www.thebodyworker.com

Pay per click advertising is taking over the way of advertising. The news said a few weeks ago that major cities newspapers were suffering because everyone is advertising with Google Adwords.

Adwords is Google’s answer for driving targeted customers to your website. What this means is that when people put ” massage, seattle” ( or whatever city you work in) into the search engine, your ad can come up on the top of the results if you set your click rate high enough. You can control that amount you spend per click, per day and per month. Setting the price high enough will get you to the top of the search engines. You can track the number of clicks you get each day so you can set up a daily/monthly budget. When you reach your budget, the ad stops showing, but hopefully you have gotten enough clicks to get a client and pay for more clicks.

Paying top dollar for your clicks is worth it to find a quality client - one who becomes a regular client. You really get your moneys worth.

You do have to have a website and a website can help you get the call. The main thing your website needs is lots of content and lots of information about ‘what solution you provide for people’. The thing is people aren’t really looking for you, they are looking for a solution to their problem. The main purpose for a website is to build trust through supplying enough content to make people feel comfortable - to trust you!

You can find out more about creating a website that works (click for your free ebook on creating a website) - one that gets you to the top of the search engines, gets the click and gets the call and then makes you additional money while you work!

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One of the ways to build traffic to your site is to build links from other sites to your sites and your site to their site.

One of my pet peeves is link farms that are just lists of links that don’t have any real value to them. I also hate people always emailing me to do a link exchange when their site has no relavant content to what my sites are about. I also don’t know who they are or what their product is so I don’t want to promote anything that I don’t use myself or know of myself.

You can get much higher quality links from other sites when You sign up for the value-exchange program that is free from Sitesell.com

All you do is sign up with them and then search for other valuable sites to exchange links with.

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The biggest thing about starting a massage business is learning to get out of your own way. By that I mean learning to become more self aware of yourself and what your thoughts are. Your thoughts and beliefs are what create your reality.

When you start thinking that there are reasons like:

There is too much competition.

Massage is just not respected enough in my town.

I tried sending out a flyer, but didn’t get any response.

Things like these are just the excuses we create to keep us from acknowledging that we are the creator of what we have in our life.

It really comes from our early years of upbringing where we learned that we were not good enough so we protected ourself with thoughts like this.

The thoughts are at this point unconscious - like driving a car. How often do you think about having to step on the gas or turn on a signal? You don’t. You just do it!

How much of your life is being driven by that part of you that just does things automatically?

You send out one or two flyers and think that it won’t work In my view, it doesn’t work if you have sent out a flyer every day for a year! Learn from each thing that you do to market your practice. Send out a flyer and see what happens. If you don’t get the response you want change something until you do get the response you want.

So often I hear massage therapists saying that they aren’t successful because there are too many therapists out there- the competition is too great. Competition is an excuse for not being creative and believing in yourself. If there is too much competition, what do you have to do to set yourself aside from everyone else?

When you are creating your vision of a successful business, how often is it clouded by little thoughts like ” No one will really want me to massage them.” or whatever it is that you tell yourself so that you don’t feel bad.

Start questioning your thoughts and beliefs. When you begin to see yourself more clearly and become more connected to how you feel and use your inner guidance system to show you what path to take, you can get out of your own way and build the practice that you want.

The biggest misconception is that “I tried sending flyers ” or whatever it is that you did and it didn’t work.

The problem is how many times did you try it? Did you try it a few times and then learn and adjust and try again?

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I was thinking about the word rehabilitation the other day after reading an article on the meaning of the word. After some searching online I found this definition of it from the Online Etymology Dictionary.

“1533, from M.Fr. ©habilitation, from M.L. rehabilitationem “restoration,” from rehabilitatus, pp. of rehabilitare, from re- “again” + habitare “make fit,” from L. habilis “easily managed, fit.” Specifically of criminals, addicts, etc., from 1940. Slang shortening rehab is from 1948. The verb rehabilitate is attested from 1580.”

ORIGIN Latin rehabilitare, from habilitare ‘make able’.

The article that I was reading that was in an old ‘Tricycle’ Magazine was talking about rehabilitation as being a process in which you are willing to move into the deepest aspects of your being and work at the boundary of what is with awareness and compassion and learning to live inside of your body once again.

What a concept. It insurance companies who are always quoting the benefits saying that massage has to be a part of rehabilitation - every type of massage, touch or healing would have to be covered as most every method has a way of getting people to be more aware. Sometimes massage is the exact opposite in some ways as it relaxes people so much that it takes away their awareness.

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The most widely used piece of advertising is the list of the “benefits of massage” that most massage therapists will put on their websites or on their flyers.

The following is from the Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals (ABMP) website and similar wording and claims are made on most massage therapists websites:

“Treating the Body
Massage therapy addresses a variety of health conditions, the most prevalent being stress-related tension, which, experts believe, accounts for 80%-90% of disease. Massage has been proven beneficial in treating cancer-related fatigue, sleep disorders, high blood pressure, diabetes, low back pain, immunity suppression, spinal cord injury, autism, post-operative surgery, age-related disorders, infertility, eating disorders, smoking cessation, and depression, to name just a few. Here™s why:

Bodywork offers a drug-free, non-invasive and humanistic approach based on the body’s natural ability to heal itself. Massage has many physiological effects, such as:

* Increasing circulation, allowing the body to pump more oxygen and nutrients into tissues and vital organs.
* Stimulating the lymph system, the body™s natural defense, against toxic invaders. For example, in breast cancer patients, massage has been shown to increase the cells that fight cancer.
* Relaxing and softening injured and overused muscles.
* Reducing spasms and cramping.
* Increasing joint flexibility.
* Reducing recovery time for strenuous workouts and eliminating subsequent pains of the athlete at any level.
* Releasing endorphins, the bodys natural painkiller. For this reason, massage is being incorporated into treatment for chronic illness, injury and recovery from surgery to control and relieve pain.
* Reducing post-surgery adhesions and edema and reducing and realigning scar tissue after healing has occurred.
* Improving range of motion and decreasing discomfort for patients with low back pain.
* Relieving pain for migraine sufferers and decreasing the need for medication.
* Providing exercise and stretching for atrophied muscles and reducing shortening of the muscles for those with restricted range of motion.
* Contributing to shorter labor and reduced tearing for expectant mothers, as well as lessening the need for medication, minimizing depression and anxiety, and shortening hospital stays.”

But for the most part the general public will not really know what that really means to them.

The ABMP reports that only 12% of Americans have had massage which is really a small number when you think about it. (From the ABMP Metrics Section: 12 percent of U.S. adults visited a massage therapist in 2004 and 40 percent have received a professional massage sometime in their life. )

What this means to me is that the general public still is not embracing massage and the profession has to do more to educate people as to what massage can really do. The same boring list of benefits needs to be explained and talked about extensively so that more people can really understand.

But what does that really mean??

Why would anyone want to increase their circulation? or stimulate their lymph system?

Writing and talking more about the benefits of massage is needed to educate the public more about what it is that we really do.

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