We started developing our website TraditionalBodywork.com in May 2017, and managed to launch it in March 2018. The idea then was to create a website that listed all Thai Massage schools in the world, and notably those of Thailand, also writing school and Thai Massage instructor reviews, and of course writing about Thai Massage.
As for monetizing our website we thought that Thai Massage schools would be very happy to advertise with us. Well, we were very wrong. In fact, the Thai Massage training community liked our work, but we already gave free advertising by listing them, and moreover, the massage schools in Thailand really didn’t need any advertising because of a booming tourist industry and plenty walk-in students.
So, a year after launch, in April 2019, we wrote our first eBook about Thai Massage training in Thailand. It was my partner Helissa who urged me to do so, and hence I did, a bit unwillingly, to be honest. It was a complete surprise to me that there was really interest for such a book and that we started to make some money.
Of course, we then “saw the light” and we started writing more eBooks: for instance about Abdominal Massage training in Thailand, about massage treatments in Thailand, about Reusi Dat Ton (Thai Yoga) training, and more. We also published a variety of specialized, in-depth books about Thai Massage.
Our sales and website traffic were increasing, and we were happy. Then we arrived in February 2020. It became clear that something awful was happening in the world and that there was a risk that Thailand would close down for foreign visitors, which, as we thought, would end interest in our eBooks that concerned training and treatments in Thailand (the books that were our most important sellers). And well, that’s just what happened.
In March 2020, we experienced a rapid decline of both website visitors and eBook sales. Although we were very worried, we didn’t really panic, because Helissa still had a job as an English teacher, which luckily gave us enough income to survive. Nevertheless, we also realized that she might lose her teaching job as a result of the COVID pandemic. And what would we do then?
Thus, we realized that we needed to promptly change direction with our website and write other types of books. So we did. It meant a lot of research and very hard work, but we rather quickly published works about Tantra, Taoism, Ayurveda, Yoga, Chinese Medicine, Fertility Treatments, and more.
We were very fortunate that these new types of books were received well and sold beyond expectations. If we would have waited for the market to rebound it would have been a financial disaster for us. We’re still happy that we made the right decision immediately at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In September 2021, we also launched our first Video Workshop as a means to diversify our offerings even more. Today we’ve published twelve video workshops and they’re doing moderately well, supplementing our book sales.
From COVID we’ve learned that circumstances can change rapidly and that your livelihood can suddenly come in serious danger. As for our website it means that we always need to find more ways to diversify our offerings to make sure that we don’t rely on just one sales channel or just one topic.
We do realize that we’re certainly not there yet, that is, we have not by far arrived in totally safe financial waters (and probably never will), but we are hopeful and optimistic that we can stay independent, and keep on living our dream of freedom.
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