#financial magic

The Pecuniary Oil I’ve had brewing turned out beautifully! And I think that it will work even better for Money Drawing than my last batch.

Many people consider financial magic to be one of the more difficult forms of magic. Though that is something many people agree on, we don’t really know why. 

Therefore I’ve created a very short survey that will see if knowledge of money correlates with ease of money magic. If you have time, please take it! 

Results will be posted here @malachitelibrary , Wordpress, and Patreon. 

Knowing how to price is an integral part of your magic business. Prices that are too high will result in no customers at all, and prices too low could result in you getting overwhelmed with orders. You need to find a balance so that you will get customers in the first place, be able to keep up with them, and make enough money for yourself.

***NOTE that this is written mainly for USD. 

Purpose/Effects of Pricing:

Incur a profit,the most obvious reason. You want to make money for yourself.

Control/affect demand- Part of the economic law of Supply and Demand is that as price increases, demand decreases; as price decreases; demand increases- an inverse relationship.

Reasons for a price:

Demand- Demand is the main force that will drive your prices. Again, prices too high mean no customers, and prices too low could mean becoming overwhelmed with orders. Try to set prices that balance demand and your ability to supply.

Quality -If your tarot readings, for example, are renown for being highly accurate, of course you will be able to price them higher than a beginner reader. People will pay more for things they believe are of higher quality.

Income- You need to make an income, of course. Once you get business regularly, try to have your lowest prices be about the equivalent of minimum wage in your area; you deserve it, of course.

Length/Time Invested- The longer a service takes/the more time to make a product, the more you should charge. Time IS money here, quite literally.

Cover cost of supplies: For spells, amulets, charms, spirit/entity vessels, and other services, you will have to charge enough to cover the cost of the supplies. You want a good margin of profit- meaning you want the revenue from selling to exceed what the cost of the supplies are, otherwise you’re not making any money to take home. 

Signs your prices are too high:

People rarely if ever buy your product, even if you are high-quality, have tons of reviews, etc.

No matter how much you advertise, self-promote, etc, it seems like people don’t do more than glance over your items.

Your friends say they wouldn’t buy them even if they had the means.

You wouldn’t buy that service for (insert your price here).

People believe your services are fake or a scam.

Signs your prices are too low:

You are magically exhausting yourself to keep up with orders; they just keep pouring in no matter how many you do.

Toooo many orders.

Some Example Bad Starting Prices: Imagine an absolute beginner charging these prices. They have no reputation, no reviews. Would you buy these services from them at these prices? Most likely not.

3 Card Reading- $20

5 Card Reading- $30

10 Card Reading- $50

Single Question Pendulum reading: $15

Pre-Conjured Spirit: $200

Suggested Starting Prices: Note that these are only suggestions for starting prices; meaning you should only start with these, not stay with them. This is termed “penetration pricing”.  These prices are low enough that people will be attracted to you even though you do not have much experience/reviews yet, but high enough that you should be able to turn a decent profit even though you are just starting.

1-3 Card Readings: $3

5 Card readings: $5-6

10+ Card Readings: $10

Pre-Conjured Spirit/Entity: $15-30

Custom Conjure Spirit/Entity: $35-50

By Time it Takes to Do the Service:

15 Minutes- $5

30 Minutes: $5-8

1 Hour: $5-15

Remember, these are just starting prices to enter the market, meaning prices ONLY for the purpose of building up reputation/a customer base in the long run. Obviously, raise your prices as the quality of your readings, your demand, and reviews/reputations increase. When raising prices, raise them very slowly; maybe 25-50 cents to a dollar at a time for very low-cost services, and a couple of bucks, maybe $3-5 for higher-cost services.

***NOTE that this is written mainly for USD.

Here are the other posts in this magic business series if you have not seen them yet and would like to read. These are all part of my #magic business series (all articles use that tag).

Things to Know Before Starting a Magic Business

How to Start an Online Magic Business

How to Market Yourself on Tumblr

Reviews are an important part of building your reputation in the magic business world, as with all businesses. They are what lets people know the quality of your product/service, how trustworthy you are to deliver, and other things. Therefore, being able to handle and deal with negative reviews that come your way is an important part of doing business. Here’s how to handle criticism, feedback, and negative reviews without getting offended.

Thank you @serapphire for helping with the post, especially the addition of Canada’s rules on Astroturfing! 

Know that it’s not personal. They are critiquing your service, not you. Remember, it’s about what you did/made, not who you are.

Have a working and established method of taking care of yourself before addressing the negative reviews; self-care. Know a few methods of cooling off that work for you. Whether it’s deep breaths, staring at the ceiling, going for a walk, have some ways of emotionally preparing yourself to deal with criticism. Take care of yourself emotionally before dealing with them.

