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Organization of Professional Astrologers |
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OPA E-News |
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Volume 1 - No. 4 - May, 2001 |
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This month: The OPA conference early registration deadline is coming up quickly (June 1), Results of Last Month's and previous Surveys, New Survey Question, Results of Last Month's Q & A, Previous Month's Q & A
Postings for Rideshares and Roommates
As a courtesy, I'll post your arrival information on the website and in the OPA E-News. This way you can contact each other if you'd like to hook up to share transportation costs to and from the airport.
You'll need to furnish the following: Name and contact information (email, phone, etc), and arrival information (airport where you'll be arriving, airline, flight number, scheduled time of arrival).
I will also post roommate requests. If you'd like us to post your roommate request, furnish the following: Name and contact information, gender, smoking/no smoking R
Contact me at: emzucker@netreach.net
Roommate Request:
NSF looking to share room with another NS female. Ellen Zucker Tel: 215 722 6888 Email: emzucker@netreach.net
Check here for rideshare postings
Check here for roommate postings
PS. DON'T FORGET JUNE 1 IS THE EARLY REGISTRATION DEADLINE!
Contact Diana Riviere at diana@archivepress.com
Tel: 303 554 0801
Fuller detail is posted on OPA's website, http://www.professional-astrology.org
6 of you responded out of 85 who received the newsletter. (7%)
Thank you for your time and effort.
Of those who responded, half of you do and half of you don't. And you feel pretty strongly about your decision.
First the pros:
Sandra Leigh Serio writes:
Yes I offer Visa and MC and that is because 80% of my clients are telephone clients from all over the United States... I find it is well worth it because you can verify the card number and amount before the session and you don't have to wait for a check to arrive and to see if the check is good. I do have some regular clients who prefer to send checks and they have a proved history of good credit so I do allow them to send the check after the session. However, with someone new, I don't do that --- I ask for the payment before the session.
Bob Mulligan writes:
I take All credit cards. It has helped my business immensely. I charge my clients billing their cards over the Internet. It means that I get paid right away. Clients are often use to spending money with credit cards. It makes it simpler for them. The bookkeeping is simpler too. It's well worth it.
Don McBroom accepts credit cards, too. And he has a cautionary story to tell:
Being a relative newcomer to the profession (full time as of July, 1999) I felt it would be helpful to offer credit card services and would avoid billing hassles, etc. even though I fully expected most clients to pay by cash or personal check. I found a service through Costco (linked with Nova systems) that offered no monthly minimum on a 2-year contract, only requiring that you buy the equipment (about $400).
I thought that would be a good deal.Well, a few months into the contract, I received a billing for $20 for the month. I called and explained the situation to the customer service representative (is that an oxymoron or is it just me?). She, in so many words told me that I was a liar, that their company never offered a plan with no monthly charge. I asked to speak to a supervisor. After a substantial delay the same woman got on the line and she said that the plan had been changed (but offered no apology for her earlier attitude) and that the monthly charge would be waived for my first year. After numerous additional phone calls and letters, I gave up.
So, the monthly charge of $20 stands. Not that this is a horrendous amount of money, but when you're just starting up, you'd much rather be spending the money on advertising.In summary, buyer beware.
Anyway, my initial thought that few clients would pay by card has proven true. Most pay by cash or personal check - and maybe I'm lucky but I haven't had any problems. I do see the credit card service being a big bonus when dealing with phone consultations to ensure that the payment is OK.
Although, some find the ability to accept credit cards is particularly helpful for phone consultations, some of you do phone consultations and work quite well without taking credit cards, thank you very much.
Chris McRae writes:
No I do not use credit card payments. I have never had a problem with cash or cheque and have never had a cheque bounce in all the years I have been doing charts. For a new client, I ask for a deposit before the time of the appointment and the balance after they have had the consultation. Most of my business now is by referral but it wasn't always so. When I did a lot of television I had many new clients but perhaps my public image prevented people from taking advantage of me. I have never been asked if I accept credit cards so never saw a reason to do it.
Arlan Wise reiterates this sentiment:
No. I haven't felt the need. Most people pay me by check. I trust my phone clients and only get stiffed once a year at the most.
As does Maureen Ambrose:
I don't need to offer credit card payments. I deal in personal checks or cash.
Sandra-Leigh and Bob share their merchant bank arrangements with us:
Sandra-Leigh uses Bank One:
Vendor: Bank One
Terms: A flat fee of 10 cents per transaction plus .0339 per transaction. This computes to about .03509 per ticket or 3.5% per transaction. On a $100 charge, the bank receives $3.50.
Bob uses Merchant Express.
Terms: $15 a month gateway fee. $.15 per transaction and 2.09% interest for Visa, Master Card, American Express, Discover.
In response to Elspeth's comments about rates in the Denver/Boulder, Colorado area, Sandra-Leigh writes:
Ellen, Elsbeth is from Boulder as is Diana. I am from Boulder County, I live in Superior it is 5 miles southeast of Boulder so I am considered to be in the Denver/Boulder area. Diana charges $90 per hour and I charge $100. Elsbeth may be correct that most astrologers here charge around $60 -- though I do not personally know anyone who charges $60 and know many who charge a lot more than that. I would guess that the ones who do charge $60, are mainly the hobbyists or those who have not been in practice for a very long time and who do not work full time as astrologers. I find many many people in this area saying they are astrologers when in reality they are more like hobbyists. Elsbeth may know many different people than I do, so she may be correct also, but this is my experience of this area. I hope this clears things up.
