How to build Transit Report Content

The Astrology Reel opens up a new way for astrologers to create general, semi-personal transit based forecast reports by recycling their videos in time.

Currently

Most everyone that uses astrology to talk about what’s coming up casts a chart with one of the 12 zodiac signs on the ascendant and then interprets the planets in the houses from there.

Biggest drawbacks:

  • This is a one-time report, it (generally) cannot be recycled ever again.
  • The astrologer can’t go into much detail.
  • It’s time sensitive – if it’s not viewed right away, it outdated.

The Pro’s:

  • The work is manageable.
  • There is content for everyone
  • It’s like ‘current event’ news

If you step back and look at what transpires in a year, the astrologer does 12 segments each month for 12 months or 144 segments which can not be used a second time. Other astrologers will do weekly reports that are shorter, but still cover each sign thus 12*52 = 624 video segments that can’t be reused.

Proposed

The Astrology Reel aims to change this by using technology to select the appropriate content from the collection smaller, aspect specific videos (of video segments) that can be used multiple times.

Biggest drawbacks

  • Very few astrologers have created aspect-based videos.
  • Technology is really needed by the viewer in order to find the right content.

The Pro’s:

  • Aspect videos can be reused every time that aspect is encountered.
  • Reports can be cast for any moment in time.
  • Astrologers content accumulates in time generally raising its value.

Key Idea

The most important thing that The Astrologer Reel is striving to do is to make the astrologers content more valuable in time. The website empowers you to create content that never becomes obsolete so that your video collection becomes bigger and richer as it is filled out over time.

Today, the astrologer’s transit content becomes less valuable because the further away from the publish date, the more the data is only useful to the researchers and historians.

What’s the first Step?

The first step is to understand what can be indexed and why. In other words, what is the logic behind how a transit report can be built? How can the data be used and what does the data have in common?

Cast a chart of the current moment. What do you see?

  • Planets (& asteroids) in signs.
  • Aspects the Planets (& asteroids) make to one another.

The chart stands independent as it captures the current moment in time. If someone were born at this at this moment in time, the chart represents the innate natal energies that describe the person. If you where a mundane astrologer, it would describe the innate energies that are playing out in that specific moment.

In either case, astrologers generally interpret the planets in the signs and the aspects between them.

From the website’s point of view, if you cast a chart for a moment in time it can index:

  • Planets in signs
  • Planet Aspect Planet
  • Planet Sign Aspect Planet Sign (way more permutations!)

If exact time is known

  • Sign of Cusps (Asc, MC, etc.)
  • Planet in houses
  • Planet House Aspect Planet House (way more permutations!)

And if you’re dealing with a previous point in time

  • Transit Planet to previous point in time Planet

Mundane astrologers will cast a chart based on a time like the full moon, new moon or eclipse. A natal astrologer would cast a chart on a time of birth. Yet, in either case, the technology behind building reports for either situation is the same.

This means that if you develop a natal series, or a mundane series, the basic information that would be indexed would fall into the first six categories above.

If you look at the sample reports on this site, you’ll see that astrologers have picked the low hanging fruit of the planets in the signs, planets in the houses and cusps and expounded upon that. The aspects and aspects through time are a little more involved.

Details:

If you cover the traditional 10 planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) in each sign, you produce 120 indexed datapoints. Likewise, if you cover the house system, it’s another 120 indexed datapoints. If you cover the cusps, you have a 12×12 situation which explains why most people cover the ascendant and MC.

  • Planets in Signs ~ 120
  • Planets in Houses ~ 120
  • Cusps in Signs = 144 (Asc and MC = 24)
  • = total ~ 264 to 384 (@5min each is max 1,920min content)

(note ~ is approximately)

The only real difference between the natal chart and the mundane chart is the way the user wants to digest the information or the way the astrologer presents the information. Both the current transits and the natal chart contain similar information, the difference is that when the user of the website buys a natal report, they get information about that one moment in time. When someone buys a transit report, they get to see the energy at any moment of time during the year. The transit chart is dynamic. The website fetches the current planetary arrangement for the user and draws up a report.

