Kiva Loan Team For Medical Spa MD

Medical Spa MD's Kiva lending group for micro-loans to Third World entrepreneurs.

Kiva, a non-profit website that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur across the globe. You choose who to lend to—whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq—and as they repay the loan, you get your money back. Here's the Kiva about page.

I've been a member of for a while now. In fact, my daughtter and I started her micro-loan fund a few years ago. Since she started with $100, Maddy's lent to 33 different entrepreneurs and groups around the world and her fund is $500 or so. She re-invests the money with new entrepreneurs as the loans are repaid.

We've created a lending team for Medical Spa MD

Once you're a part of the team, you can choose to have a future loan on Kiva "count" towards our team's impact. The loan is still yours, you choose who you loan to and repayments still come to you—but you can also choose to have the loan show up in our team's collective portfolio.

If you'd like to join our lending team we'd love to have you. We'd love it even more if you were to blog/post/tweet/invite your friends. For $25 you can help change someone's life.

The Medical Spa MD Micro-loan Fund

Join Medical Spa MD and our Members to do some good around the world.

If you've never heard of Kiva, it's a micro-lending organization that provides working capital in amounts as small as $25 or $100 to entrepreneurs in third world countries.

My daughter has had a tiny, $100 'micro-lending' fund that we started when she was ten. So far, that single $100 investment has helped 24 small businesses around the world. (It's a loan so they pay it back and it can be re-lent to others.)

We've been doing this for a few years as a family and it's been a real learning experience for my daughter. After all, this is real money and these are real people. If you lend to one person, it means that you're not lending to another. Who is more deserving? Who's riskier? We've had some very deep discussions and it's been great.

Which brings me to the Medical Spa MD Micro-lending Team.

I want to recruit you to join the Medical Spa MD Micro-lending Team on Kiva.

Kiva is a non-profit website that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur across the globe. You choose who to lend to - whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq - and as they repay the loan, you get your money back.

If you join Medspa MD's team, we can work together to alleviate poverty. Once you're a part of the team, you can choose to have a future loan on Kiva "count" towards our team's impact. The loan is still yours, and repayments still come to you - but you can also choose to have the loan show up in our team's collective portfolio, so our team's overall impact will grow!

If you're part of a medical spa, laser clinic, plastic surgery center or dermatologists office and you're willing to put in $100 or more to Kiva loans and join our lending team, I'll publish your clinic or medspa on a special page that I'll build (Hey, I just thought of this. It's not done yet.) and give you a badge to display on your website. You'll also be doing some good in the world.

Please take a look at Kiva. It's a fantastically run organization. I've been lending through them for the last six years and I have never had a momemets regret. It's easily the best $100 that I every put to use.

Let me know what you think about this in the comments. (As soon as we have a couple of members I'll build a lenders page that will link directly to supporting clinics and sites.)

Create an account and join the Medical Spa MD Lending Team!

Medical Spa MD: Botox & Laser Clinic Spam Comments

If you're Medical Spa MD Member you'll probably already know we have a hoard of spammers who regularly target the site with garbage comments about fake Botox, discount purses or skincare, laser hair removal and the rest.

Paula says it clearly:

Jeff,
When I first joined Medical Spa MD, I signed up to have recent posts sent to my email account so I wouldn't miss important clinical discussions. There is SO much spam now (i.e., Jaquily and others) on a daily basis that I have to unsubscribe from the feeds. Can you please find some way for this to stop so I can once again enjoy the discussions?

Belive me, I feel your pain. The spam is something that I have to deal with every day.

So, effecive immediately, we're going to run a test to see if we can keep a lid on the fake Botox comments. All comments will have to be approved by a Medical Spa MD editor or myself before they go live. I don't expect to be able to stop all spammers but perhaps we can make a dent by trying to catch those that are clearly just posting spam.

Medical Spa MD Member comments will not have to be approved before being published so you can just login to your account to aviod the wait.

Note: Comments will only be rejected for violating our terms of use. We will not be verifying anything about the truth or accuracy of a comment or claim.

Medical Spa MD: Physicians Only?