Bob Mulligan adds:
Elsbeth mentioned last month that OPA member's rates may be higher than other astrologers. Ellen's comment was to ask if this was generally true for other astrologers around the country. We have uncovered a deeper issue.
Anyone can call themselves an astrologer. A consequence of this is that clients have no way of knowing what they are getting when they go to see someone calling themselves an astrologer unless they know someone else who has seen this person. Because we have no educational requirements, no licensing, no standardized testing, in the most public sense, we lack definition as a group. An astrologer could be a fortune teller with no background in studying the movement of planets in correlation to worldly activity.
Even amongst competent astrologers there is a vast range of circumstances and expectations leading to vastly different rates. Would someone who has a spouse earning the real income for the family, who studied astrology a little bit as a hobby, charge the same as someone who prepared for the field as a real profession? Are these two people even providing the same kind of service for their clients? It might be hard to shed any real light on the issue of rates without coming to some understanding of minimum acceptable standards for the field.
Here in Naples, psychics commonly advertise as astrologers. It can be that collectively we still haven't completely defined our identity with the general public. Should an astrologer be able, for instance, to calculate a chart?
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Bob also responds to Cathy Coleman's comment about his rate structure:
Point of clarification to Cathy Coleman. I have no trouble attracting a clientele. I work all the hours that I want to seeing clients. My question to those who work in astrology as the sole support of a family unit. Have you seen your cliental become more narrowly focused at the upper socioeconomic level like I have? I use to see people from ever walk of life. As my rates became more expensive, my clients became more focused in the upper 1% of the population. That's all.
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Ellen Zucker writes:
When I reread Bob's question, I saw that his rate increase was his RESPONSE to a drop off in volume. He was losing volume under his old rate structure of of $100 an hour-which falls in squarely with the rates reported by respondants to the E-News Survey.
To me, it raises other questions. One, why was his volume dropping under the LOWER rate?
If clients are at all rate sensitive then Bob should have lost a lot of clients upon adoption of a 50% rate increase. Bob reports that he is seeing all the clients he wants-just that they are from the higher end of the economic spectrum. Could it be that clients were lost, but that the increase in rate offset them? Did the rate increase exacerbate the shift to higher income clients?
Bob, How did your clients react to the rate increase and how did you implement it?
Arlan Wise wants to know:
1. How many of us are supporting ourselves purely by Astrology?
2. And how many of us have other sources of income, such as a job, partner's income, investments, inheritance?
Comments?
Last month Ellen Zucker wrote:
I attended a meeting at a local Astrology organization when the speaker made an offhand comment to a long-time Astrologer in the audience. He said that the two of them were probably the only Astrologers left that knew how to calculate charts by hand.
Do you think it is necessary for an Astrologer to be able to calculate charts by hand in this age of computers? Why or why not?
Arlan writes:
I think every astrologer should know how to calculate a chart. It's important to know how the mechanics of a chart work. I don't think we have to give up computers since they are such a wonderful way too save time, but it is necessary to know how to create a chart. What would you do if a client was coming and there was no electricity ( not such a impossible idea these days)?
I met a Vedic astrologer in India who spoke of the importance of calculating the chart himself. He said it put him in the process and he understood the chart better since he'd worked on all of it and invested his energy in the chart. He thought it was a bad thing to use a computer.
I don't agree with him but I listened to him with interest.
Sandra-Leigh writes:
Yes, I do think astrologers should know how to calculate a chart without a computer. I had to learn it to pass the AFA Professional Examination and it gave me a working knowledge of astrological math principles, like time zones, daylight and war times, and even an education about longitudes and latitudes. We had to calculate charts for Europe and Australia so I learned about south latitudes and eastern longitudes. The astrological math education comes in very handy now. I can easily "catch" mistakes in data input in computer generated charts.
Dear Members,
If you have additional comments on this topic, we will continue to publish them.
New Q & A
Ellen Zucker writes:
A couple of months ago, I recall reading an article in my hometown newspaper (Philadelphia Inquirer) describing how the economic downturn was a boon to some psychics. Apparently, some of them were generating increased business from worried clients. Yet, at the same time, I see many people have become more reluctant to spend money-and to be more value conscious when they do.
As someone who is beginning a practice with the intent, ultimately, of supporting myself with it financially, I wonder about the impact of economic cycles on Astrologers and how you deal with it.
Has the current slowdown in the economy affected your Astrology business? If so, how, and how are you handling it? Have you noticed any correlation between past economic cycles and your volume of business?
Dear Members,
Send your comments to Ellen Zucker at emzucker@netreach.net. Comments will be published next month.
It's your Q & A.
Let us direct our collective energies towards brainstorming about YOUR dilemma.
Send in the details. One question will be chosen and posted in next month's OPA E-NEWS.
To write to OPA E-NEWS, send to: emzucker@netreach.net. Articles, contributions are welcome. No attachments, please.