If you have just graduated and are looking for your first job, you can find others who are in the same situation and also share your experiences with others by blogging or writing articles in online websites.  If you are just a year or two into a job, you can also be sharing what you learn with others.

If you are just starting out creating your own business or you have been in business for 10 years, it is important to be helping others and sharing your process.

In doing so, it is helping the profession create better massage therapists and helping the profession to grow.

The reason for sharing is that when you share and build connections and community and help others, you will also be helping yourself.  You will also find others that can help you along the way. With so many ways to share now adays with Facebook, Google Plus hangouts and Skype, staying in touch can be what you need and based on what you are able to give.  Going to the many conventions and massage festivals and conferences can also really be great for breaking the isolation of being a massage therapist.  Connecting faces with real people can deepen your bonds and the support you get.  When you share with others your struggles, concerns and successes, the process of becoming a successful massage therapist will get easier and easier for you and the many others you are connected to.  The more support you get for yourself, the more you can help your clients!  The more clients you can help!

Being a mentor is also a great way to add residual income to your career by creating a content rich website/blog for other massage therapists.  You can get paid sponsors or sell affiliate products like books through amazon.com, Ebooks like the Couples Massage Training Course from Tiffany and Gary Blackden,  and technical manuals on back pain and myofacsial pain like those from Paul Ingram.

The more you write you will also be developing your writing skills and thought processes that will eventually make enough for an Ebook.  Anyone can publish a book these days through companies like Createspace.com which is print on demand publishing. ( Publish your book with CreateSpace: get high royalties, low book prices, and expanded distribution.) You can upload your files and get your book (s) listed on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com and when someone orders a book, it will be printed immediately.  You don’t have to self publish and have 1000 books printed.  They print them only when they are ordered!  You can also put them for sale in a Kindle format and widen your reach.

If you have an idea for a book and don’t know where to start – start with reading my other site www.guidetomakingwebsites.com and the section on how to write a book.

When I first started out in the massage profession in 1987, there were not any resources, books, websites or much of anything on building a business, getting a job or how to do much of anything!  I learned by sharing with friends and working in massage offices with other massage therapists.  We learned by trial and error and often more with errors!  We had to call each other on the phone back then – can you imagine?  No internet, email, texting, cell phones…nothing!   I did much alone! without any help or support.  It took years to learn how to bill insurance and get paid.  Now you can learn in a few months (See Insurance Billing 101 for Massage Therapists) or less and connect with others to get your questions answered.  You can even re-sell that book and my other books on your website through Clickbank.com.  (see more on the affiliate page.)

The Affordable Healthcare Act was a bill created by President Obama that was signed into law on March 23, 2010.  This Act will make almost everyone in the US be enrolled in a heath insurance plan. If you are in the low income bracket and can’t afford insurance, there will be options for you to get insurance.  If you were ever denied coverage due to previous conditions, there will be help for you.  There are things like tax deductions and also benefits for people under age 26 will be able to get coverage under their parents plans.

Each state is required to set up their own insurance exchange system to provide low cost insurance or they can participate in the Federal Governments System. You can find out what your state has decided to do on the www.healthcare.gov website.  If your state has elected to create their own insurance exchange, it is important that you find out what needs to be done to make sure that massage therapy is on the list of allowed providers.

Nationally,

Here is the big part of this: 80% of this has already been implemented.  That means if the Supreme Court rules to repeal this act, everything that has been completed may have to be reversed! (There is a group of Republicans who are claiming that the Act is unconstitutional and they are fighting it in Court – see NY Times article)

From a previous blog post I wrote about what little info I had on the Healthcare Act:

On March 23, 2010 President Obama signed HR 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. As it stands now, here is the excerpt from the health care reform bill passed:

“The provider non-discrimination provision (Section 2706) to be enacted into law reads in part: ‘A group health plan and a health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall not discriminate with respect to participation under the plan or coverage against any health care provider who is acting within the scope of that provider’s license or certification under applicable State law.’”

This basically sounds much like the WA State Every Category Law that was created in 1996 and implemented in 1999.  Currently in WA State, massage is covered when medically necessary.  It does not cover preventative work.

After doing some searching online for more information on massage and the Affordable HealthCare Act, I found some information from ABMP.  There is a chance that massage could also get into the preventative care section that is being created.  ABMP wrote a Position Statement A comment on the Prevention Strategy
of the National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council
December 2010 and submitted it to the Prevention Council created by the US Surgeon General.