As an example, if the astrologer covers the meanings of a Mars transit through each of the signs, if the user buys two years’ worth of transits, the website will eventually pull up all the videos for Mars. Likewise, Venus and Mercury circle the chart along with the Sun over the year, thus the report would fetch every aspect these planets make during the year.

Aspects within Chart

Covering the aspects between planets is something that very few astrologers do in a public away. I would expect that this would be because there are so many permutations and it’s hard to help the user find the correct aspect for themselves for free. Basically, you need a consumer that can lookup planet placements for themselves, but that’s virtually impossible to find. Fortunately, the website can easily do the work of calculating all aspects needed to find the content.

What is the biggest bang for the buck?

When looking at how to cover the aspects you want to figure out how to produce content that can quickly fill in a report so that all characteristics of that combination are covered. To simplify things, most computerized reports tackle the Planet Aspect Planet combination rather than the Planet Sign Aspect Planet Sign one. Here is why.

Planet Sign Planet Calculation

In order to calculate all the aspects that the Sun makes to all the other planets, consider the equation:

Sun * number of Aspects * number of Planets

If the aspects are: conjunction(1), sextile(2), square(2), trine(2), quincunx(2) and opposition(1), there would be six aspects that cover 1+2+2+2+2+1 = 10 situations for every planet.

If the number of planets include the standard 10 (listed above), the number of aspects that the sun makes in a stationary planet would be:

1s * 6a * 10p = 60 aspects (at max)

Considering that an upper limit, in order to get the number of aspects of all the planet you simply multiple them in:

10 planets * 60 aspects each = 600 (at max)

If you add in the nodes of the Moon, the ascendant, MC and other points, you get additional sets of 60 that get included in the collection. Also, planets go retrograde at different points which could add more color.

At the same time Mercury and Venus don’t stray far from the Sun, thus no trine, quincunx or oppositions there which reduces the count slightly.

Going to the Extreme

Now, in order to produce content for Planet Sign Aspect Planet Sign, theoretically, there are 12 possibilities for the first planet and 12 for the second. This adds 12*12 =144 as a multiplier to the 600. Thus, 600 * 144 = 86,400. In other words, it’s just absurdly high. At 5 minutes a video, you’re looking at 432,000 minutes or 7,200 hours or 300 days of video content. Unless it’s a group effort, that’s just not going to happen for free from anyone!

What is worth doing?

Well, it depends on what you want to share with the world. In a natal report, covering the planets in the signs is roughly 120 video segments. If the same amount of work were divided into a collection of aspects, I would consider something like:

(Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus & Mars) * (conj, opp, tri & squ) * major planets

This is:

5 * 4 * 10 = 200 video segments

When you investigate the outer planets, you find that, because they move slowly, they act like a stable point in the chart upon which everything else revolves.

Reflecting

Just above, you can see that the amount of work to cover one planet making aspects to all the other major planets is about 40 video segments. Once these aspects are developed, they can be used for years over and over again. Each time the Sun makes a conjunction with a planet, that video will come up in the report meaning that the 10 conjunctions that you make this year are repeated next year. Same holds for the other inner planets.

If you look back at the very top of the article, you’ll be reminded that astrologers are creating 144 videos a year that are getting thrown away shortly after they are published. In five years, the astrologer will have thrown away 720 videos.

Likewise, if the astrologer created 40 videos that can be recycled every year, they’ll have 200 videos in five years which would cover the bulk of all transits.

Transit Aspects to Natal

Once you understand the previous section, you’ll realize that it’s not so much the aspects within a chart that are interesting, but rather the aspects that the transiting planets are making to your natal planets. This is what everyone loves to talk about. This is where the real magic happens on an individual level.

Yet, the Transits to Natal are simply a Planet Aspect Planet combination. Thus, all the math in the previous section holds for this situation too. The only difference is that when the report is developed, it’s developed to calculate the transit planet positions in aspect to natal planet positions. This is already displayed for registered users on the data page of the website.

