I sometimes venture to work on a well known online expert site that has categories for all manner of psychic phenomena.
I joined in late 2002 and worked there enthusiastically for a few months. I even got myself onto the first page.
Now I was brought up in a ‘psychic family with psychic lineage (right click here to read about it). I had been exposed all my life to the trade and knew its’ nuances and different branches pretty well and could do readings in pretty much any way anyone might fancy them done.
So I ventured into this new and exciting online world hoping for great things. I wrote up a few profiles and submitted them into the correct and relevant categories.
Then I quickly learned what a weird, wiggy and paranoid place the online world of psychicdemia was. There was little, if any quality control. Industrial relations, suitable work environments and quality control of any kind were completely alien concepts.
I learned that my abilities and experience were worth around about zero to the company and that the only thing they valued was my ability to pull clients and keep them talking.
And there were many on the site who I would not have employed if I owned the site.
In fact I found out that it would be very easy to join up and pretend to be an online psychic; ‘welcome all comers’….and you could probably ‘wing it’ with very few skills.
People ask a surprisingly small number of basic questions.
First question usually is “does he/she love me”? To this question it is expected you answer in the affirmative. If you answer in the negative it is most likely your client will suddenly vanish with as much gusto as can be applied in an internet chat-room. In a pay by the minute world this equates to no pay. Answers such as, “they wouldn’t know true love if it hit them between the eyes” are not recommended answers.
Next question might be “how does he/she really feel about me”?
Now this question is a more in-depth variation of the former and requires a little more skills and imagination to answer.
It comes after they have briefly presented you with the evidence of mistreatment dished out by their partner who ‘loves’ them. They are now trying to get you to prove that their partner loves them despite their bad behaviour. There are a few ‘off pat’ explanations for such behaviour such as, “they have a fear of commitment’ or “they are still hurting and recovering from the hurt of a previous relationship”. With any luck such comments might get them chatting for a few more pay by the minute minutes. At this stage you could perhaps mention a major rejection and abandonment issue that occurred during early childhood. Empathy and sympathy thrown into the mix definitely helps as well. If you’re feeling unsympathetic today I suggest you go do your gardening instead. Recharging your own batteries is also important as such work can be very wearing.
You still don’t yet need any psychic abilities; just make sure to throw in as many reassurances as you can.
Though of course if you’re a real psychic you can give some specific and detailed information though being psychic will not necessarily interpret into their ongoing visits. Your ability to instill hope is far more important.
As long as you can be pretty comforting and affirmative you should find that it is relatively easy to keep the conversation going for a while as long as you stay positive.
You may have been on the line for 10 -20 minutes by now – so you will be doing fine in terms of your pay packet.
And as long as you have made them feel potentially loved and optimistic about the future of their relationship you most likely will get a glowing comment and a 5 star rating which means that it is far more likely that many more clients will come your way to boost your pay packet and get more of same.
Somewhere in this mix will be the question, “when will he/she ring me, email me or other form of contact next”? It would appear that this question requires psychic ability and the few online psychics who are actually psychic just might be able to accurately answer this one. Though there still is every chance that psychic ability may be counterproductive both to your pay packet and the caller’s state of buoyancy and general optimism.
In fact for the around 90% of callers who drop into your online psychic chat-room being psychic could well be your downfall. Truth is many of them are in an abusive and/or dysfunctional relationship and definitely do not want to know this fact. So being psychic is more likely to be counter-productive in such scenarios. Sad but true; very sad but very true.
Almost all questions asked of an online psychic are variations around this theme. So basically all the skills you need are a cache of ways for dealing with such questions.
You can also charge the fee you so desire. I find that the fee you charge has very little to do with the ability to attract clients. Many forlorn lovesick clients will be prepared to max out several dozen credit cards as long as you are prepared to make them feel good and unremittingly hopeful. When they become jaded by your routine and advice they will simply move on to the next online psychic that takes their fancy; but along will come another forlorn type to fill your gap before too long.
So these days it seems that when people are feeling panicky, abandoned, unloved, rejected, confused, vengeful, angered or any number of intense and unpleasant emotions that the pay by the minute psychic becomes a very attractive and potentially addictive and expensive idea.
It didn’t take me long to realize that perhaps I should instead be called an ‘online love band-aid’. Most clients seem to be seeking assurances that their lover is coming back or hasn’t even gone in the first place.
So if you think you have the skills to make such people feel temporarily happy enough to always give you a 5 star rating then you have most of the skill that is required. Whether or not you are psychic is irrelevant though you may need to pretend to be and make up an interesting story or two about your supposed abilities and how they were developed and acquired.
Of course a degree in online advertising can help too. You need to appear to be really exciting and totally accurate and if you can get a few friends to come along and hire you and give you a great (publicly visible) comment that says something like she re-united me with my lover within 48 hours and a 5 star rating these should get many potential clients just lining up to talk to you.
Of course there are other clients for whom having genuine psychic abilities is required but these few and far between and are certainly not the mainstay.
Some people do come looking seeking career advice or pet psychics. Others come seeking contact with those people or pets that have passed over. In fact you’re more likely to score someone with psychic abilities under such categories.
But having said all this there are ‘readers’ who are well adapted to this particular niche and who, in a genuine effort to be of assistance can layout a tarot spread and waffle on for a while genuinely trying to help the clients. Most of them are only looking for hope and dispensing hope is not particularly a psychic matter.
It really does trouble me that so many people seem to be in abusive and dysfunctional relationships and visit psychics who are not trained to spot or deal with such problems other than by dispensing false hopes.
Prior to this world of pay-by-the-minute psychics a person would visit me in a comfortable home setting where we would share a cuppa and I would give them a reading that delved in-depth into all aspects of their lives. Love, children, home, work, travel, new opportunities, health to name just a few are the aspects I would routinely look into.
So my initiation into the world of the pay by the minute psychic was a bit of a shock to my system really.
Consequently I rarely work as an online psychic and when I do I (initially) refuse to do the pay by the minute routine; instead I get clients to purchase an upfront reading for a fixed cost where, until I may know the client better I provide a more well rounded kind of a reading.
I haven’t yet touched on or mentioned the elaborate screening techniques required to keep the massive percentage of internet predators that stalk, abuse or harass internet psychics suitably at arms length. This is another huge subject and fodder for further articles. Keep posted.