Should Medical Spa MD be physicians only?

During an email exchange on a completely different subject with a long time Medical Spa MD Member, he hit me with his opinion that at least a part of Medspa MD should be reserved exclusively for physicians.

Here's parts from two of his emails and some of my response.

Jeff,
...I would recommend an area for physicians only and you need to prove who you are. Leave the comments open to the public but only the physician members can post comments...

The site has lost its appeal to the physicians to a large degree because there is no where for them to converse now that there are many nurses, aestheticians, salesman and patients on the site. It really was doing its best when it was mostly physicians talking back and forth about technology and techniques.

This is part of my emailed response.

Hi L,

Your reply hits on something I've been thinking about for some time, but have some reservations. It is possible to password protect areas of the site but very difficult to able to force people to actually 'prove' who they are.

I"m guessing from the tone of your post that you feel that the 'quality' of the site has been diluted with non-physician posts asking questions about their age spots etc. I somewhat agree but it's a challenging situation. I'd be interested in what you think might be a possible (and feasible) solution.

I could make some/most/all of the forums login only. This would require an account but I could not insure that everyone was who they say they are. This also goes against one of the factors that has makes the site actually attractive. My guess is that you might think twice about posting under your actual name since this could potentially cause you problems if you wanted to say something important about someone who might identify you.

I could make part of the site a paid memebership site. This would allow me to identify individuals though they wouldn't have to use their real name. This seems like a potential solution. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this. Would you pay a fee to have access to a community where you felt you could exchange information with other docs that were also paying members

Certainly I've always valued your opinion on this. Hope you're well
Jeff

Since I launched Medspa MD back in 2000-whatever (It was called Medical Spas Online then.), I've changed the site to reflect what I thought was the best value for physicians. There are plenty of places where patients can go and get advice, but Medical Spa MD has been the only site where physicians can discuss the back end of what they need and do with each other. I want to continue to be respectful of that and not become one of the myriad of consumer facing sites. Besides, we're building a platform now that will allow that kind of patient/physician interaction outside of this site.

If you're a physician I'm really interested in what you think about this. Should there be a physicians only area where you're identified? Are you concerned that their are impostors on the site? (I've outed a number of them before.) Would you be willing to login in order to post or get content? Should PAs and NPs have access? If you're a physician, how would you like this site to be structured?

Please leave a comment, contact me directly via the contact form or just email me

Sciton BBLs Group Buy & Medical Spa MD

5 Medical Spa MD Members can now save $15,000 on a new Sciton BBLs through Sciton's Medical Spa MD Group Buy.

This offer expires after the first 5 Members make a deposit.

Sciton is the first major cosmetic laser and IPL technology manufacturer to test the waters in this kind of sales environment. For that, they deserve considerable kudos since it's not the typical CYA marketing and sales play that manufacturers usually employ.

We'll be discussing Scition and the BBLs at lenght but there's a rub of course. This offer is limited to the first 5 Medical Spa MD Members who make a deposit and get going. There's no risk since you can return the BBLs if you're not happy. You'll have to pay for the clinical training but you'll keep all the money that the BBLs makes you during that period. If you're looking to add an IPL for any reason, take a look.

As a note, don't think that Medical Spa MD is selling out or playing favorites. Sciton approached us because they already know that they've made sales of their technology because of Medical Spa MD's Members. They'd like to expand on their success. We're happy to have them because they've shown themselves to be proactive on the sevice end, engaged with Members, and have a good reputation.

If you've got any questions about this plan, please contact Scition directly by calling 614-891-7591 or email info@sciton.com

Additional Reading

• Sciton Technology Forum
• Sciton User Group

Medical Spa MD: Appologies for the occasional, accidental comment deletion.

I've got an appology to make.

To whom, I'm not sure.

Since we focus on cosmetic medicine and discuss everything from IPL & cosmetic laser reviews, Botox and filler injections, internet marketing for medical spas and everything that goes along with that, Medical Spa MD is under constant attack from spammers.

