Why I started this website…

Back in 1999, after a year of being sick and not being able to work as much, I was researching the possiblity of starting an apprenticeship program for a friend of mine to go through to become a massage therapist. Apprenticeship programs are allowed here in WA but have to be approved by the board and meet their school requirements. I started collecting information from my old massage school notebooks and when it started to become to much paperwork and jumping through hoops to get the program approved, I put it all into this website-www.thebodyworker.com. In the beginning it was just a hobby.

I had no previous computer experience.  My friends kids taught me to surf the internet.  I remember shaking in fear the first time I registered my domain name and figured out how to upload a page.  (Yikes - if I can do it anyone can).
Something to do while I was recuperating from working too many hours for too many years and also putting too much energy into putting on training classes for the Zentherapy Institute.

I had come down with a unexplained vertigo and dizzyness that would put me in bed for a week at at time every few months or so.  It was the beginning of my road to figuring out where I wanted to go with my massage practice and how else can I make money, writing about something I love and have poured my heart and soul into.

Somewhere in that year I purchased the manual “Make Your Site Sell” from Sitebuild it that is now available for free. It put so many ideas in my head and the content came spilling out into 2 new websites -www.massagetherapycareers.com and www.massagepracticebuilder.com.   I wrote a few ebooks - The Insurance Billing Manual” which is also available online for free today and was selling books through Amazon’s associate program which was helping by bringing in additional income.

Through the past 7 years I wrote when I had time and struggled with dizziness and minor unexplained health issues that just wore me down.

Back in 2004, I came upon this phenomenon called “Google Adsense” and started putting ads on my websites.  I had been reading about them for awhile and was very skeptical because I didn’t think that you could make any money by people clicking on ads.  I never clicked on ads.  I was afraid at first that they would send a virus to my computer or something or people would get my email address for more spam.  I put the ads on the top 25 pages and the first month I made about $100.  I quickly started adding the ads to my pages and now I can’t stop!  I have plans for making about a dozen more sites on different topics that I love researching and writing about.

You can tell I am not really a writer by trade.  I think I barely passed any english class I ever took.  I have been thinking about hiring an editor and when I was researching it I had a sample of my writing edited.  Boy did she pull my writing apart- but it also made it sound more organized and presentable.  I never hired her , but will for my next e-book that I hope to get out early 2007.

So I am still practice massage, but I am starting to find that it is much easier to make money online from writing about the topics that I love.  What is making it all possible is everything I learned about making a website and running a business - which most of it comes from Sitebuildit!  Everyday they are coming out with new things and they don’t raise their rates.  I am proof of the results that SBI gets!

So I still struggle with dizziness occaisionally, but it is part of my healing path.  A part of the call to pay attention to the things within me.  Recently I have only been working  2 days doing massage and I realized that I feel better - physically and emotionally.  I have been blogging more and planning more and creating more new ideas.  I can’t wait to get to the computer and start writing or researching something.

Also, One of the reasons why I started writing has to do with the fact that this whole 17 years of being in the massage profession, I keep coming back to the fact  that no one ever really told me what it would be like.  The massage schools made it all seem easy and fun.  Massaging and living a life that was more meaningful.  They neglegted to tell me anything about how to make money doing so.  I live quite a simple life because of it which is both a blessing and it’s own curse.  Not wanting much because I never thought I could get much is now changing as I approach 50….the whole thing is that no one ever told me anything about much.  If they did I must not have believed them.

For this reason I write- to tell you where I have been and what I have learned, in hopes that someone will be able to do it differently than I did…

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Websites for massage therapists

I have been doing some thinking about websites for massage therapists and have found that what I have been talking about here and online is just too much for people to understand. A website can do many things for your business but most people get feeling too overwhelmed and don’t know where to start.

Every massage business needs to have a website so that you can put it on your marketing materials so that people can learn more about you.

A website is an investment in your business not just and expense.

Using and following the Sitebuildit! software can help take the stress out of the process. If you like reading manuals and have time to put into your website, it will be one of the easiest and most profitable investments you can make.

