A good working relationship with the media should be a priority for the instructor and/or person organizing out-of-body experiences or lucid dreaming lessons. It’s much more effective than simply advertising in mass media. And it’s free. However, it’s also much more difficult to achieve.

The point is that the topic of phase states is extremely interesting for people in practically all forms of mass media. It’s a "scoop" in and of itself. They’ll be happy to fill their columns and airwaves with the interesting interview you give them. That’s how they make their money – people like you are their lifeblood.

So why don’t they chase after you with open arms? The answer’s quite simple. Contrary to popular wisdom, it is not journalists who seek information, but information that seeks journalists. True, sometimes they get an assignment to do something on a certain topic and might then find you on their own. But even if that is the case, they should already have been aware of your existence in the first place! The key thing to realize is that the doors of any editorial office are open to you as someone who teaches an extremely unusual phenomenon. They’re waiting for you. Call and go in and tell them about yourself. Even if they don’t immediately do a story about you, they’ll still remember about you as soon as they have a need for something out-of-the-ordinary or unusual. And this will happen on a regular basis.

Success in any field will get journalists to begin lining up all on their own. But you don’t have to wait for that. You can achieve it on your own and without doing anything especially difficult. Call up the editorial offices of local newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and television studios to ask them which editor you could speak with regarding your activities. Call – don’t write. Letters and e-mails usually either won’t make it, will get lost, or will not be taken seriously. Tell them about yourself and about how you can tell them about the phenomenon. Leave your contact information and just wait. Sooner or later, they’ll remember about you and call. By calling all the local editorial offices, you can become a frequent guest on local morning talk shows and the center of feature stories in all kinds of local media. The media attention can’t but have an effect on how many students you have.

It’s important to remember one rule for working with the media and stick to it all your life: keep everybody’s contact information. As you make a new contact at some media outlet, and especially one that has expressed interest in you, save his contact info and store it in a safe place. Such data is pure gold. Especially valuable are the personal contact details of journalists who you can call at any time to propose something that will be of interest.

Send people to both your website and ours for more in-depth information on other methods and practitioner news. Don’t forget to tell people about our forums and yours, where they can get in touch with thousands of other practitioners of all levels. Many keep online journals that are not only interesting to read, but also motivate people to make their own attempts. Your students might also start keeping online journals so that they can share experiences and seek advice from others.

An instructor who holds serious and regular training sessions on out-of-body travel and lucid dreaming can count on a substantial stream of people who turn up "out of nowhere". A substantial portion of the group will turn up on its own without any advertisement or effort on your part or that of your helpers. Meanwhile, the more effort you put in and the more you advertise, the sooner this spontaneity will start. However, there’s no guarantee of this, as people showing up spontaneously is a kind of seal of quality for your seminars and level of teaching.

Accordingly, quality of instruction is in large part what will make it all happen. This is precisely why the instructor should devote time and energy to maintaining a positive image, as well as keep seminar participants as happy as possible. This includes not only giving interesting and effective training sessions, but also talking with students after the lessons. Make every effort to get them to practice as effectively as possible on their own after personal training sessions with you. It’s in your interest, too. If everything is done correctly, people will talk about you and recommend your lessons to their friends – and that’s whether you like it or not. For example, a superbly-run seminar alone can lead to half the tickets for the next seminar being sold without any effort on your part because the students will enthusiastically tell everybody about you, especially for the first week afterwards. This effect will gradually snowball over time and can even allow you to bring your advertising activities to a minimum.

If you hold training sessions for the sole purpose of constantly recruiting new people and then getting them out of your hair as quickly as possible, you’re going to get to spend tons of time and energy on recruitment. Bad teaching not only cancels out any positive "word-of-mouth" effect, but will also work against you. For example, if someone is planning to come to you for a training session, others might simply dissuade him. As a result, there is no point in chasing after purely material gain without taking an interest in the field itself and the people you work with. It will be obvious to the audience if you’re only interested in their money, and it will come back to bite you sooner or later.

Contextual advertising means placing your Internet ads only on pages and websites that mention key phrases (e.g. "lucid dreaming," "out-of-body travel," and hundreds of other words and phrases from this and related fields). Such services are provided by all major search engines, with Google leading the pack. Many social networks also provide contextual advertising.

A key feature is that you only pay for the number of times your ad is shown (or even just the number of times it’s actually clicked on), and you have it shown only where visitors might be potentially interested in it. For example, there’s no sense in publishing an ad for an out-of-body travel seminar on commercial real-estate websites. But if that website has a forum and someone has started up a discussion on lucid dreaming, that’s exactly where your advertisement will be shown. Moreover, if your activities are tied to a town or city, you might choose to have your ads shown only to users who are in that area. For example, if someone from your city visits a webpage about lucid dreaming on a popular esoterica website, then he and only he will be shown your text ad or advertising banner on that page. This clearly allows you ways to optimize your advertising budget. Though quite expensive, contextual advertising is most effective.

The only problem that might arise is an insufficient number of queries on your topic in your region. Out-of-body experiences and lucid dreaming are not very well-known yet, and so not that many people discuss them. This problem is partially solved by diversifying your contextual advertising providers as much as possible. There are usually 3 to 4 large providers on any given market.

– Practical training given

– High return on investment

– Windfall potential

– Relaxed instruction in a private setting

– Minimal startup costs

– Network with successful and influential people

Disadvantages

– In-depth interaction with another person, with all its associated benefits and drawbacks

– High requirements regarding quality of instruction

– The atmosphere created by actively practicing in a group is missing

– No opportunity to watch other practitioners’ attempts and learn by example, unlike with groups

– One-on-one lessons do not popularize the phenomenon among the masses