A lucrative new career option!
If you have a look through the TV Guide during any week, you will find nestled tastefully beside ads for X-rated products a whole host of 0900 psychic phone counsellors. My first thought about this was that it reflected how we have become a more superstitious society, but then I realised all it really shows is we have a greater range of superstitions.
In 1965, when my parents first bought a TV, there was one channel, no TV Guide, and no 0900 psychics. If you wanted a religion it was Christianity or nothing. Now we have the full range. Sky TV will soon have 18 channels available by satellite, plus the 4 normal ones, means 22 channels.
A few weeks ago I counted 22 0900 phone psychics in the TV Guide. Coincidence? This week I counted 25, so I suppose the number of channels will be rising again soon.
If your religion is sport, there is an ever-increasing number of sports channels to keep you happy. If you are into Newage, there are psychics galore. Christianity no longer fulfils everyone’s spiritual needs. Not that it ever did, but now that you don’t get killed for believing something else, there are a lot more religions to choose from.
In the October 24-30, 1998 TV Guide, the 25 0900 Psychics charged from $1.99 per minute to $5.50 per minute. A litre of milk costs about $1.20 to $1.40. It might be interesting to see how this ratio has changed in a few years’ time.
“Moonbeams” offers live psychic readings and advises you to call for your daily inspiration. Even at a cheap rate of $1.99 per minute, twelve minutes is going to cost $23.88 per day, $167.16 per week. That’s good money. For twelve minutes’ work per day. I began to hear the sound of a cash register.
If you want to make an easy buck, all you need to do is get an 0900 number and put an ad in the TV Guide. Don’t charge too much to start with. Once you have a larger client base, you can charge more.
But how do you convince them you really are psychic? Easy. You already know a lot about people who ring up an 0900 number. Firstly, they are not very bright, but don’t tell them that. Secondly, they have money problems. If they were good with money, they would never ring up at $1.99 per minute. Also, they are “sensitive”. Everybody thinks they are sensitive. People have a lot more in common than we realise.
Assume that everybody who rings up is 18 to 35 years old, sensitive, with money problems. They also have problems with relationships, want to travel, and feel insecure about various things from their looks to their job. This may not fit everyone, but the people it does fit will think you are great, and they will ring again.
Get “Caller ID”. It allows you to tell the number of the person that is ringing. Before you pick up the phone, enter the number into your computer database. Up pops their details. Name, address, age, marital status, and anything else you can find out about them.
When you pick up the phone, say something like “Ah, Susan, I had a feeling you were about to call.” During the course of your reading, the victim will often tell you more information about themselves. This information is recorded on the database to be read back to them in a later reading, as if you were psychic. People forget they have told you things, and even if they remember, they will think you knew these things because you were psychic.
When a new victim rings up, record their phone number. Give them the standard cold reading. Make general statements like “I see problems with your relationships.” They will interpret it as if it specifically applies to them. If they have been having problems, they’ll think you have seen this psychically. If they haven’t yet, they undoubtedly will do soon. After all, a psychic said it was going to happen.
Everybody has problems with relationships, money and work. The biggest problem is coming up with new ways of saying the same things. It’s probably worthwhile learning tarot or some other “fortune telling” system. Use it to randomly generate these general statements.
After they’ve hung up, record any new details they have told you on the database. Then get your brother to ring them and pretend to be doing a telephone market research survey. From this you will be able to get things like age, occupation, marital status, income range etc. Ask a few bogus questions about what radio station they like to listen to and they won’t suspect a thing. Enter all this into the computer, to be called up the next time the sucker rings.
If you find out their address and they live near you, it might be worth an hour of your time to drive past their house. See what they look like. It is easy to find out things about people. When you reveal these details back to the client, they will be amazed, even though all you had to do was a bit of detective work.
If you got ten calls per day charging, say, $3.50/min times ten minutes, that’s $350.00 per day for 100 minutes work. $1750.00 per 5-day week for 8.3 hours work. $91,000.00 per year. Do you think it’s possible that some dishonest people might find this easier than robbing banks?
I don’t think all 0900 psychics are conpersons, But I would be surprised if there aren’t a few. I also think it would be difficult to tell the difference between those who know they aren’t psychic and those who think they are. I think many, if not the majority of so called psychics do actually believe that they have the gift. They simply don’t realise that they haven’t tested their abilities. If even a few of them had the gift, there would be no casinos.