So after 2 hours, I still do not know what that all really means for the profession.  There are many things still to be determined by the States and Federal Government, but I know that massage therapists need to be in contact with their legislators and insurance commissioners to even be considered.

When clients are calling to make an appointment (or emailing or using your online scheduling system), you never really know what process they went through before they called or emailed.  Were they in pain for weeks before finally calling?  Did they wake up this morning and think they couldn’t take it anymore and just had to get in?  Had they gone to their doctor a month ago who recommended that they start getting regular massage because they are so stressed?  Did they get a gift certificate from someone and they really have never gotten a massage so they don’t know what to expect or what to do?  Are they regular users of massage and have had many massages during their life?  When you think about the many possibilities it can see that the one thing in common is that they eventually find you and contact you for the appointment.   The one thing you can provide is a easy way to contact you and make the appointment and set up your schedule in a way that supports you in what you need to be successful and to take care of yourself.  Creating this framework is often a process of finding out what doesn’t work and creating new boundaries to support what does work for you and the clients.

It is important to have set hours so that clients can know when to expect that you will be in the office.  Having set hours also helps in creating and supporting the therapeutic relationship with clients.  I also have a set of regular weekly or every other week clients who come in at the same time on the same day, making it easy to remember and fit into their schedule.  Having a regular time and day, helps take the stress out of getting to a massage and gives people a sense of security or knowing when they will see you again.  This is actually an important part of dealing with transference that happens with clients. Transference is a very complex process that happens between the client and the massage therapist.  It happens in every relationship to some extent for that matter – family, friends, schools, church – you name it really.  I have written more on transference for massage therapists (opens in new window) on my other website, but in general transference happens in a relationship with a power imbalance.  A client will think of the massage therapists as someone with more knowledge then them about their body/muscles and will look to the massage therapist to ‘fix’ the problems.  When the pain is relieved or they feel better, they feel nurtured which also has the risk of bringing up past issues/feelings of getting their needs met as a child.  With the added touch component, these feelings can be amplified.  In the clients’ eyes, you become the wonder massage therapist.   What keeps the feelings from being projected onto you is – any guesses?   Yes Boundaries!  Setting your appointment times helps create a healing container for your clients.  They know when they are seeing you next so that they can depend on that.  They learn that they are separate from you but that they can count on you.  It is the boundaries that provide the actual real ‘healing’ letting them feel a greater sense of themselves and feel supported and cared for.

So having a set schedule – a starting time, a lunch time, an ending time can help clients feel more secure and will help you to take care of yourself.  When you start extending your schedule to try to meet clients needs like working through your lunch, coming in earlier than you planned or staying later than you planned, chances are that you are going to end up feeling resentful.  Through the years I have found that trying to accommodate clients and be there for them at any hour, usually ends up in clients doing things like not showing up for their appointment or showing up late or things like that, making them fall into the category of the ‘draining client’ and not an Ideal Client.  Every instance will be different though and you have to evaluate every situation as to whether or not you will let your schedule slide to accommodate clients.  Usually in the beginning of starting a massage business, you often feel like you have to be there to get the client and you come in at hours that you might not want to be there.  The more you can set clear boundaries around the times that you will be at the office, and let clients create their schedule around you, the more people will actually respect you.  Massage Therapist have a tendency to want to please everyone and will often let clients schedule according to the clients schedule letting their boundaries slide.  The way you will know that your it is a boundary issue is usually you will start to feel resentful, exhausted and will feel like you are being taken for granted.  So the clearer your boundaries, the more respect you will get as a massage professional.  You also have to really evaluate each situation.  If you do this once in awhile for a really regular client or someone in so much pain they are crying on the phone, and you do other things to take care of your own needs for time and nurturing it will most likely work out OK.  Where you get into trouble is when it happens too often and you start feeling drained to the point of you won’t feel like going in to the office.