I have modified my overwhelming amount of material that talked all about the search engines and getting traffic and creating additional income online to something simpler-

JUST GET A WEBSITE GOING! Just try something! Take the first step and see what happens…

whether you use a free host, or something like www.ez-web-hosting.com or the step by step process of building a business and a website at Sitebuildit! …You can hire someone or do it yourself.
You just have to start somewhere and start learning.

I am so convinced that you’ll eventually end up with SBI - I am going to further offer my services and help take the stress off of you and offer to build you an 8 page website for $300 when you purchase an SBI site for $300 through this link or any of my links online about SBI. (read my new version on websites at www.massagepracticebuilder.com)
In other words - Just do it!

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Massage Marketing

Marketing a Massage Practice is a very unique situation.

While I do believe that most of it boils down to what beliefs you have about yourself and the amount of self confidence you have - you also have to be willing to commit to doing everything that you can to be a success.

Discovering the beliefs you have about yourself comes through being able to look at yourself and search deeply for what is inside.

When you know in your heart that you are worth a 6 figure income, (or whatever amount you desire) you will be willing to do whatever it takes to find a way to make that amount. It doesn’t mean that you can just sit back and clients will walk in the door just because you have a ‘clear mental image’ as it is called in the “Science of Getting Rich”.

You have to do something! You have to take actions! You have to take one action and learn from it and take another step!

Learning everything you can about marketing, finances and business will give you some better ideas of what steps to take. Combine these things with self awareness and self-confidence. Knowing more about yourself and what you value you can then take the steps that you need -not the one’s the marketing books tell you or anyone else tells you, but the one’s that get you excited the most about life and creating the business you desire.

You can go out and create a marketing plan that ignores your values and I am sure it will work to get you clients. You could use marketing and advertising ‘tricks’ to get people coming in the door. I would guess that you won’t last long in the business if you are doing all of the massages yourself. People who are coming to massage because they have been coerced by advertising that plays with their emotions will be the most challenging people to work with. If you keep offering special discounts what you will get are people who don’t really value massage.

Working with draining clients will decrease the length of your career. Health issues and burnout will be the cause.

So the whole idea behind marketing a massage practice is to find a way to bring in clients for you to work with who are nourishing….they pay top dollar for your work, they know the value of your work, they also place a high value on their health and well-being.

(I am not saying that people without money won’t value you. A person with a lower income and high values about health will find a way to pay you.)

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Credentialing and Massage

The whole mystery of credentialing is not easily explained.

Credentialing is the process that you have to go through to become a contracted provider with a health insurance company. WA State is the only state that allows this as far as I know.

It is really a mixed blessing. These companies lure you in with ideas that you will be getting a steady influx of new clients but forget to tell you what you have to do to get paid.

I am recently up for re-credentialing with a - I don’t know what the term is - third party network is all I can come up with. They represent about 6 different insurance companies. I just received the forms to fill out and the contract. These contracts really make you sign your rights away. You have to accept what they will pay you (which in all cases but one is way less than what I charge per hour.) I am hoping to opt out of the one’s that pay the least as it allows for in the contract, but when I asked one of their credentialing representatives, I was told it wasn’t possible. I’ll call again on Monday. This is the problem with these companies is that someone else will tell me a totally different answer.

The problem is that we really lack professional support from our associations.  Our profession is so divided between 3 major associations, we lack any real cohesiveness to stand up for ourselves.

When I went to an AMTA-WA sponsored meeting with the insurance companies and other experts, the insurance companies said they are doing this basically because they can!

What they are doing as far as paying us such low rates and making it harder to get paid.  And they are also creating a definition of “Medical or Clinical Massage” by creating a separate credentialing for that category of provider.  The insurance companies are creating specific credentials that we need to have in order to be called a “Clinical Massage Therapit”.  It is being taken out of our hands because our profession lacks the courage or the understanding of what is happening.

The benefits and pitfalls of credentialing - By Whitney Lowe

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