The spam comments are left every day and every day a member of our team goes through and tries to clean them out. We have a very sophisticated site so we can bring up all of the last comments that are left and look at them in one place as a simple list rather than scrounge around the site. Of course with tens of thousands of comments it's not really possible to go through and find or ensure every one but there are some 'filters' that we can apply to bring up a list of likely spam comments.

Today it was my turn. Unfortuanately... as I clicked 'delete and report as spam', I noticed that at least one of the comments was probably not spam at all. It appeared that  it was a legitimate comment from a well intentioned plastic surgeon, possibly a first time commenter who'd overcome natural reticence and was asking a question of the community here.

Of course I only recognized this just as I consigned that comment along with the rest, to the ignominious death of the spam pile and once that's done, it's done.

So, I wanted to voice my apologies to the physician who left that comment, whoever you are.

I'm sorry. I get a 'fail' for that one.

I'll try not to make that mistake again.

We make every attempt to keep our forums clean of spam and imposters (Yes, we can identify them too in many cases). So please don't take my accidental deletion of your comment as anything other than what it was, my overly quick mouse and slightly too slow reflexes.

Our coummunity is our greatest asset. With more than 5000 physicians around the globe who are Members it's an attractive target for the nare-do-wells of the world. If you're a medical provider any where in the world and you've got a question about the Sciton BBL, Fraxel and Thermage settings and results, know what other physicians are saying about Restylane SubQ, or you want to interact with other Members or form a cosmetic laser user group, this is absolutely the best place on the web.

So, I make no apologies for making every effort to protect it... except in this case.

Medical Spa MD Select Partners

As the world’s #1 physician community around non-surgical cosmetic medicine, Medical Spa MD's Select Partners offer discounted products and services as well as special customer service to our more than 4000 physician members worldwide.

Medical Spa MD Select Partners display this badge.

IPL & laser technology companies, service providers, publications, content providers and other businesses that sell to cosmetic medical practices and medical spas are partnering with Medical Spa MD to gain access to the tremendous buying power of our physician community. And our Members get special pricing and the trust that comes from the fact that Medical Spa MD stands behind every Select Member.

What makes a Medical Spa MD Select Partner?

• Amazing Products & Services our Members want: To be included as a Medical Spa MD Select Partner, there has to be real value available to our world-wide community.
• Exclusive Member Pricing: All Select Partners offer reduced, exclusive pricing to Members. In some cases our Select Members will build out entire new websites to keep this pricing from their existing clients.
• Fantastic Customer Service: Select Partners must provide exceptional customer service to Members. Medical Spa MD is an active community and Members can complain directly to us.
• Transparency: While we consider our Select Partners as just that, partners, our reputation comes first. When our Members buy from a Select Partner they know that we're standing behind that business.

Become a Medical Spa MD Select Partner.

If you meet the above criteria, let Medical Spa MD help you make the most of your marketing efforts. Consider joining the Medical Spa MD Select Partner Program — a way for you to access our incredible physician community. Or propose your own creative plan for partnering with Medical Spa MD. Apply here.

Medical Spa MD: New Partners & Services in 2010.

We've had some significant growth over the last while and that's enabled (and motiviated) us to look at how we can provide the most opportunity to our physician community.

We're currently buiding out relationships and adding additional offerings that include: strategic partnerships with other content providers, SEO +SEM, marketing & advertising outsourcing, training products, IPL & cosmetic laser classifieds, additional medspa MD guest post authors and more. The power behind this is the strength of our independant physician community aggregated in one place. Because we have so many physicians, we can harness the buying power of the entire group and businesses can provide pricing and services that they just can't afford when selling individually.

I'll be posting on these individually but here's an overview of some of the partnerships and additional services in the works.

Medical Spa MD Select Partners

We have a number of relationships with other cosmetic medical resources that we're working that include websites, magazines, and other vendors that meet our criteria for inclusion as a Medical Spa MD Partner. What's the criteria to be a Select Partner?

Medspa MDs Select Partners must offer significant value exclusivley to Medical Spa MD Members as a group and provide fantastic service and responsiveness to Members.

If you're a business you can apply to become a Medical Spa Select Partner here.