A few other tips for making appointments with clients that I have found to work is when you are scheduling a client – tell them what times you have available first so they can see if something will fit their schedule.  If you don’t have many clients when you are first starting out, don’t tell clients that directly as in ‘I am open all day’.  If you are open all day, start with telling them the optimal time for you -like if you have one appointment scheduled late in the afternoon, you will want them to come in the afternoon and not 8 am making you have to wait all day in between sessions unless you are doing a ton of marketing which would be a good idea too.  The thing is to make clients think you are popular.  While that may seem deceptive, I just think of it as it is none of anyone’s business.  I also use it to take better care of myself by making the most of my time.

Some more tips for making appointments:

• Decide if you want/need online scheduling.  I personally don’t use it and some say it is a must have, but you need to evaluate if this will help your business.  I need to talk to people anyways because I screen people out and have to ask questions if they have insurance.  It can make it easy to make an appointment. If you live in an area where people are more comfortable using this then it will work. If you work with retired people or people who are less computer savvy then it might be an issue.  Online scheduling will let you take credit cards to secure appointments and send auto reminders to people if you are having issues with no shows or late comers.
• Tell people your cancellation policy when they make an appointment.  Have it on your website and intake forms but also tell people out loud to make sure they understand it.  You can’t enforce it if people don’t know about it (well you can but they will probably be pretty mad!)
• Use a twitter feed on the pages of your website to let people know of last minute openings.  I do that with my office site and always get last minute openings filled.
• Return phone calls/emails ASAP – within an hour if you can.  People will be really impressed and grateful!
• If you are replying by email – don’t just say – Yes I have xxx open – ask questions about what condition they have or why they want massage.
• When people call and just ask how much do you charge they may start out just being a price shopper, but you can turn it around by asking a question about them first before you just say your price.  Say something like “Are you calling because of some pain or health condition?”  People will usually give a sigh of relief and start pouring out their story.  Just listen!  Ask more questions.  Build the relationship.  Then when it comes to price, most won’t care and it won’t matter anymore.
• Don’t let clients see your appointment book.  First it is a privacy issue! Next if there are big holes in your schedule, people will fill it in with their own ideas about why you are not busy.  Last week when I went to the convention, I had all Thursday open on my book.  People may think other things like – hmm…they don’t want to see me, she isn’t busy, she might not be good…or whatever.
• ASK the client to make another appointment at the end of their session.  This is preceded by a massage session where you are educating clients about massage and how it applies to the issues they are having in their body.  It is about asking them what they feel when you find tight muscles and getting them to feel the change massage is making.
• Set your boundaries around late arrivals.  If they come late, they usually lose the time.  Again, you will have to evaluate each situation as to whether or not you will go longer (if you can go longer to make up the time.) In general, do not go longer.
• Tell people that you have people that come once a week or once a month.  I have many who come twice a week and have for over 15 years!  When I tell people that, they usually are wowed! and it gets them thinking and dreaming.  My accountant says that most people say that they would get a weekly massage if they could afford it.  People need to start understanding the value of a massage.  Telling them that you have other clients coming in often gives them permission to do so themselves!

What other tips and tricks do you have for creating appointments?  Share them here!

I also hate marketing!  Yes it is true.  I have a huge list of massage marketing tips on my website here.  Honestly, I probably have only done about 5 of those things during my whole career.  I am an introvert and yes hate talking to people for the most part especially in groups or people in elevators!  I don’t have an elevator speech!  I do fine one on one which I think is what allowed me to last so long in this business.

When I first started out, I rented an office in a health club that also had a PT office.  I had a room in the PT space.  I didn’t do much else but put up signs in the club and got to be friends with all of the staff.  I hung out at the front desk and handed people locker keys and towels and had a name tag that said my name and that I was a massage therapist.  I did a few free chair massage or foot massage days but absolutely hated it because I felt so out of place and out of my comfort zone!  I don’t think it really got me any clients.  People just wanted the free samples.

What I did do early in my career was get a client from the health club.  He sent me a check in the mail of all things before I even met him for a series of 5 massages.  That was pretty trusting of him. Turned out he was a personal injury lawyer and he became a regular weekly or every other week client.  He had a few chiropractor connections who he introduced me to and one of them I started going to myself for some neck/back issues.  We always talked when I went in to see him.  I started referring people to him.  I never once asked him to refer people to me – but he just started doing it because of him getting to know me and our relationship.  Because it was mostly personal injury or work related injuries, I had to learn to bill insurance.  So off I went by trial and error figuring out how to bill insurance.  I would get cash clients from the health club and injuries from the chiro, lawyer and PT group.  It kept me going so I could still set my own hours.  Back then I also had a horse and was taking riding lessons.  I took them in the a.m. before going into the office!  I would go to the office everyday – no matter if I had clients or not.  In the beginning when I did have more slow days, I would take a ferry ride across Puget Sound to an island (Bainbridge Island) and have lunch there, sit in the park and enjoy the ride back and forth and would usually have a client or too booked by the time I got back.  The health club staff booked my appointments back then and there weren’t any cell phones so I would call in to check to see when they were so I could get back on time.

