I am trying to figure out what to do about that damned tarot website. It really is my only source of income other than the small supplements of eBay (and I got a depressing little note from eBay just today letting me know my average daily sales come out to a whopping $0.67) and the books (lately about an extra $120 a month) but not only does it only bring in a few hundred a month even when sales are lively -- which isn't enough for me to really have a life with, I couldn't move from my parents house on that -- but then, the people lately are just intolerable. I got another one of those great guys just yesterday pulling the old "prove to me you are a fortune teller." I should have told him "I predict I'm going to block your email if you keep this shit up." They insist they're not asking for a free reading, they just want me to answer questions as proof of ability, and they'll buy tons of readings if I do a good job. I suppose these people just show up at restaurants and spas demanding services and insist that it doesn't count as 'free' because they will buy things later if it's to their liking? I also got an amusing inquiry the other day -- she never actually bought anything or I'd feel obliged to keep the request secret. It was a woman complaining that her daughter was seeing two men and there was one she approved of and the other she didn't like because he was "controlling" and so she wanted me to cast a spell to force her daughter to choose the man she approved of. Maybe she recognized the irony and that's why she never went through with it.
I might be willing to tolerate this if I were making good money, but I'm not so really I'm not. Unfortunately I don't know what else to do -- I have only ONCE ever gotten hired for a steady job, and that was because the owner of the place was a family friend. Santa Fe has pretty much no steady work except service jobs, which 9 out of 10 I will object to on moral grounds (I just cannot abide places that have stupid dress codes for no reason. I mean it's one thing if you need a jumpsuit and hairnet for sanitation purposes, but when they force everyone on the staff to wear a uniform just to mark you like cattle I can't tolerate it -- not unless they call it an acting gig and pay appropriate guild wages.) The remaining service jobs I don't get for reasons I can only guess at; I imagine the fact that I'm not very capable of coming off as friendly even if the best of times doesn't help, and also usually these lovely cashier jobs paying minimum wage go to the college grads like my sister (who graduated from Carleton College and now works at Trader Joe's.) Unfortunately, that part-time cafe job which again paid only a few hundred a month, was the best-paying job I ever had. The tarot job is second best.
I did go and level out the I Ching readings and Tarot readings to an identical rate, so it's less of a hassle when I need to switch out which one a person is getting. I MAY have found a decent method for getting straight Yes/No answers which has been a continual problem on the site to date -- I never found a reliable card method to read a plain yes or no, meanwhile I Ching can give a reliable no answer but it is a lot harder to confirm a yes and I am SO sick of people asking what "probably" or "maybe" means. (I Ching basically tells what date an event is able to happen, and you generally can't really say with certainty if the date result means yes it WILL happen.) I've started to read with a sort of Urim and Thummim, at least as far as I can get at recreating what they might have been. So far my test questions have been getting accurate forecasts.
Thing is I need to average about $70 in sales a day in order to be making a living. I am nowhere near that and see absolutely no hope of ever getting to that point; even when I do nothing whatsoever but promote the site I only seem to be able to get business enough to make that much per week, and no growth at all. Very poor earnings for the amount of effort.
I probably will have to buy up that stupid domain for another year at least just to discourage scammers from piggybacking on it. And if I do that then, one might say, why not keep it open and make a bit of extra from whoever shows up?
Because I don't get paid enough to deal with the level of stupidity I have to endure!
I might be willing to tolerate this if I were making good money, but I'm not so really I'm not. Unfortunately I don't know what else to do -- I have only ONCE ever gotten hired for a steady job, and that was because the owner of the place was a family friend. Santa Fe has pretty much no steady work except service jobs, which 9 out of 10 I will object to on moral grounds (I just cannot abide places that have stupid dress codes for no reason. I mean it's one thing if you need a jumpsuit and hairnet for sanitation purposes, but when they force everyone on the staff to wear a uniform just to mark you like cattle I can't tolerate it -- not unless they call it an acting gig and pay appropriate guild wages.) The remaining service jobs I don't get for reasons I can only guess at; I imagine the fact that I'm not very capable of coming off as friendly even if the best of times doesn't help, and also usually these lovely cashier jobs paying minimum wage go to the college grads like my sister (who graduated from Carleton College and now works at Trader Joe's.) Unfortunately, that part-time cafe job which again paid only a few hundred a month, was the best-paying job I ever had. The tarot job is second best.
I did go and level out the I Ching readings and Tarot readings to an identical rate, so it's less of a hassle when I need to switch out which one a person is getting. I MAY have found a decent method for getting straight Yes/No answers which has been a continual problem on the site to date -- I never found a reliable card method to read a plain yes or no, meanwhile I Ching can give a reliable no answer but it is a lot harder to confirm a yes and I am SO sick of people asking what "probably" or "maybe" means. (I Ching basically tells what date an event is able to happen, and you generally can't really say with certainty if the date result means yes it WILL happen.) I've started to read with a sort of Urim and Thummim, at least as far as I can get at recreating what they might have been. So far my test questions have been getting accurate forecasts.
Thing is I need to average about $70 in sales a day in order to be making a living. I am nowhere near that and see absolutely no hope of ever getting to that point; even when I do nothing whatsoever but promote the site I only seem to be able to get business enough to make that much per week, and no growth at all. Very poor earnings for the amount of effort.
I probably will have to buy up that stupid domain for another year at least just to discourage scammers from piggybacking on it. And if I do that then, one might say, why not keep it open and make a bit of extra from whoever shows up?
Because I don't get paid enough to deal with the level of stupidity I have to endure!
But then, stupid people are... well, *stupid*.