A New Site For Medical Marketing & Outsourcing

This new site will be all about outsourcing for cosmetic medical practices. Outsource your marketing, your advertising, your SEM (Search Engine Marketing), article writing, direct mail and postcards... all that stuff.

• Outsourcing
• SEO & SEM: Directoy submissions, local search, backlinking.
• Marketing & Advertising
• Article Writing & Submission
• Direct Mail: Postcards & Mailers

You'll be able to get whatever you need oursourced at a fraction of the time and expense that you'd be expending to source and and manage it. We'll probably start out fairly small and focus on a couple of services that we can already deliver exceptionally well and use ourselves.

Medical Spa Writers + Guest Posts

One of the easiest ways for you to get some exposure for your practice or company is simply to write a guest post here on Medspa MD. We're actively looking for physicians and providers who can offer real value to our community. You'll recieve a valuable link to your practice or business and some welcom traffic.

Submit a guest post onMedical Spa MD.

Medical Spa Products

The Advanced IPL & Laser Training Manual and Advanced Medical Spa Aesthetics Training Manual & Study Course are fantastic resources to train and educate your existing staff, and new hires. Paula's done an absolutely amazing job of getting everything your staff needs in one place. I only wish I had this way back when. If you'r training process consists of having new hires follow you around... your life just got a lot easier.

Used IPL & Laser Classified Ads

Looking to sell your cosmetic laser or IPL? Looking to get a killer deal on one? Medical Spa MDs classified listings are where you'll want to start. (It's anticdotal but I think we've passed the $1m mark.)

Teeth Whitening

We were approched by a company providing custom teeth whitening services for companies and organizations as fund-raisers and asked if we'd allow them to sell whosale teeth whitening kits, pens and services to our Members. We've tentatively said yes and are trying out their services ourselves to see what we think.

These are exacly the same services that dentists offer and include taking impressions, making custom whitening trays and delivering them back to the clinic. Clinics would buy these wholesale. The markup would be in the 100%-300% range I'm guessing.

This could be a fantasic add-on since the #1 cosmetic service that people want is actually teeth whitening.

Laser Repair, Parts, & Service

Another interesting deal that I'm not at liberty to discuss quite yet but we're looking to take on some reilable partners to provide IPL & laser repair services for Members. If you've every had an IPL hand peice rebuilt by the manufacturer you'll know what I mean here. (Of course we'd love to have good technology providers as a partner too.)

Anyway, that's just a few of the directions we're moving in. I'll update this post as we get some of these services up and running. If you want to make sure you're aware of your options and our Partners offerings, make sure you're a Medical Spa MD Member.

Share Medical Spa MD on Twitter or Facebook.

Medical Spa MD is foremost a community of more than 4,000 physicians around the world practicing cosmetic medicine. If you find something you like on Medical Spa MD, please share it.

To share a post on Twitter, Facebook or another social site, just click the 'Share' link at the bottom of every post.

You can find Medical Spa MD on Twitter here.

Medical Spa MD + Others

It's been an interesting last few weeks for us at Medical Spa MD.

We've seen in increase in the number of inquires around partnering with Medical Spa MD. While I'd normally guess it had something to do with the successes that our current partners are having... but I don't think that information is public knowledge.

In the last three weeks we've been approached by or talked to a number of consumer facing websites, medical publications, potential authors, and even some technology providers and pharmacies.

We're also launching a number of internal iniatives. We've emailed a few of our Members to ask what would be of the greatest benefit. (If you've received an email please give us your thoughts.)

We'll see how this pans out for Medical Spa MD but I'm hopeful that we'll be able to work out some additional deals and benefits for Medspa MD Members.

Medical Spa MD Advertising

A quick answer to a question I received via email.

Hey jeff, I have a question for you. The ads that appear on the right side of MedicalSpaMD in the "Ads by Google" space, did you subscribe to Ad Sense to get them there? Are they Google Ad Words ads, or are they from a PPC company like Yodle or Reach Local?

We have a number of advertisers on Medical Spa MD, some of whom use Google and others who want specific placement and visibility who place their medical spa ads directly.