I moved out of the healthclub and into space I rented from a doctor and then moved into a space and rented from an acupuncturist and moved a few years later into the space I am in now with 2 other massage therapists.  I always rent from someone else to keep my over head down.

In about 2000 or so, the WA State insurance commissioner at the time (Deborah Senn) created a law that mandated insurance companies to pay for massage.  She was a big advocate of massage and got massage regularly from a MT named Lori Belinski who was also very politically active for the massage profession.   Senn took a big leap and got behind the massage profession and made it possible to bill health insurance.  I got on a few of the major health insurance companies providers lists.  You get clients just from being on the list.  You don’t have to spend money on marketing to get those clients.  You have to know how to chart and bill and keep track of it all.

So I was still sleeping in and also staying up late creating websites and writing! As I learned how to optimize and create websites, I was able to keep clients coming in the door without doing much else.  Between billing insurance and the website, it keeps me in the clients I want to work with.  One of the things about websites is that when people are searching for massage and they find your website – they are soooo ideal!  They are already looking for a massage therapist!  It can’t get any easier than that.

So that is why I am so passionate about websites and helping MT build their websites and also about billing insurance.   My website does the work for me.  The provider list refers people to me weekly.  Yes, that is it. I don’t go to sporting events, charity events, chamber of commerce meetings.  I don’t do flyers, mailings, postcards or much of anything else.  I am the lazy massage therapist.  So I am writing everything I know about billing and have put it into an Ebook – Insurance Billing 101 for Massage Therapists and yes a book on websites is coming soon (probably next) but you can read a lot of what I have written on websites already to get you going or just use Site Build it! because that is what has taught me everything I know about creating websites.  They teach you how to use the keywords in the specific parts of your site so your site gets listed on the top of the search engines.  They teach you how to write content and educate clients so that you don’t have to do sales.

Massage for Fibromyalgia - SEO results 04/01/12

It is near the top of the SE results on Bing.

So I just did a rebuild of the page I have on the same topic on my other site www.massag-career-guides.com

So now I just have to post this with a text link going to the page on massage for fibromyalgia on www.thebodyworker.com and then see if it changes the SE rankings.

Results just in 4/6/12

So what does that all really mean to the average massage therapist?

If you want your website to rank on the number one spot on Google, just write an short article for my site at www.massage-career-guides.com.  You can find forms to fill out in various sections - like the types of massage,  a day in the life of a MT, massage success stories and leave your website address and I will make it into a link.  Post a comment on this site or the blog on www.thebodyworker.com  and then wait a few days.  If your site isn't ranking better yet - add your link to a few other sites.   let me know your results too and your process on my Facebook Page. 

ON 4/17/2012 I made a post on my Facebook page and a few people responded that this same page was not showing up at the top of the results like I am seeing.  Here is a screen capture from this morning.

I just actually watched the movie and am not sure what the whole issue is.  In the movie, the struggling wife and massage therapist needs to take care of her family so they don’t lose their house.  She initially walks away from the job when she realizes what she was hired to do but the large amounts of money make it to appealing.  She continues to struggle with it saying that she will quit soon and she is doing it just to get out of the predicament she is in.  She becomes the top girl at the Healing Touch Massage Place because she is attentive to clients in a way that their wives are not.  She eventually goes too far and adds drugs to the story trying to balance the busy work and family life.  One of the girls that work with her eventually turns the place in and -this is the most important part -She gets arrested!!!!!   To reduce her sentence she is asked for the list of clients and she willingly shares it.  She realizes her mistakes and wants to save her marriage, family and life.  I guess we don’t know for sure how they will continue on with the TV series and they are using more sex scenes to promote it.

