Astrology business model
There are no books on how to be a financially successful astrologer. I’ve got one, out-of-date handbook for writing and selling science fiction, but other than one story I successfully marketed in my undergraduate career, I found I did better working for a newspaper. That makes all of this rather experimental, on my part. There are no rules. There are no guidelines.
Prior to 2001 and its subsequent economic meltdown, this stuff worked pretty well as I was getting paid a meager fee for my work. But that mere pittance covered everything and allowed me my lifestyle. Despite the claims, I can suggest that the purported “market penetration” wasn’t nearly as deep as my former employers claimed. I get regular readings from my website, but I can count on one hand the number the folks who claimed to have read my stuff on AOL.
The lack of response from AOL could be a couple of things. Except for one, fortunate Jupiter transit, the company actively discouraged any contact with the writer [me>. I was incensed when I discovered that other writers were getting paid 10 times as much as me, but in the bigger picture, my column is still alive, and they’ve all fallen by the wayside. Could also be the idea that mailing a note to the writer might result in a loss of a sale on some other part of their site. Don’t know, it’s all academic now. Remember? No guidelines, no hard and fast rules. Another idea I’ve bantered about is the idea that the big astrology sites, at least the ones I’ve looked at, don’t have much in the way of archives. I’ve got close to a decade of columns available, if you just dig. All starthere. [And here, and here.>
So these days, the model is a little different, and I’m sure I can adjust the business model, as I need to. It works like this, the web server costs money. Access to the web server costs money. Writing horoscopes and answering questions takes time. All of this is paid for by selling chart reports. That’s it. No 900 lines. Advertising revenue, I opted to try the “results driven” kind, resulted in a minor amount of money, just enough to pay for the server, but the effort to police the ads themselves, solicit the advertising, insert the code, and so forth really didn’t justify the effort.
As it stands, there are two options. Donations help, and, at times, those very donations have helped keep the server up and running. Both PayPal and Amazon deposit directly into the astrofish.net account. Which, in turn, goes to pay for the server and access to that that server.
The other choice is to actually sell the weekly column again. Regrettably, at least for a small operator like me, that doesn’t work, as there are a number of sources for free astrology columns. Can’t compete with that price. While I’m repeatedly assured about the quality here, the price can’t be beat. My last marketing efforts yielded exactly zero, and after trying for several years, I’m giving up. They have to find me. You’re reading this, you found me, I suppose I’ll have to let the marketing guy go. “Hit the streets, dear, you’re out of work.”
> Re: astrology.com
> If you don’t need an ego boost, skip this. If you want to hear about how
> much they suck and you rule, read on…
>
> I click on the link in the Cap scope. Leads me to an offer for a free
> sample ‘Astro Identity Report.’ What have I got to lose? I get my free
> sample. Just a reading for my Mercury and Venus placements.
> (\\i.e.\\, I got what I paid for.)
>
> I compare it to the FGS version. You’re nice – they’re stupid.
Keep on rocking in the free world. That free stuff is sometimes not even worth the time you spend getting here from there.