Old thread, but an important topic!
velvetina wrote: ↑19 Jun 2018, 15:14I've done other things, in between and alongside, tarot reading but for the last couple of years I've actually needed another income, as I can no longer make a living from tarot reading alone.
The same happened to me. I used to make my whole living from readings, but after literally years, the traffic dried up to the extent that I've had to get a "regular" job.
I believe that the main reason for this is because of the internet; the internet is amazing but it has certain disadvantages too - one of them being that, from my point of view, folk who would have perhaps come to see me now have the option to go online. Please, please don't think that I am being dismissive of on-line readers! I'm really not, but they are competition, if you are thinking about tarot-reading purely from a business POV.
The internet plays a part, but I don't think that's all of it. Or maybe it just took awhile to build momentum. I know I was doing OK until about five years ago.
My colleague at the esoteric bookshop (which also suffers because of Amazon) supplements her income by working on a tarot phone-line. The phone-lines have been around a while, but they has never felt a "competitive threat" as much as the internet has been, and this, I think, is because of the opportunity to receive free readings. Sometimes it's someone starting out who wants to practice; sometimes its a promotional offer; sometimes its an automated service. I think that its great for folk to practice, but it does impact on the marketplace; lots of folk will be drawn by the idea of a 'freebie' and I don't blame them.
We don't have esoteric shops where I live, other than botanicas, and those already have people doing readings and
limpias. And my spanish is really bad. So that's out.
When I was reading full time, I used every other available platform - yes, including the lines. I was on Keen and some others, and I can tell you that when things dried up, those dried up too. There was a pile-on of "readers". Listings were getting buried.
I blame that for a lot of it, and it IS internet related. You see it all the time on facebook, etc.: People, if they ask about it, are always encouraged to go pro - even if they can't read their way out of a wet paper sack.
There are legions upon legions of people out there billing themselves as "readers". They virtually always claim to have miraculous psychic powers, too.
One woman who had been studying Lenormand for THREE MONTHS (it takes 5-7 years to get fluent) started selling readings on every platform she could find: her blog, Etsy, some others. And she copypasted my advertising blurb from my Keen listing to her blog! She didn't even know enough about what she was doing to write her own ad copy about it!
I posted a Cease & Desist to her blog comments where everybody could see it, and she took it down pretty quick.
But the market is still flooded.
As for free readings, Keen used to offer three free minutes. We still got paid for those (I wouldn't have done them otherwise), the idea was to keep the client on the line. Sometimes you could. Other times, they didn't even have any money in their account. By the time they got their question out, there was often only seconds to answer them before you got cut off. I learned to read cuts and read them FAST, because these people will leave one star reviews if they're not happy - even though it's their fault for not buying a couple of extra minutes to give you time to answer.
If people are doing unpaid readings on the phone lines for practice, they have no business BEING on the phone lines, as they're not ready to go pro. Let them practice on their friends like we did.
There's no way to stop them, though. We can only let it run its course. Eventually they'll ruin the business and maybe we can start up again in the aftermath.
For now, I'm only selling phone readings through my blog, and working occasional parties. I don't do readings at the house anymore, either, since I live alone these days and I'm not about to hang out my shingle and let random people in the house. I quit Etsy a long time ago because you have to sell something tangible, and typing up readings and formatting them in a PDF is more trouble than it's worth, pay-wise.
Tarot is becoming more and more popular and populist. Suddenly, everyone has read an article and become an expert. It's easy to buy a tarot deck, a book to explain it. It's easy to find a willing audience to practise upon. It used to be a far more elusive and mysterious thing!
Remember when it was generally accepted that reading cards involved learning card meanings? Now people get upset when you say that.
We have the new age gurus to thank for that. "Anybody can do this. Just look at the cards. You don't need books. You have all the answers inside you. Just buy my course and be an expert reader in one week!", etc. While ignoring the meanings and just getting impressions from the images can be a good exercise to do for yourself, it's hit-or-miss with client readings. It's like a Rorschach - it says a more about the person doing the looking than it does about the person sitting across the table.