Massage Therapists seem to be up in arms about this all because they think it is portraying massage in a bad way.  There was no legitimate massage happening in the place.  When did it become such big news that massage is often used as a front for prostitution? No one is confused about legit massage and prostitution and the movie makes it clear that it is a place of prostitution and not real massage.

What I find most striking is the reaction by the many massage therapists about this series. I guess I am not sure how far the series will take it, but if it follows the movie -SHE GOT ARRESTED!  That is a big support for the massage profession!  Many massage therapists think it will make more people request happy endings or make more people think that they are doing something illegal.  If TV shows and movies really did that then there would not be any TV shows allowed.  I just watched the movie “Safe House” where the whole CIA was made out to be crooked except for a Denzel Washington of course.  Were all of the CIA agents complaining?  Maybe that’s a bad example.  What about every TV show that bashes lawyers, doctors and housewives?

I think the real issue lies deeper than just this movie/TV series. Will a movie/TV show take clients away from us or not allow us to get the clients that we need to be successful?  Will more clients come in wanting something extra after seeing the show?  I used to get upset about things like this too until I realized that the answer isn’t fighting others about what they have said or done as in The View fiasco a few years ago  (or when was that??).  It is a deeper manifestation of our fears as massage therapists.  It shows the clear lack of a defined profession that we are all working towards.  It shows we have a lot of work to do in keeping our image separate from that of those happy ending places.  But what will that really take?

While ABMP and AMTA jumped up to write letters, what are they doing to focus on a solution to the problem?  What are we as a profession doing to help create a different image for ourselves?  Can we really separate massage from being used as a front for prostitution?

The petitions are still going but I have to say I don’t really think that just a few thousand signatures or even if we got every MT to sign it (about 300,000 people) that it would make a difference for a TV network.

The many complaints are really cries for what we do want.  We want to be seen as a legitimate profession that can help reduce pain, stress and heal the pain of grief, depression and the many parts of our lives that they influence.  We want to be seen as professionals and we want to be a respected part of healthcare and respected in the spa/relaxation massage world.

What we do need is more education and programs like the AMTA WA Real Massage Campaign.  What we need are more TV shows and movies that show what massage really does.  What we need is more national ad campaigns that also show it.  What we need is for every massage therapist to get involved in writing about it on their websites and their marketing materials.  We need more programs like www.defendingourgoodname.com where a local massage therapist Lavon Watson (ex-cop) has started educating Massage therapists about what is going on and what can be done to stop illegal massage parlors and those questionable foot massage businesses.

Petitions at:
www.changeorg – as of this writing 1043 signatures

www.thepetitionsite.com – 3284 signatures at this time

Other bloggers:

www.bodyworkmentor.com

www.LauraAllenLMT.com

www.stephlasch.com

The Real List from mywesttexas.com

Over the years I have struggled with how massage therapists can get away with charging very high prices -like over $130 for an hour massage especially when they only charge their cash clients $60 an hour.

In the insurance world there is something called a “Usual and Customary and Reasonable” fees that are calculated in a very complicated way.  They calculate what various locations around the US are paying for specific codes.

There are two sides to this.  Just because there is something called an UCR fee, it does not mean you should be or can be charging it.  When you charge different rates for the same service to different people or insurance companies it is considered to be insurance fraud.

Now many massage therapists over the many years I have been in this business have all sorts of reasons why they think they should charge more:

• It takes more time to do the paperwork to bill insurance.
• It takes more time to get paid – like 2 weeks to 3 years.
• Other health care providers are doing it.
• They are doing something called ‘Medical Massage’ which is different and requires more skills and training and is different than what they do with people who come in and pay cash.
• They provide a cash discount for people who do pay cash (checks or credit cards) at the time of service.

A few years ago, I took a workshop put on by the two Attorneys that AMTA -WA has hired to help look at insurance billing and other legal issues.  Basically what they said was that it is illegal to charge different rates and that the extra time involved is just considered to be part of doing business. The bottom line was whatever way you want to explain it, you better be able to prove it in court.   Personally, I do not know how one can explain that if a person came in with pain or stress (which who does not have that these days) that you did something different on them than you do with insurance clients. (See The Business side of Caring (PDF) Pieck Law Group )

Diana Thompson has also said that you can charge a fee that you would have to pay an insurance billing company to do the billing.  So if you are charging a cash rate of like $65 an hour and a billing company would charge you $20 to do the billing you can then charge the insurance company $85.  She also says in her book ” Hands Heal”

It is illegal to charge different rates for the same service to different people and different organizations.  It is appropriate to charge different fees for different services or to offer reasonable discounts for payment on the day of service as long as the discount is offered to all patients equally.  For example, if a patient pays cash but is submitting the bill to insurance for reimbursement, he or she must be offered the same discount at the time of service that any other patient would be offered.  Acceptable discounts range between 5% and 15% depending on state regulations.

