I’ve been toying with the idea of taking an equine massage therapy class. Looking at either NE Indiana Equine Massage which is close enough to home that I could attend in person, or the Equissage on-line course. I know Equissage has been around for a long time. The costs are about the same but I guess my biggest question is, does anybody know if there’s anyone who has actually made a living as an equine massage therapist? Or is all the money to be made in running a school teaching others, lol?
My old equine massage therapist did it full time, but she worked hard for 50+ hours a week. Lots of travel time.
Well, you need to think about your market, how you will market yourself, and how many hours a day you can reasonably work.
How many equine body workers are competing in your market? Do you live in an area where people splurge on their horses? How good are you at networking and marketing yourself?
What is your hourly rate and how will you factor in travel time?
Most importantly, what does " make a living" mean to you in your area and cost of living?
Around here it would be hard to live on under $50,000 gross per year, which is about $4,000 a month. If you charged $100 an hour, you would need 40 clients a month. That’s ten a week. How often would you insist they call you back? Could you do monthly appointments with the same 40 clients? If its every two months you’d need 80 clients and if it was every six months you’d need 240 clients.
I doubt any of our local equine bodyworkers are making a living solely at it, though one might be. She gets taken on a winter circuit by one show barn every year. She’s however the top one locally and I believe she also had a human RMT training.
In general a good rule of thumb is that people rarely make that much money from things that are really easy to qualify for, because the market is flooded with other practitioners who have also qualified.
