Free Tarot Reading Tips I Wish Someone Had Told Me.
Providing free tarot readings is such a wonderful way to grow as a reader, practice your skills and even promote your services. It is also a nice way to give back to your friends and social media following and even test out a new deck or spread. While I know not everyone finds benefit in reading for others or providing free readings, for those who do, I hope this post helps you on your free reading journey. When I started gifting free readings online, I was a little intimidated and unsure of how to do so that was most comfortable for me. I picked up some tips and tricks along the way that I think would help those who are wanting to offer free readings.
I think before anything else, deciding why you want to offer free Tarot readings is important. There are many reasons why and neither are incorrect if they make sense to you. You may want to use free readings to gain exposure, as a form of gratitude, for promotional means, to obtain and collect testimonials, to help you get to know a new deck, to gain confidence as a reader, to boost sales for a particular reading in your Tarot shop, to give a preview of a paid service and the list can go on. Make sure your intentions are valid for you and your situation. Having that clear goal will help you tailor your reading offering to what you are wanting to achieve.
When offering any free service, think about what type of reading you want to provide your audience. Is it a past life Tarot reading, an intuitive reading or a three card past present and future reading? It is also important to be mindful of what your reading will include and what it wonāt include. Be clear on what exactly you are offering. This helps those who are seeking your services understand the type of divination you are providing instead of expecting another type in return.
Ethics, Rules, Disclaimers And Personal Boundaries
Some free readers have specific rules and guidelines set in place for their free reading offerings. I am a firm believer in being upfront about what type of reader you are, what types of questions you will and will not answer and having a place online and offline where you can point to your ethics and disclaimers. Some readers who offer free readings usually provide a link to their ethics and disclaimer pages on their free reading post. This helps potential clients who are seeking your services understand if you are the right fit for them. Disclaimers help you legally by addressing things like charlatan laws, not reading for persons under the age of consent and that the reading may be considered for entertainment purposes only depending on their location. I also think it is important to set personal boundaries for yourself. If there are certain topics or things you are uncomfortable reading about, let it be known. If you do not want multiple questions or joint questions per free reading request make it known. Ā If you are willing to provide additional clarification and insight after a free reading, setting a boundary of how many times the free reading client can contact you for more clarification is also good to have. Every client and reader exchange will not be a perfect match. It is okay to be selective with who you read for and the questions you are comfortable answering. Do not feel bad for updating and changing your ethics, rules and boundaries as time goes on.
Presentation And Examples
When you have decided what type of free reading you want to offer, think about how you want to present it. Are you sending the readings privately to emails or through private messages? Is the reading going to be sent as a PDF, video, audio file or any other file and format type? Are the readings going to be done publicly on your blog or social media platform? Are the free readings going to include photos of the cards or other tools you used for each reading? Something that I donāt think a lot of readers think about is giving a preview or live example of the reading they are planning on offering. This showcases exactly what the reading is and allows the free reading client to make an informed decision.
When making a call to action post to offer up free readings, I find that it is best to utilize a graphic that is easy to read. I made a post about free tools you can use to create your Tarot graphics that you might want to check out. Ā I also like to put any graphical information in the body of the post for accessibility. You want to keep your post inviting and easy to understand. If you are posting to social media, it could be beneficial to use tags such as Free Tarot Reading, Tarot Reading, Free Reading, Freebie, etc. Ā Tagging will help others find your post and gain you more exposure. Ā I also find that it is beneficial in tagging your posts with a unique tag, to give those who do not want to see your free reading posts the ability to blacklist them. Having a unique tag will also allow free reading clients to find their reading on your blog by searching that specific tag. Some readers like to create a public post with the specific number of slots designated to the free reading offering and proceed to tag the users who have filled a designated slot until they are all filled. If you are only offering readings for a certain amount of time be as specific as possible by giving the date, the time and the time zone for example: December 23rd 2017 from 8-10 PM Eastern time.Ā You may also want to have a set system in place for reading privacy. If you are offering your free reading clients the ability to obtain a reading that wonāt be posted publicly, you may want to put in your free reading post a specific symbol or letter combination that they can include in their request to ensure that the reading will be private.