The practice of overbilling for massage services is also being scrutinized currently in the Florida Legislature with SB 1860 which is threatening to stop massage therapists and acupuncturists from being able to bill for car accidents.  ( See article on this.)  The proposed law was created as a result of there being a significant increase in the amount of massage therapy fees paid out according to the article I just linked to.

Negron carved out massage therapy because of rising per-claim costs and what he called “overutilization.”

He points to figures that indicate the average charges per massage therapy claimant have increased from $2,887 in 2005 to $4,350 in 2010.

Vivian Madison Mahoney has also talked about this extensively in many of her articles on Massage Today.  See her article Fees (Oct 2002)

So setting your fees for massage for when you bill insurance needs to consider the legal aspects as well as what you need to make to be successful.  Setting fees is a complex calculation that only you can make based on what YOU need to make for the time spent doing massage, your skills and level of education, what the market will bear and what people will pay.

Learn more about how to bill for insurance and get paid in my book Insurance Billing 101 for Massage Therapists.

See also: Setting your massage fees

Here is how it works basically:

Each year I start out creating an annual spending plan. I can plan for my monthly expenses and also plan to go to conferences or go on vacation and guesstimate how much it will take to do that.  Each month I start out with planning my month and making my best guess at what expenses I will have and what my goal for income is. I can see a special tab in the worksheet that tally’s everything up and lets me know if that will work or not and then I can adjust accordingly.  Each week I track my income and expenses.  I have an Excel spread sheet that I work with ( a special one from the Financial Recovery Institute).  When I started tracking all my income and expenses both personal and business, I could finally really see what was going on in my money world.  The biggest thing I learned was that money is just basically a math problem!

So each month I start out with my plan.  Each week I tally my income and expenses and it then tells me if I am on target or not.  I can adjust as I go.  I either need to work more or find a way to make more money or I can cut back on something.  I already live pretty simply so it is more often just creating a way to make more!

Spending plans are a lot different than budgets.  I don’t like the word budget or I guess I don’t like having to budget!  A budget to me means that I have to stop having a latte or eating out for lunch everyday like I do when I am at the office.  A spending plan frees up your energy to become more creative and find new ways to make more money or get more massage clients!  A spending plan provides relief as you often may feel overwhelmed by bills or expenses but you can watch it all carefully on your spending plan.

The creator of the spending plan program I use has just written a book on the subject.  It is called Financial Recovery by Karen McCall.

The whole process is also about taking a good look at how you deal with money and your beliefs about money. For many massage therapists, the general saying seems to be – “It isn’t about the money”. Sorry, but it is. You are a business now and you need to have enough money to stay in business so that you can help your clients. It is as simple as that. Mikelann Valtera refers to this as “Noble Poverty” – the idea that you have to give yourself away for little to nothing because of the unconscious beliefs that if you do, you will be loved or whatever it is that might be your take on it all.  Tracking your income and expenses will let you start seeing that making money is just a math problem. It doesn’t have anything to do with all of the fears that often are behind issues with money and how you value your time and money.

Last year was difficult for me mainly because of health challenges that kept me from having the energy to do massage. At the end of Jan 2011, I was diagnosed with plaque in my carotid arteries and a thickened wall in my artery which scarred the heck out of me to say the least.  My ND had done a Lipo Particle Protein test that showed that my cholesterol was think and dense and more likely to stick to arteries. She also did a CIMT (Carotid Intima Media Thickness )scan of my arteries which I now am learning is very controversial as far as making a diagnosis.  My ND recommended a series of IV drips that was supposed to help clear it out and I did a dozen of those in a few months and they ended up making me sick as a dog.  I could hardly walk the 8 blocks that I usually walk to work from the bus stop. It messed up my thyroid and other hormones and it was depressing.  I don’t have any family history of issues like this and have never had high cholesterol.  I was also on natural supplements to lower my cholesterol after this diagnosis and that made my cholesterol too low!  That messed with my thyroid again and a few other things.  Now I am consulting with another doctor on the carotid artery thing and am getting conflicting information.  Apparently everyone had plaque in their arteries and mine is very, very minimal.  I am learning tons about inflammation and plaque build up too!  Anyways…dealing with all of this has left me with less energy to focus on building new cash clients and prevented me from even doing my full schedule – which I like to do 12 clients a week.  I think I averaged more like 8-9 clients a week.  So it cut into my income significantly.  If it weren’t for my websites and the residual income that they create for me – I’d probably be one of the homeless people I see on the streets everyday in downtown Seattle!  I was turning away clients actually some of the time because of not being able to work so my clinic website was always working!  It was just me that wasn’t!

