Advertising and Sponsorship Policy

The LA Actor Guide is sponsored by Headshots LA, a Los Angeles headshot studio owned by this guide's editor, Joshua Michael Shelton. You will see Headshots LA advertising on the homepage and throughout the site. This page says plainly what that sponsorship pays for, what it does not, and where the ads appear. We would rather tell you all of it than have you wonder.

Who sponsors this site

Headshots LA. It is the only sponsor, and it is owned by the person who writes and edits the guide. That is a real commercial interest, and we do not hide it: the footer of every page says the site is presented by Headshots LA, and there is a Headshots LA ad on the homepage where you cannot miss it.

We chose that over the alternative, which is a site that quietly serves its owner's business while claiming to be neutral. Openly sponsored and clearly labeled is the more honest arrangement, and it is the one we run.

What the sponsorship does NOT buy

This is the part that matters, so it is the longest.

• It does not change a single sourced fact. Every price, rule, date, and legal claim on this site traces to a primary source and carries the date it was checked, exactly as it did before there was a sponsor. The sponsorship pays for the guide to exist; it has no vote in what the guide says.
• No other business can buy anything here. No school, agency, casting platform, or rival photographer can pay for a mention, a link, a kind description, or a place on a list. There is one sponsor, and the door is closed behind it.
• Nothing is ranked for money. We do not rank schools, coaches, agents, or photographers at all, for anyone, at any price. Our methodology explains why, and the sponsorship does not create an exception.
• The headshot advice still applies to everyone, including the sponsor. Our headshot guides teach you to evaluate any photographer, list the criteria our own studio would be judged by, and show independent studios' published pricing next to ours. If anything, the sponsor is held to a higher standard here, because we know you will be watching.
• The one page about a competing product stays clean. AI headshots for actors evaluates the product Headshots LA competes with. It carries no Headshots LA ad and no link to the studio, and it says so in its own opening. We are not going to advertise against ourselves on the page judging our competition, because a page you cannot trust is worth nothing to you or to us.

Where the ads are

So you can recognize them, and hold us to this list:

Every one of those is labeled. Every link in them is marked rel="sponsored nofollow", the honest tag for a link the publisher benefits from, which also means these links pass no search ranking credit. If you ever find a Headshots LA ad somewhere not on this list, or an ad that is not labeled, that is a mistake and a broken promise. Tell us.

What we still will not do

Sponsorship is not a license. We will not:

• Sell coverage, a mention, or a link to any other business, at any price
• Rank businesses for money, or present a paid placement as an editorial judgment
• Publish fake reviews, fake ratings, or fake testimonials
• Let the sponsor, or anyone, preview or change a guide's sourced content
• Accept a sponsor whose practices harm actors, which is why the sponsor is a headshot studio and not, say, a service that charges actors to audition

Why say all of this

Because "I'm not hiding that I sponsor this site" only means something if the site says so out loud, in its own policy, in language you can check against what you see on the page. A sponsored site that admits it and shows its work is more trustworthy than one that pretends to be independent. The ads are honest. The facts are sourced. Those two things are separate, and both are true.

Questions, or a placement you think breaks this policy? Tell us. If we ever fail to disclose something, that is itself a correction, handled under the corrections policy.