Saturday 19 February 2011

Coming Soon: a new beauty therapy website

Today I am very excited. After many months of thinking about doing it and then months of discussing it with my business partner, I am very excited to say that very soon I will have a brand new website.


As the number of massage and beauty therapies that I have become qualified in has grown, I have – until now – had a website for each one. So for my male massage therapies I first had http://www.danielmassage.co.uk/ for my Shiatsu massage and Indian head massage (for which I was qualified when I came to live in the UK – and specifically Surrey).

Later on I qualified as an ITEC Swedish massage therapist followed a year later by a VTCT qualification in Sports Massage. So that’s the massage side of my business sorted.

Then I had a brain wave – an idea that I had been putting off for too long as I was always busy – it’s a skill which complements massage nicely as my clients often request both during the same visit: male waxing – hair removal from the back, chest abdomen etc. This was so successful that I qualified in intimate male waxing techniques shortly afterwards. So now I offer back, sac and crack, Brazilian, the so-called ”Boyzillian” and Hollywood waxes.

But my skills don’t stop there. I am now qualified in hair removal by threading and shortly in facials. Manicure and pedicure will follow shortly. And even more exciting therapies in the longer term!

Anyway, you will soon be able to find out more about all these treatments in one place – on http://www.danielbeauty.co.uk/. Coming soon to the interweb near you!

Saturday 5 February 2011

Should a Massage Therapist advertise on Facebook?

Today I got not one but two calls from one of those God-awful sales people.


You know the type: they sound like they are - or want to be – your best friend, use your name in every sentence and are just a little bit too excited on the phone, except you can hear their colleagues shouting at their potentially hot leads in the background too. Oh how I pity those poor souls working in call centres. It must be very depressing for them.

Anyway, if you have read this massage and male waxing blog before you will know how annoyed I got by endless sales calls from morons thinking they could ”manage” my Google Ad Words campaign and charge me a fortune for doing something I am quite capable of doing myself.

Today I got a call from a guy who had a space – and only one space mind you – for a massage therapist in my area (Woking Surrey) to advertise on Facebook. Now I had been discussing whether you can advertise locally on Facebook with some friends recently and they told me that it is possible, so I had been considering the possibility anyway.

I let this over-excited over-friendly desperate-for-commission salesman go through his irritating patter and asked – what can their company do for me and my massage business on Facebook that I can’t do myself? Apparently Facebook encourages you to spend £300 a week and they can do it for half that. Why? Bulk buying I suggest. A suggestion that Mr Over-Excited leaps upon as correct: Oh you are smart Daniel!

A quick look at Facebook – and five minutes filling in a form to create an advert – reveals this to be complete rubbish.

If I decide to advertise my male massage business on Facebook – rather than Google Ad Words, I shall be doing it myself and spending as little or as much as I decide. Much like Google’s Ad Words really.

The only question in my mind is: Which is better – Ad Words or Facebook?

There’s only one way to find out…… Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!

Thursday 3 February 2011

The downside of being a Self-Employed Massage Therapist

Often I tell friends and family that I love not only being self-employed but working from home: setting my own hours, the oh so long commute from upstairs to my  massage therapy room downstairs (also used for male waxing and facials by the way), deciding to take a day off if I want to or have a lazy summer's afternoon if the whim takes me.

However more often than not it's quite the opposite..you end up working 7 days a week and long hours to boot. But when it comes to the middle of December, and people's minds turn to other matters...like partying hard and visiting family far away from my massage practise in Surrey..well then, dear reader, the business just dies. For two whole weeks at least.

Add in a tiny little bit of snow and well, I might as well go on holiday myself...

Thankfully it is now February and business is picking up again nicely. Phew!