Don’t beat yourself up over it. Try not to think, “oh no, I did horrible” or “of course I did bad”. Those types of thoughts are not helpful to you improving and getting better. Again with the self-care: have ways to manage your emotions so that you will be able to deal.

Know that you can’t improve without feedback at all. By gaining negative feedback, you get a chance to improve what you could do. Where did you go wrong, and how could you fix it? What could you do better next time, every time? Use the feedback to grow.

Know that you’d likely be more frustrated if you didn’t get feedback at all. Ah, the struggle of offering free readings. Did you do good? Did you do bad? Looks like you’ll never know. Wouldn’t you be a bit pissed if your services were shit and nobody told you?? “Why didn’t they tell me?”, you would say.

See it as an opportunity to show excellent customer service. You may have fucked up the product or service, but now you have the opportunity to make up for it and show that you really do care for your customers. In a word-of-mouth industry of magic, excellent customer service can go a very, very long way. On the flip side, terrible customer service (insulting your customers, cursing those who post negative reviews) will also, go a long, long way- towards destroying your business.

It’s illegal to purposely drown out, not publish, edit, or delete negative reviews.

This is called Astroturfing-penalizing or removing negative comments and leaving only positive ones. VERY bad for your businesses’ reputation if you do this. Additionally, many review sites will penalize businesses that do that.

It is ILLEGAL in the United States, through the Federal Trade Commission’s Endorsement and Testimonial Guidelines. 

It is ALSO illegal in Canada, through the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network. 

ICPEN’s new Online Reviews Guidelines are organized according to three types of online marketing participants: review administrators, traders and marketing professionals, and digital influencers.

In general, the Guidelines emphasize that online reviews and endorsements should be based on genuine user experiences (for example, no fake reviews), not be biased (for example, not only display positive reviews) and include adequate disclosures (for example, whether a review or endorsement has been paid for or otherwise compensated)."

In summary: don’t fucking do it.

Hope this helped, and here are the other posts in this magic business series if you have not seen them yet and would like to read! These are all part of my #magic business series (all articles use that tag).

Things to Know Before Starting a Magic Business

How to Start an Online Magic Business

How to Market Yourself on Tumblr

How to Politely Refuse Service

Many people want to start magical businesses of their own or offer their magic services for payment. This post covers some basic business skills/general things on how to start your business!

Know the prerequisites for a basic business.

Basically know that even if your business is a spiritual journey for YOU, it is still just a regular business to everyone else. Brush up on basic business skills, don’t be a jackass to your clients. Have the confidence to be able to handle criticism and negative reviews. Be able to communicate quickly and effectively. I have a more detailed post here.

Know what you want to offer for money.

Business can take the fun out of things you consider just a hobby. Are you certain that you want to provide that service professionally? Would you be okay if that service didn’t feel so fun anymore? Many people do readings for fun/the spiritual feels/pleasure….would it be okay if one day, your readings stopped feeling super spiritual or fun to do?

Know your target market and general client base.

Your target market is who you want to sell to. Your client base is just the general types of people who buy your products/services. Knowing both of these is super important to figuring out what to offer, how you should present yourself, and other important business things. And yes, you can have multiple target markets, and a wide client base.

To figure these out, think: What type of people usually buy magic services? Other magical people who believe in magic/spirits. What’s the general demographic of magic-practitioners on tumblr? 15-30 years of age, a large deal beginners….Do you see the sort of deductive reasoning that finding your target market and figuring out your client base is?

Know what exactly makes you different from other sellers.

Is it experience? The types of readings you offer? The quality of your readings? The deck you use? Is it you, yourself? Knowing what makes you different from other sellers/those providing services is going to be your selling point, what makes people want to buy from you specifically. You want to be different so that people actually remember and recognize you/your service.

Market yourself.

Make posts about your shop, and asks your friends to reblog/share it (the worst you could get is a ‘no’). Use 3 billion tags, and even make your own special tags for yourself. Talk with people one on one. Answer questions about your shop/services. Have an FAQ, and info page.  Have an “about” page with actual content about you; don’t have it be something like “Kelly, 17” with nothing else there. People want to know who the actual person behind the business is. Have multiple places about you; a tumblr + facebook + twitter is pretty common. This gives you different forms of content and different client bases.

Get familiar with paypal and/or other forms of payment.

Paypal is the most commonly used one, and it’s easy to use, especially since most people use it, and you don’t need a Paypal account to pay through Paypal. However, quite a few people do not like Paypal due to bad reviews- BUT most of these worries can be countered if you use the invoices. Please just learn to use the invoices, it will save you a billion headaches.

Know how to price.

