I’ve been running my witchy business since 2015. Over the years, I’ve poured my heart and soul into every piece I create—jewelry, homemade spell candles, oils, spirit dolls, curios, and my self-published books. I offer spiritual counseling, energy work, and tarot readings shaped by decades of experience, training, and lived wisdom. Like every small business owner, I invest countless hours into marketing, branding, and figuring out how to reach the people who genuinely need my work.

And for a while, like many practitioners do when they’re eager to grow, I thought offering free tarot readings would bring in more clients.

It didn’t.

What it did do was teach me one of the most important lessons any spiritual entrepreneur, artist, or witch can learn:

Free work doesn’t create value—
it diminishes it.

1. Offering Free Readings or Free Art Undermines the Community

Whether you’re a tarot reader, a spiritual worker, a jewelry maker, a rootworker, or an artist, your craft is part of a larger ecosystem. When we constantly offer free labor—especially in a field where many of us are already underpriced and undervalued—we unintentionally harm others in the community who are trying to make a living from their gifts.

Free readings set unrealistic expectations.
Free artwork trains people to expect creativity at no cost.
Free spiritual work teaches clients to undervalue the practitioner.

When you undercut your own worth, you’re also undercutting the worth of everyone else doing this work.

2. Free Work Attracts the Wrong Audience

This was a hard pill for me to swallow.

People who are looking for free services usually aren’t looking for quality, connection, or transformation. They’re looking for a quick fix. They’re not invested in the work, the process, or the spiritual exchange. They disappear the moment you announce pricing.

The clients who value your craft—the ones who respect your time, your intuition, your years of study, your energy—are not the ones demanding something for free.
They’re the ones who understand that your work is worth paying for.

3. Free Labor Trains YOU to Undervalue Your Gifts

Every time you give away your craft for nothing, you reinforce a dangerous belief within yourself:

“My work isn’t worth charging for.”

And that is the quickest path to burnout.

Your creativity, your mediumship, your connection to spirit, your ability to divine and interpret messages—these are skills honed through time, discipline, sacrifice, training, spiritual alignment, and lived experience. They are not disposable.

When you work for free:

• you drain your spiritual energy
• you drain your creative energy
• you drain your motivation to continue
• you feel resentment instead of fulfillment
• you weaken the boundary between work and self-worth

A gift freely given is beautiful.
A talent endlessly drained is not.

4. Money Is an Energy Exchange

Many witches, tarot readers, and spiritual practitioners struggle with charging because we feel like we’re charging for the gift. But in truth, we are charging for:

• the time we devote
• the tools we use
• the years we trained
• the spiritual upkeep required to stay aligned
• the preparation and cleansing work
• the emotional labor
• the intuitive and psychic energy
• the knowledge gained through experience

Money is not greed—it is acknowledgment.

It is a reciprocal exchange that ensures the practitioner can continue doing the work.

5. Free Work Makes Your Craft Invisible

People value what they invest in.
When someone pays for a reading, they show up differently:

• They listen.
• They take it seriously.
• They apply the guidance.
• They understand its weight.

When someone receives something for free, they usually treat it like background noise.

The work is the same—
but the experience is not.

6. You Deserve to Thrive, Not Survive

You are not obligated to give away your labor, your magic, or your creativity simply because others want it without paying.

Your bills are real.
Your time is real.
Your energy is real.
Your talent is real.
Your lineage, your training, your initiations, your hours of study—
those are real.

You deserve to build a business that supports you, not drains you.

And if you are a spiritual practitioner reading this, hear me clearly:

Charging for your work is not unethical.
Exploiting yourself is.

Final Thoughts: Value Your Craft, and Others Will Too

The moment I stopped giving away free readings and free spiritual services, everything shifted. My clients improved. My energy improved. My business improved. And most importantly—my relationship with my work improved.

You do not have to prove your worth by giving yourself away.

Your magic has value.
Your intuition has value.
Your art has value.
YOU have value.

Stand in it.
Charge for it.
Honor it.

Because when you honor your craft, you help raise the entire community with you.