One key difference though is that when you’re comparing two charts all the planets in one chart can make aspects to all the planet in another chart. This means that you have:

All Planets * Aspects * All Planets

Thus, if you cover the transit Sun with four aspects to the natal planets, you’ll get 40 possible combinations for every planet. There is no short cut with Mercury or Venus. The only short cut is with the slower moving planets that only exist in a few signs during a standard lifetime.

Stretching to call it realistic, if you cover ten planets with 4 aspects, you’re looking at 10 * 40 or about 400 video segments. (Natal reports range from about 144 to almost 400 videos.)

How many segments end up in the report?

At the time of writing this information, I have 24 transit to natal aspects in play in my chart when considering just the common 10 planets and the nodes of the moon. My daughter has 41. If the astrologer has a collection of 400 video segments, my report today would reference 5% and my daughters would reference 10%. In a couple months when I reference my transits on the website, I might get 10%.

In the report, there will be videos that will show up day after day for a year or more depending on the aspect. If I have a transit Uranus conjuncting my natal Sun, by sign, that will show up for seven years. By orb, it might be a year or more. Likewise, any other aspect that you cover regarding this planet will show up for a long period of time.

If you want to focus on longer term influences, filling in the outer planet aspect series may be where you focus. Yet, when you’re covering Transit Planet Aspect Natal Planet videos, in order to cover all people, a full series will be needed.

Two types of Transit Reports

Transit Planets in Houses based on Ascendant or Sun

This is the type of report that you typically find online today. The astrologer talks about the house placement based on either the Sun or Ascendant sign. They will basically say things like – the sun is transiting your 5th house. Mercury is transiting your 4th house. Venus is transiting your 5th house. Venus is in square with Uranus in your 8th house. Etc.

When all these aspects are covered all mixed up, I index it as ‘Sign July 2019’ and display the video that corresponds with the sign of the Ascendant or the Sun.

In order to build a report based on the above example, the website would determine the house placement for the viewer and then search for: Transit Sun in House 5, Transit Mercury in House 4. Transit Venus in House 5. Transit Venus Square Transit Uranus. Note that each of these video segments would be independent and simply cover the topic of that specific transit influence.

This basically means that if you’re building a Sun, Mercury and Venus series, you would independently talk about what each one means in your standard monthly report, but clearly mark the transitions. In which case, the monthly report now takes a more formalized approach, but I can index the content to pull out four video segments in each of the 12 signs that are covered.

This means that you produce your month ahead video and you build your series for the website at the same time.

After a year

By the end of a year, each look ahead will have covered the Sun, Mercury and Venus for each Ascendant (& Sun) sign and a Transit Venus Aspect Transit Uranus collection.

At this point, if someone purchases a report based on this data collection, they will get everything you said about these configurations last year which are recycled into the current year.

In the next year, rather than talking about Transit Venus aspects to Transit Uranus, you might add segments about Venus to Jupiter or Venus to Mars. The viewers of your monthly content see you giving stuff away to them that is interesting and entertaining. Meanwhile, what you’ve giving away gets indexed to fill out your video report to make it more valuable in time.

This would be a Transit Through Houses Report.

Transit Planets Aspect Natal Planets

This next type of transit report doesn’t use the house system, thus it’s independent of the time of birth and the month of birth. The way that it becomes personalized for someone is through their personal planetary positions and the aspects that you cover with regards to them.

When the astrologer covers transit planets to natal planets there really isn’t any easy way to determine which aspects to create first. Also, when you think about aspects, rather then thinking about a series of 12 items, the astrologer needs to think about collections of 40 (or so) in order to make for meaningful coverage.

One of the good things about creating this type of report is that when you create a series of 40 that covers the entire cycle for that planet all those videos will come into play during the full cycle, just not all at the same time and there are times when no video will be displayed.

As an example, consider you cover the four main aspects of Mars for all signs and you cover the traits of Mars in all signs. This would be 52 video segments. Then, if the user checked there report every two weeks throughout the year, what will they find?

Well, Mars will move through about ½ of the chart indicating that ½ of the Mars in the signs videos will be seen or 6 sequential videos. Each of these videos will be visible for about 2 months.

