored schools based on the context of the page and not based on your activity. We do not know who you are, but we do know what our page is about. We show sponsored schools that are relevant to that.

STORE NO PERSONAL DATA – We do not ask for any information that would personally identify you unless you contact us, in which case we will ask for your name and email only so that we may respond. We do not store, transfer, or sell that information.

BE COOKIELESS – Some websites set cookies in order to remember you or your preferences across visits. In some cases, they follow you around the web. We do not. We neither write nor deploy any cookie code as a company. 

Some third-party code we use to count traffic (e.g., Google Analytics) and securely host our websites (WordPress) may set a very limited number of cookies.

In the end, our commitment to you is to run our business the right way. We keep our websites streamlined, we show you ads that make sense in context, and we let you drive from there.  Thank you.