So a lot of people do it non-predictively. That way they're "not wrong". But the thing with clients is that they usually tend to want
predictions, and when they don't, it's "How does he feel about me?" type questions.
That's why I say this whole thing is unsustainable.
PLEASE PLEASE don't get me wrong! I absolutely do see the benefits, and I am always pleased to see it becoming more mainstream BUT I have seen this happen before; that tarot gets fashionable. The difficulty in finding a good reader is not the same as simply finding a tarot reader.
Trends always hurt whatever is trending. The market gets flooded with poor quality examples, people get tired of whatever it is, and in the end, whatever was trending ends up worse off than when it it just had a little niche of fans. Example:
Crocs are ugly, but good for gardening and they're comfortable. You can just hose the mud off and leave them at the door.
There was a huge Crocs trend. People wore them when they were out and about. Celebs were photographed wearing them. The stores were full of Crocs.
Cheaper knockoffs started to appear. We saw these everywhere too.
Everybody got very tired of seeing Crocs.
Crocs company almost went bust and had to scramble to start making various different kinds of shoes to keep from going under.
Crocs are still around, but people no longer mainly associate them with gardening. They tend think of them as tacky "People of WalMart" shoes.
Or think of dog breeds. It's horrible when a dog breed trends. You see a lot of badly bred ones, severe health and temperament issues, unwanted ones...I wish there were no trendings of living beings.
Cartomancy didn't have the best reputation before all this happened. I think the aftermath could be really bad. We might have to fight to convince people that we don't believe in indigo children or solving the worlds' problems by holding a crystal and thinking happy thoughts.
Where I have my - for want of a better word - Tarot-reading residency, we've been looking for someone else for almost 2 years. It's not enough to know the meanings, a good reader has to know how to talk to anyone; how to turn people away; how to deliver a difficult message; how to understand that people hear what they want to hear; how to choose appropriate vocabulary; how to turn down the ego-setting; how to mop up tears; when to suggest a doctor, or the police; or a lawyer. A good reader needs to know when to say no, but without making the individual who is asking feel upset or anxious. I KNOW VERY FEW GOOD READERS!
Amen to that.
A good reader also keeps their mouth shut and does not discuss what a client tells them in confidence. A good reader WILL refuse to help someone who wants help raping, stalking, etc. (yes, we get those people sometimes) and will break confidentiality to report crimes of that nature. A good reader is not judgemental - I've actually seen a woman many consider to be an "expert" (she has a youtube channel, wahoo) say that someone in an
open relationship was "cheating". And a good reader doesn't NEED to devise an elaborate "code of ethics". Ethics are not something to be turned on or off depending on whether you have a deck in your hands. Card reading ethics are the same as regular ethics: if you talk about your partner with friends, or your friends with other friends, or your friends with your partner, you can do "third party readings"
I hate psychic fairs with a passion! There usually seems to be some bossy person with an agenda and I find myself slipping into beligerant anarchist before you can say 'chakra balancing gem elixir'.
I never did one, we don't have them locally. I don't think I'd like them. A friend told me he was the only playing card reader at one, everybody else was reading angel cards. The Doreen crowd.
That leaves pub evenings. I do actually do these, but they are spontaneous and I get 'paid' in drinks!
Nothing wrong with a little barter, as long as they don't take advantage. 1 question, 1 cocktail!
I recognise that I seem to be coming over in quite a negative fashion; I think my intention was to be a voice of caution: tarot reading is wonderful, and I don't regret it. However, it's highly competive these days.
Yes. People see the price of readings and think it's super profitable, but you don't get as many as you would need to be anything approaching comfortable, much less prosperous. The only way around that is to actually BE a celebrity, and those are people doing some kind of psychic/medium thing rather than card readers, more often than not.
You know, pulling the cards can sometimes be the easy part. I can't even remember the last time I did a 30 min reading. I have to listen and write, and scry and draw on images. Sometimes I even need to dream before the reading is ready for the client. 
