Tarot hotlines

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 29 May 2005, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Sushi	29 May 2005
How many people here have worked on a tarot hotline, doing readings over the phone? I met one girl once that did, the place just patched the call thru to her home phone and paid her a small cut of their per minute fee. Other than the low pay, she didn't seem to mind it. Do all the phone lines work in this manner? How have your experiences been?

Ace	29 May 2005
I worked them in the old days when the connect time pay (you only get paid for the time you are actually reading) was up to 40cents a minute-$18 an hour. The situation you describe is probably Keen.com. The psychics charge as much as they want, or as little as 99cent a minute. If it works for you, do it, but I would rather have a set fee paid in advance (so I KEEP it all) and they call at an appointed time and get read. Others work line that yes, are connected to your home (you log in) and wait for readings to come in. These days the connect time rate is $10.90/hr or less. I figure that if I want to be enslaved, I can sell myself for far more than that. I would not recommend 900 lines, not anymore. If it works for you, though, do it, but I would rather have a set fee paid in advance (so I KEEP it all) and they call at an appointed time and get read. For one thing, you make more money per reading. For another, you don't get the people who call line after line looking for someone to tell them that they are fine, their boyfriends don't appreciate them and if they want to spend more money on some scam the psychic will gladly sell them, they will bring their boyfriend back to them! Ace

Gwynne	29 May 2005
The only phone work I do is through a website where I set my price and my hours. They charge a per minute connection fee, and then a percentage of the remaining, so if I charge $1.99 a minute I make $1.06 a minute. If I charge .75 a minute, I make .29 a minute. I create my own listings, with my own pictures, topics, etc. And I can have listings in as many topics as I want. I currently have four, ranging in price from .75 to 1.99 That's between 17.40 and 63.60 per hour, good money no matter how you look at it! However, I don't actually make that much for the time I spend logged onto the phone. That's only while I'm talking. I end up talking about half the time I'm logged on, but I still average about $20 an hour for the time that I'm logged on, again not bad money. But, and this is a big, huge BUT, you get some interesting calls.... A lot of "When will he come back to me...." or "Will I find a job soon?" For instance, just last week I had a woman call four times in the same afternoon, to my four different listings. She asked the same question all four times. "When will my boyfriend come back to me?" I use a combination of oracles, stones, Tarot and other methods, and everything I was seeing indicated that he'd been gone for awhile, so I asked her "How long ago did he leave?" Six years was her reply! Six years and she's still calling psychics to find out when he'll be back? The cards were quite blunt, he wasn't coming back, he was long gone, possibly even married with children by now. "Well...." she says, "other psychics have told me that, but I just don't want to give up hope...." YIKES!!! There's a difference between hope and obsession!!!! Then there was the woman a few months ago who called. Her: "Can you tell me who my baby's daddy is? I know it's one of six guys." Me: "How do you know that?" Her: "Because I write down all my tricks in a calendar and I counted back 9 months from the day my son was born and those were the six johns I did that day." Me: "What if your son was 2 weeks early? Or two weeks late?" Her: "Oh.... I never thought of that! I'll have to go look at my calendar! That could be a hundred different guys!!!" I kid you not!!!!! There are hazards to phone work, beyond just the strange people... You get callers who call more and more and more and become dependent on you. It's a difficult trap to avoid, so it's absolutely necessary to build up a reference network with trained counselors who know how to deal with such things. The website that I use has counselors working on their network, I've built a relationship with two of them who specialize in "psychic addiction." There is also the advantage that I can block a particular caller on this site as well. If they won't talk to a counselor and keep calling they go on the blocked list.

Mother Goose	29 May 2005
Gwynne...that's so interesting about them having counselors for the tarot readers! I'd never thought of such, but you would need someone like that to help you out with those who become addicted. I'd like to take a look at the site...would you pm me the addy?

Emeraldgirl	30 May 2005
I have not done phone readings before and given some of the stories about the wages that you received vs. the amounts that are charged by the companies I probably won't but I will definately do person to person readings. I think the system Ace described sounds great and I love the story about the lady and her baby's daddy.

Lady Maria	30 May 2005
Gwynne wrote: The website that I use has counselors working on their network, I've built a relationship with two of them who specialize in "psychic addiction." There is also the advantage that I can block a particular caller on this site as well. If they won't talk to a counselor and keep calling they go on the blocked list. That's amazing, I've never heard of that. It's nice to see that those businesses have a heart, and are not just in it for the cash. Blessings, Maria

floracove	26 Jun 2005
That is interesting Gwynne, I'd be interested... Would you mind pming me the info? Thanks :)

PlatinumDove	26 Jun 2005
That is such a funny story about the woman and her baby's daddy....

The Tarot hotlines thread was originally posted on 29 May 2005 in the Talking Tarot board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Talking Tarot, or read more archived threads.