The bulk of my clients are regular weekly massage clients and I supplement that with insurance cases.  Insurance cases used to pay really well until last year when the last high paying ins. company reduced their allowable fee by $46.  That was quite a cut in pay for me in that way and I didn’t really have the energy to get new cash clients.  I did finally get the www.squareup.com credit card processing tool and app and that has helped in some ways but it cuts into my profits.  I am not sure if I will be raising my rates or not next year.  It is very convenient to use and I like that the money is deposited right into your account.  You don’t have to go to the bank!

So now my plan for 2012 for my massage business is to cut back more and focus more on getting my 3 books out that I have planned for this year.  I also want to help more massage therapists be more successful in their practices and in finding or creating higher paying jobs.  Most everything depends on my health though which is doing better currently.

It is funny how the new year creates such different feelings – a fresh start. A new plan.  Clearer Goals.  Why do we need a new year to do that!??  But I’ll take it!  Looking for a better 2012!

If your website is not at the top of the first page of search results for your keyword – massage your city – you are toast!  Don’t even bother with the website really if you are not going to put the time into it to make it happen either really.  Yes that may seem a little harsh.

When you do put the time into your site to get to the top of the search engines and get people to click on your site AND make the call for the appointment you cut your marketing in half or reduce it to nothing. I don’t do anything but use my website to get new clients.  So when you do get to the top of the search engines and get found for your main keyword – you are attracting your ideal client – someone who already is looking for massage!  It doesn’t get much easier than that.  But once you get to the top you then have to get people to click on the site and call.  That is were the metatags come in and then what you say on your home page!

Take the time to learn about metatags – these tags are a hidden part of the website that search engines look at.  While Google says that they don’t use it for ranking a site, they do show up in the text that shows up on your listing.  So when you do get listed at the top of Google you will want to make sure people are clicking on the listing.  If they aren’t it could be your meta tags.  Use your main keyword – massage your city – in the first words of each of the tags – title, description and keywords.  Also use it in the file name of the page!  It is simple really once you get the hang of it. Site Build it! will teach you how and even provide a system that analyzes your use of the tags and keywords.

Your home page should be about the client! Put yourself in the clients shoes…what would you want to see first on someones page?  Get to the point.  You  have about 3 seconds to get someone’s attention. Create a headline that tells people exactly what you do – what solution do you provide?  Then talk a little about how your massage works to do that. Tell how you are different from all of the others out there.

Be careful with text and color of pages.  Make it easy to read and navigate.  Keep the music off!  I can’t stress that enough!

People don’t care about the benefits of massage like increasing circulation and lymph.  All they care about is whether or not they will be out of pain or less stressed.  You have to break down each so called benefit of massage and keep asking the question “So What?” until you get to the real benefit.  How will it change someones life or body or health?

Write as much content as you can to educate people.  Some massage therapists may think that it can be too much but I don’t think it can ever be too much.  When you have a lot of content you can also get a lot of other traffic to your website.  You can then find affiliate products to promote that will make you additional money or you can create your own products like ebooks or books about back pain and massage or stretching and working at the computer or couples massage classes or whatever!

Beware of pictures of yourself! Make sure they are professional and appropriate! No shots down the shirt or in less than ideal situations.  Put yourself in a perverts shoes!  Some words also conjure up less than ideal images – like deep relief, full release, full body massage,
I have so much written on websites for massage therapists:

here is the general overview of massage websites

How to choose a domain name

Search engine optimization

Metatags

What to say on your home page

What other content to write about

More on this site on massage websites