More About Sunless.com

Brief History of Sunless.com

In 1997, Clara Pettitt, a resident of Oakland, California, started a Geocities site called Just A Little Bit Orange, where she shared her sunless tanning tips (all five of them). Her intention at the time was to improve her web site building skills. To her surprise, the information was eagerly received, and she was encouraged to expand the site.

In 1999, Clara moved the site from GeoCities to a new domain, Sunless.com.

Since the beginning, Sunless.com has been a consumer guide, promoting safe sunless tanning. Sunless.com is not affiliated with sunless tanning manufacturers.

Every year, half a million people find Sunless.com. More than five million people have visited the site.

The People

Clara Pettitt has owned and edited the site since 1997. Beginning in 2002, TanGal and BigDog have moderated the Sunless.com messageboards, and shared their considerable skincare and airbrush sunless tanning expertise through more than 30,000 posts!

Most important are the repeat visitors to the messageboards. A core group has helped hundreds of thousands of people to use sunless tanners instead of harming themselves by tanning in the sun or in tanning beds.

We live for moments like this:

This site...is one of the absolute best, most-informative, most worthwhile ventures I have ever seen on the WWW. No kidding. I am a professional 30-year old with a healthy fear of skin cancer but no desire to go out in public wearing my natural skin color. My brother wanted to re-up at our favorite tannery (our spring ritual) but good sense finally kicked in and I told him I wanted to check out self-tanners. His response was to laugh and tell me he thought they were all about orange. After a bit of digging, I was disheartened to find that most online sites did not offer any type of in-depth info and it looked like without the proper arsenal of products, I was likely to return to the tried-and-true cancer institute known as my local tanning place. BUT WAIT! I stumbled upon your site, printed every last bit of info, and at this very moment my brother and I are sorting through it to figure out what to order and then we're off to cyber-shop for our healthy spring glow! THANK YOU from the bottom of our melanoma-free hearts!

Technology Used

Database: www.mysql.com
Scripting language: www.php.net
Messageboards: www.phorum.org
Host: www.dreamhost.com
ISP: www.speakeasy.net

How Sunless.com Is Financially Supported

All income comes from advertising revenue, specifically through the affiliate program LinkShare. To prevent bias, Sunless.com does not currently accept advertising from individual sunless tanning manufacturers.

Contact Sunless.com

Email Clara Pettitt: clara @ sunless.com

Press

Clara Pettitt is available for phone interviews, which can usually be arranged within 24 hours. Please note, however, that Sunless.com does not offer statistical data for the global sunless tanning industry such as gross annual sales, etc. Industry financial data can be purchased from organizations such as ResearchAndMarkets.com.

Sunless.com has appeared in many magazines, including U.S. News and World Report, Mademoiselle, Muscle & Fitness, BBW Magazine, and Weight Watchers. Newspaper coverage: The New York Times, Reuters News Service, Detroit Free Press, TimesDaily, The Dallas Morning News, The Washington Post, and The Chicago Tribune. TV coverage: NBC5 News in Chicago, the X Show, UPN 9 News in New York.

Copyright

All Contents Copyright © 1997 - 2011 by Clara Pettitt. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Clara Pettitt is prohibited.

Sunless.com zealously protects its content because our sole business is providing content. This copyright includes all text, all images, and all photographs, and includes content posted in the messageboards.

If you are a doctor, feel free to use any of the information on this web site for the benefit of your patients. While it is acceptable to print out individual copies for patients, do not redistribute information published on this web site in any other fashion without receiving written permission from clara @ sunless.com.

Request removal of trademarked images for any reason whatsoever by sending an email to clara @ sunless.com.

Manufacturers who wish to quote briefly from a product review at Sunless.com are free to do so.

Anyone may link to Sunless.com. Sunless.com does not participate in link exchange programs.

Sunless Tanning Product Samples

Samples of sunless tanning products for testing/reviewing purposes are cheerfully accepted. What's a sample? One standard container from 4 to 8 ounces. Less is insufficient; more is gratuitous.

Shopping Guide

The primary purpose of the shopping guide is to provide Sunless.com visitors with a comprehensive guide to sources of sunless tanning products, not to promote web sites selling sunless tanning products. Sites will be listed at the discretion of Sunless.com. Only text links are used.

A web site will be listed in the shopping guide if it meets the following criteria:

1. The web site must sell sunless tanning products (through telephone ordering, online ordering, merchant look-up, catalog)
2. Must offer standard payment options such as Visa or Mastercard
3. Must not charge inflated shipping/handling fees

Sunless.com does not seek or accept renumeration for linking to sunless tanning manufacturer and distributor web sites.

At any given time, no more than three web sites will be listed for each product. The web sites will be listed in alphabetical order. If there are more than three eligible web sites, they will be chosen on the basis of ease of navigation, product variety, and payment/shipping options offered. Exceptions will be made if needed for large product lines. Sites offering international shipping are preferred.

Not eligible for listing: Personal web pages owned by representatives of cosmetic companies such as Avon, Beauticontrol, Mary Kay, Amway, etc.

Advertising

Sunless.com displays only 468 x 60 non-animated banner ads. Currently, Sunless.com displays banner ads available through affiliate programs such as LinkShare only.

Messageboards

Since 1999, Sunless.com has hosted a sunless tanning messageboard. It was the first public messageboard devoted to sunless tanning, and remains the largest. Registration is not required to read or search messageboard posts.

The messageboards are intended for sunless tanning consumers; sunless tanning manufacturers are discouraged from posting. For more information, see the messageboard posting guidelines for sunless tanning professionals.

Privacy Policy

Sunless.com does not sell or distribute information gathered from visitors to this web site, including email addresses.