Likewise, because Mars will cover half the signs, it will create either a conjunction or opposition with every planet along with a trine and square. Because the Mars can’t make different aspects to a single planet at the same time, each one of the aspects will be displayed in sequence ie, opposition followed by trine followed by square, etc. If you use whole sign rather then orb, the user will get 2 months of opposition followed by 4 months of no aspect, then 2 months of square and 2 months of trine until it enters the conjunction space.

This means that for any planet in the Mars set, the user will see a video about that planet for 6 months out of the year.

Now, if you extend this to the ten planets that are covered in the set, you will see that each planet will have videos displayed for ½ of the year. This implies that there is a high probability that the viewer will have an average of 5 different aspect videos involving Mars at any particular point during the year.

This is significant. This builds real content in the report.

Based on the above, if you had to choose which aspect to cover first, it makes sense to create the square and trine aspects first. Why? Because they are used twice during each cycle of Mars around the chart. You are virtually guaranteed that Mars will hit a trine and square to every planet in one year. With the conjunction and opposition, you will only get one or the other.

All the outer planets work the same way. If Jupiter takes a year in each sign, you’ll have at most 2 Jupiter in the Signs videos shown to the user during a year. This reduces the Jupiter in the signs videos from 12 to 2. The total set of 10 planets would then be 42 rather than 52. What this also means is that if you cover aspects that Jupiter makes with all the natal planets, the user will get none, one or two videos for each planet during the year. For instance, Jupiter may be in opposition for ½ the year which indexes a video and then moves quincunx (which is not covered). Or it could be in square and then move to trine.

If you extend this to 10 planets, the probability is that you’ll get at least one aspect during the year from each planet, but it will only be listed for half the year, thus about an average of five different aspects during any given sample. Just like Mars.

Again, this is significant because the information is timeless!

In the case of Jupiter, more than 25% of your videos will be shown in the report during the year. At any point in time, the average would be about 12.5% of your videos being on display.

In the case of Mars, more then 75% of your videos will be shown. At any point in time, the average would also be about 12.5%.

Producing content

You can be as creative as you want when creating the content, but as you can see form above, there will be a lot of videos for the viewers, thus it’s probably practical to keep the length of the video down what that means is relative to how you produce content. People love 5 to 8-minute-long videos.

Maybe you break up a collection into planet all aspects a natal planet, in which case the video may have 6 five-minute segments regarding something like Mars conjunct or opposite or trine and square the natal Venus. In which case the video might be 20-30 minutes long. Completing a series would then be 10 (or so) of this type of video.

Maybe you create a video about how a particular transit planet aspects all other planets. This may be Jupiter conjunct all the natal planets you want to cover. Maybe you cover 3 or 4 minutes on each conjunction, thus you have a 30 or 40 minute video. A series would be 4 of these videos each one being a different aspect.

How many series are needed to list a report?

When you look at a natal report, the minimum bar is about five planets in all the signs (5*12=60) and more details about a cusp or two (2*12=24). This creates a starting point of about 84 videos. This being the minimum requirement, the astrologer would then commit to creating more in time. How much more? It depends on how inspired they are or how much support they get from their fans.

Comparing that to a transit report, the minimum bar would be about 2 series. The astrologer would also want to commit to creating more videos in time.

Note that the key difference between putting work into a natal report verses a transit report is that natal reports are one-time sales on the website. Transit reports are subscriptions that last about 13 months and the report changes based on the time of year it’s run.

Next steps

If you really want to start creating timeless content, you really want to start looking at building a transit report.

How to get started

The first step is to register and login so you can use the features of the website. Second, let me know that you want to create a series so your account can be marked with astrologer privileges.

Then, use the Post Form (found at the bottom of the website) or email me directly with content that you want indexed for your transit report. The easier it is for me to find where the aspects start and stop, the faster I’ll be able to index the content.

How to manage the process

When astrologers build reports on the website, they are given access to their own reports. Thus, any time content is added, you’ll be able to see it unroll in the report.

Also, if you’re building a Transit Planet aspect Natal Planet report, the website can be used by the astrologer to inventory all the aspects that have been created. To do this, the astrologer logs in and visits the tn page.

How to get support

If you have any more questions, feel free to get a hold of me.