These direct ppc ads are used for a couple of purposes; to pay our hosting and bandwidth costs so we don't have to charge readers, and to pay the fees for other services we use to communicate with Members and fulfill orders. On the other end the advertisers gain access to more than a million and a half page views from a pretty select member community. It seems to be working out pretty well since we're getting an increasing number of businesses who want to become a Medical Spa MD Partner.

Laurie Peterson, Medical Spa MD's New Marketing & Sales Director

Medical Spa MD is proud to announce the addition of Laurie Peterson as our new Marketing Director.

With the escalating growth of Medical Spa MDs physician membership and the introduction of new services, from SEO and online marketing to group discounts for Botox and Restylane, we've had trouble keeping ahead of the demand. Laurie, as the newest member of the Medical Spa MD team will be heading up a number of our initives with both Members and Partners.

Here's an excerpt from the press release.

“The priority for the site has always been and will continue to be bringing the latest news, ideas and opportunities to our members”, says Jeff Barson, Medical Spa MD’s founder and publisher. “Laurie brings with her a passion for marketing that will allow our site to continue growing, which will benefit the entire member community.”

“I’m really excited to join the Medical Spa MD team and be a part of this exciting, growing community”, says Peterson. “I see lots of potential to expand on the information flow to members in addition to bringing special member discounts to everyone through our growing “Advertisers and Partners” section.”

Laurie brings 15 years of Fortune 100 sales and marketing experience with her to this new position. She lives in California with her husband, 2 kids and a very spoiled dog.

NY Times & Medical Spa MD

There's an interesting article in the Times about housing listings in manhattan that are being commented on. There's a direct correlation between that story and Medical Spa MD's community commenting on laser clinics, med spas and laser treatments.

“What’s happening now is the numbers aren’t enough,” Ms. Doherty said, referring to the information published by StreetEasy. “People are asking questions they can’t ask their broker, and they’re really interested in the qualitative perspective, in getting opinions of people.”

There is certainly no shortage of opinions to be found online. Drawing on reams of publicly available data on sales prices, comparable listings, creditors’ liens and even mortgage amounts (in the case of condominiums), commenters debate what an apartment is worth and how much a seller might be desperate enough to accept. They also pinpoint flaws ranging from imminent construction of a garbage facility nearby to crimes of linoleum.

For their part, sellers and their brokers are seething over what they perceive as a lack of accountability, hidden or misanthropic motives, and the fact that defending one’s property — even correcting a factual error — can prolong or aggravate its turn under the collective microscope. Sellers also object to being typecast as Marie Antoinette in the French Revolution-style discourse.

That accusation is not exactly refuted by the commenters themselves.

“All of us who were renters have endured a fair amount of ridicule from owners for our caution,” said Michael Waxenberg, 46, an information technology director and renter who is shopping for a three-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. “There is an element of vindication in what’s happening now — maybe we were right in trying to play it safe.

Medical Spa MD has now been around for almost 4 years and has the largest community of nonsurgical cosmetic medical practitioners that I'm aware of. The laser companies have noticed and there are some that already interact on the site. There are others who monitor Medical Spa MD but are sitting on the fence since they don't want to put themselves in a situation where they become a target. Nasty comments on the web live forever.

The number of times that Medical Spa MD has been contacted by named individuals and laser companies with requests to edit or remove comments has grown considerably. (I have yet to hear from any laser company or individual that they feel that Medical Spa MD has not been fair with them.) There are growing pains with any community and Medical Spa MD has had it's share. In looking at how to best address companies and individuals legitimate concerns there are some potential changes we're looking at. I'm not interested in Medical Spa MD becomming an attack site for individuals with a grudge. (If I wanted that we wouldn't remove the comments we do.)

As Medical Spa MD moves forward we're adding increasing capabilites and functionaily, from the ability to buy Botox, Restylane and Perlane in bulk or with group purchasing power, to offering targeted SEO & SEM for your web site, to building out a companion site that targets potential patients for your cosmetic practice. All of these additions are scheduled to be up within the next 30 days.

That being said, Medical Spa MD should continue to grow as the most trusted cosmetic physician community on the web... even if there are some changes needed.