I am doing quite an overhaul on my websites and have been finding some great articles and putting links to them from my site.
I didn’t have a place for these but they are timely since tax day is here. Even though these are a little outdated they are still good resources.
Tax Makeover by Cherie Sohnen Moe from Massage Therapy Journal
Give Yourself a Tax Break by Clare LaPlante from Massage Therapy Journal
One of the ways I make additional income for myself is selling an Ebook called “The Truth about Becoming a Massage therapist” on www.massagetherapycareers.com. I started that site in about 2002 and wrote an earlier version of the ebook then and started selling it within about 2 months of setting up the website. I am now working on many other ebooks and am encouraging massage therapists to start writing their own to make a little extra money on the side each month.
I am in the process of creating a whole section on www.workless-playmore.com about how to write, create and promote ebooks. I have been reading and studying everything I can on ebooks.
If you don’t have a website, I am also looking for people to write ebooks and I can sell them through an affiliate program for them. That means I can put the ebook for sale on my website and when people buy it I will get paid a small percentage of the fee and the writer makes money too. Both win! And as a profession we really are way behind in Ebooks. Both my sites are already am on the first page of Google for ‘massage ebooks’.
I have tons of ideas for Ebooks that can be written by massage therapists. I wish I could write them all myself but there is only so much time in the day!
We need more writers in the massage profession who are massage therapists. We already have Paul Ingram in Canada writing tutorials that he sells on his website to clients who is booked for 3 months and charges $150 to someone who just needs to get in sooner and of course massagenerd.com is the king of ebooks and he started giving some of his away for free.
Ebooks on massage are needed to start educating the public more too as well as having more information for massage therapists.
One of the projects I am working on is creating pages on www.thebodyworker.com for various conditions that massage can be helpful in treating. I already am on page three of of google for thoracic outlet syndrome which I think is pretty darn good but could be better as I get pages for some of the other conditions. What I want it to be is a place to educate people as to how massage can really help with these things.
I am also creating some new pages for my clinic site and when doing my keyword research using my Site Build it! Brainstormit! software, I discovered quite a few good keywords for tmj and related keywords. Literally every major city there were many searches for ‘the city, tmj’ or ‘the city, tmj treatment’. If you know how to work on tmj problems and have a website, this could be a great informational tool for getting clients.
I created this page on www.thebodyworker.com with reference to many online articles on tmj and massage which are quite informative and could be used as reference for clients.
My goal in doing all of this is to educate the public and also physicians as to what massage can really do.
So if you have any other resources on TMJ or have a good page on your site about TMJ consider sharing it here (which also gets you a link on the blog which makes you look good to search engines.)
When I first started doing massage back in 1987, no one really thought of trying to go out and find a job in massage. There just weren’t that many. Becoming a massage therapist meant that you started your own massage business right out of massage school.
The current salary statistics that I mentioned in an earlier post on the future of massage don’t make the massage profession look very appealing. One of the problems is that we don’t really have accurate statistics about massage jobs because there are so many massage therapists who do start their own practice.Today there are more and more places hiring massage therapists - Franchises like Massage Envy, Day spas, destination spas, hospitals, chiropractors, clinics, hospices, nursing homes, dentists, chair massage places. With more places hiring massage therapists, the more competitive the job markets.
I am also seeing a trend through my website www.massagetherapycareers.com of more high school students looking at massage therapy careers. The current average age of massage therapists is 45 according to ABMP and AMTA. With more younger people joining the work force they are taking the entry level jobs that pay $12-$15 an hour.
So what is the key to finding a massage job that pays $30-$45 an hour which is a fairly decent wage level?
People seem to be blindly searching for massage jobs out of fear and desperation rather than taking their time to figure out what it is that they want for themselves.
One of the things I recommend to massage therapists that are just starting out is to go to a variety of places and get a few massages there. Find out what it is like to work there by being a client there first.
What kind of place do you want to work at? A spa, chiropractors office or other clinical setting?What are the current employees like?
What is the atmosphere like?
Is this a place that you would like to work for?
After you know more about a place you can then set up informational interviews with the managers of the places that you would most like to work for. Ask them questions about the business so you can get more information about whether or not you want to work there or not.
Most people go about it the other way approaching places looking for a job and waiting to see if they get hired there without really knowing what they are getting into.
The other thing that massage therapists seem to forget is that even though they are going to work for someone else, they are the reason why people come back for more massages and refer all of their friends and keep the business going. You still have to have good customer service and marketing skills to educate clients as to why they should come more often. You also have to be able to tune into clients and find out what they really need. Spas are more difficult to work at in some ways because you only get one hour to make a connection with a person as many are only coming in for that one a year massage treat. All massage businesses depend on repeat clients and referrals and is mainly a result of how good the massage is, the connection between the massage therapist and client and the client getting their needs met.
I am in the process of writing a new ebook on finding a job in massage therapy. What challenges did you or are you having finding a job in massage? What things are you finding from working for a massage employer that you didn’t expect or do not like? What are you finding out about the massage job market and employers that you would want others to know so that they can look out for these things in an interview or informational process?
The past few years I have been blogging with Wordpress and love it even though it doesn’t make me as much money as my SBI! website. I was getting about the same amount of traffic but for some reason, the adsense system didn’t work as well with the blog. I think it has something to do with the layout of the pages and the way the keywords are set up even though I tried to do everything I could to set it up like an SBI! website.
Through the years I have been learning wordpress and collecting various tidbits of information on how to set up and use a wordpress blog for getting the best results. I have decided to put them all in on Ebook that I am now selling on www.workless-playmore.com While you can get most of the information for free, you may not want to spend the 6 months or so to collect it all and get it set up.
I did already talk about this back in February but I never set up the link for purchasing for some odd reason that I can’t remember. It could be the bought with the stomach flu and then bronchitis. Anyways it is good to go now.
Blogging is a great way to get your message out to potential clients and keep them coming back to your website. (You don’t even need a website. You can just set up a blog through ez-web-hosting.com and read the Ebook to help you get it all set up. It is fairly easy with just uploading themes and templates and plugins that I recommend to get you started.)
What stops people is usually what are they going to write about? Well what do you talk to clients about all day? What do you say to doctors or other health care professionals that you are networking with? How do you educate your clients as to the benefits that massage can bring into their lives? That’s all you need to write about. You write like you talk to others. It is actually better if it is written for a 6th grade reading level to keep people’s attention and interest.