One of the biggest hurdles I had when offering free readings was to be clear where the free reading requests needed to be sent and how I wanted to be contacted. Are you accepting requests through private messages, ask box, e-mail, in the notes or thread of your free reading post? Are you allowing anonymous requests? Do you want identifiers in the requests sent to you like numbers, initials, emojis? Do you need names and birthdates? Are you accepting questions for the specific reading you are offering or is it a general card pull? Being clear about how you want your requests handled will help prevent incomplete or unwanted messages and requests.
It is so important to know your reading limit as a reader, especially when providing free readings. A technique that greatly helped me was to have a set list or reserved slots for the number of readings I wanted to offer. Once that specific number was filled, I made a note that my offer to fulfill any additional reading requests was over. Decide how many free readings you are willing to do and stick by it.
Communicating with the people who are sending you free reading requests is important. If you are accepting free reading requests on a platform like Tumblr where there is a limited character amount for the request sent as an ask message, you might want to include a rule that the question has to be concise or give the free reading client a maximum of three messages to get their request to you. Once you have your free reading queue filled, you may want to notify the people whose readings were accepted. This gets people excited for the reading.
A lot of readers like to do free reading events periodically on their blogs or social media sites. If you plan on offering readings on a consistent basis, it could be beneficial to set yourself a schedule. Will you be offering readings every Friday afternoon or once a month? Having a set schedule can bring anticipating and create buzz around your reading offerings.
Reading Timeline And Accountability
Think about how long it is going to take you to do the reading, format it and send it out. Being upfront about your estimated reading timeline benefits you by being transparent with your audience. Ā Will your readings be sent within 24 hrs from the request being sent or will it take you a bit longer? If something happens and you cannot complete your reading requests, how will you notify those who have been waiting for their reading requests concerning the delay? Will you make a public post about it? Will you contact everyone individually? These are all important things to think about.
It is important to listen to yourself and learn your limits when providing any type of reading. For some readers, they can read for long periods of time without an issue and others who can only do one or two readings a day. Be accountable for your energy levels, be safe and do not feel bad that your energy levels do not match someone elseās. You may want to take a break between readings. Make sure you are staying hydrated and fed. Remember your very best is good enough.
When dealing with any amount of reading requests, being organized will help make the process go smoother for you. As I mentioned above, having a list or slots available with each query and person you are reading for written down will help keep you accountable for the reading you have done and those you have still yet to complete.
I recently wrote a post about feedback that you may want to check out but if feedback and testimonials are something you desire after a reading, make it something that is clear in your original post. If the purpose of your free readings is for feedback, emphasize that this is the whole premise of your free reading offerings and is crucial to the exchange process of these readings.
You are human. Sometimes you will get a reading wrong. That does not make you any less of a reader. As I mentioned above, not every reader and client will be a perfect match.
After doing any type of reading, I like to do some self-care. You can check out my Tarot Self Care cheat sheet and Tarot self care routine for some ideas. Some of my favorite self-care methods are reading a good book, taking a bubble bath and drinking some tea. Do whatever self-care process you enjoy and find beneficial.
Post Notes:
Please do not remove the captions.
Title: Free Tarot Reading Tips I Wish Someone Had Told Me
Deck: Prisma Visions Tarot
Copyright: Ā© Ivan Ambrose 2017
Disclaimer: As with all of my posts and content, this post in no way, shape, or form is intended to tell you how you must go about this topic. The intention of this post is to share my experiences. This isnāt the only way, the absolute right way or the way that you āshouldā approach this topic. I encourage you to use what you find useful and tweak or dismiss what you do not find useful. I am sure there are various other people in the world who choose to do things differently regarding this topic and that is perfectly okay. I can only speak from personal experience and what has worked for me. I encourage you to do your own research, to do what you are comfortable with and to tailor any advice provided henceforth to your specific needs and individual situation.
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