The goal is to be able to price at minimum wage, at least. However, you won’t be able to earn at minimum wage if you don’t have any clients yet. You may need to do a few free or discounted readings to build up your reputation, which bites but does help in the long-run. This sort of ties in to knowing your client base; are most people on tumblr willing to pay $30 for a tarot reading? Probably not. Make sure your services are worth the price; if you, personally, would not pay for the quality of services you offer, maybe your prices need an adjustment. Or, if you personally believe that you would pay for all of your services because they are so wonderful and perfect, maybe you should ask a very honest friend who also does magic if they would pay for your services.

Make an email specific to your magic business.

Just trust me on this one...Plus it can also double as your Paypal email if you use that for payment.

Encourage and be able to take customer feedback/complaints.

How are people going to know if your service is good if they never hear anything about it? You should have a section/page about reviews, both good and bad. Would you believe it if a product had 100% 5-star reviews? Probably not. You need to have the confidence to be able to take bad reviews with pride before you can start a magic business, because they will happen occasionally. You are the one with the power to stop bad reviews, by actually improving on whatever the customer complained about. Also, how are you supposed to know how to improve if you never get reviews or nobody says anything bad ever? Yes bad reviews will hurt, but you must have the maturity to say “yes, that is something I should improve on” if you want to start a magic business and have it grow to a decent size.

If you do get a bad review, saying something like "sorry it didn't go as planned, let me contact you so that we can settle this!" would go a long way to show future customers that you care.

Git gud.

There are many people who want to make money from their magic, so as to turn it into a main source of income or even a side source- and that’s wonderful! However, the state of the magic industry is not so good- filled with scammers, and bad business owners, and other negative people. Here’s some tips to make sure you don’t become another negative thing to add to the bunch.

A Business is not a Holy Mission. A business is a business. While owning a magic business may be part of your spiritual journey, that doesn’t make your service completely holy, flawless, or relevant to absolutely everyone.

Communication: If you’re going to be late, or having difficulties that affect your business- let your customers know early. 9/10 times they’ll be like “it’s okay, I understand!” because it does happen even to the best of us; we get busy and we can’t pay as much attention to our magic business. Don’t wait until your customer is angry with you to let them know that the service you’re offering may be late. This ties into the next few points-

Don’t fucking yell at or be passive aggressive towards your customers?? Literally just. Oh my god. The amount of times I’ve heard of people getting yelled at by the reader/shop keepers/other magic busines owners etc, because they didn’t like their reading, the reading was extremely late, the reading was of low quality, the spirit was actually super abusive- like. Dude. It’s absolutely pathetic that this is the only industry where being rude to your customers on a regular basis is still acceptable. As a business owner, if your service is shit it is literally your fault. No exceptions. Yes, you are still a human being and will fuck up from time to time. However, that doesn’t mean can you take a Holier Than Thou stance towards the customer and be passive-aggressive towards them. You must have the confidence required to accept criticism and responsibility for shit service if you are going to start a magic business, because you will fuck up from time to time.

Don’t fucking guilt-trip?? Again, goes with “don’t be fucking rude” but. It literally cannot be restated enough because this STILL happens a lot!! If your store/conjurer goes “well it’s your fault that your entity is hurting you”, or “it’s your fault that your reading sucks”-- run, run and never go back.

Shit-Talking Customers: Some stores literally shit talk their own customers?? Holy shit???? Don’t fucking do that?? Like the fact that I actually have to say that really shows how wonderful and beautiful the magic industry is [sarcasm]. This ties into the next point-

Confidentiality: Keep readings and other personal matters of your clients private, do not discuss their matters with anyone else unless the client specifically gives you permission to. It’s not the end of the world if they don’t want the reading/service received posted:you can have the option to post anonymously (without the client’s name), or the client may be kind enough to write you a little testimonial without the reading/service being posted, and allow the client to choose if they are okay with one of those options. So again, give them multiple, customized options to review/provide you support, and only post readings with your client’s permission.   

Make use of “Disclaimer: All readings/services are for entertainment purposes only.” There’s a reason why nearly every magic business out there worth its salt has that, and it’s because of this thing called the law. Sadly there’s still no solid scientific proof that any of what we are doing is real, so you need to have this to protect from potential lawsuits and the like.

It’s illegal to offer spiritual services to minors without parental permission.  Again, the law. Readings and the like count as religious/spiritual services, even if you personally consider them secular. These are illegal to offer to anyone under the age of 18 in the United States. Of course, there will be those who try to sneak by this. So to save your own ass, have “By ordering my services you certify that you are of legal age, 18 years of age or older, to do so” somewhere on your page. This protects you because of course you can’t exactly ask for solid proof of age over the internet- so by purchasing a reading, the client claims they are of legal age, and if they are not, then they are the ones who could get in trouble because they lied about their age.