RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: rubymelia on Sunday 21 April 19 17:43 BST (UK)
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Hi all,
Sorry I wasn’t sure which topic/forum to post this to.
I am a final year university student and in the past year have found a great passion for searching my family history. I have a long summer ahead and came up with the idea to maybe lend out the research tricks I have learnt in the past year to find other people’s ancestors.
My idea was to offer a service whereby people would ask for maybe 3 generations back including names, locations, occupations etc of their ancestors. (I would be offering this in my local area only)
I was wondering what other people’s perspectives were on this? Whether you think it’s a viable thing to get into for the summer? And any tips/tricks on going about it. Or how I could charge for what information?
Thankyou for any input, I appreciate your views.
Ruby
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Good luck - but be prepared. There are always those who EXPECT everything for NOTHING. :-X
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Some random ideas off the top of my head.
1. See if you can find out what people are charging for similar research, maybe from ads in a genealogy magazine or journal. Or Google terms to find people who are offering the service. Some might put their prices on line. "genealogy research <my county> or <my city>" <- something like that.
2. pick any local family and just do it. You will get an idea of how long it takes to do the job. then price per hour according to what you want to make.
3. I assume you are already familiar with local resources, where they are, and if they will cost you to access. factor in the cost of paying for them, photocopies, etc. price them in, tell people there may be charges tacked on for research (bad idea), or keep in touch with them as you go along and offer them the option.
4. there are probably faster ways to make better money. Maybe plan on doing this on the side.
5. When I turned 62 (in the US), I thought I might do this as a second career, then realized I was more familiar with the resources in the area where I was raised than where I lived. Also that I really wasn't going to feel like driving around to local court houses and town halls, hassling clerks all day to look at wills and deeds. - Still, you are younger than that, and it beats flipping burgers.
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Some random ideas off the top of my head.
1. See if you can find out what people are charging for similar research, maybe from ads in a genealogy magazine or journal. Or Google terms to find people who are offering the service. Some might put their prices on line. "genealogy research <my county> or <my city>" <- something like that.
2. pick any local family and just do it. You will get an idea of how long it takes to do the job. then price per hour according to what you want to make.
3. I assume you are already familiar with local resources, where they are, and if they will cost you to access. factor in the cost of paying for them, photocopies, etc. price them in, tell people there may be charges tacked on for research (bad idea), or keep in touch with them as you go along and offer them the option.
4. there are probably faster ways to make better money. Maybe plan on doing this on the side.
5. When I turned 62 (in the US), I thought I might do this as a second career, then realized I was more familiar with the resources in the area where I was raised than where I lived. Also that I really wasn't going to feel like driving around to local court houses and town halls, hassling clerks all day to look at wills and deeds. - Still, you are younger than that, and it beats flipping burgers.
Thank you so much! You have given me a lot to think about :)
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Good luck - but be prepared. There are always those who EXPECT everything for NOTHING. :-X
;D ;D
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It may be an idea to look at the following website.
https://www.agra.org.uk/
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So many records are easily available on-line, that anyone paying for research is going to want their brickwalls busting -- which will be a a difficult time-consuming task -- and often with no results to show at the end of it.
And tbh, someone who has only just discovered their passion for genealogy in the past year whilst also studying at university does not necessarily inspire confidence that they have the depth of knowledge required to undertake research for others.
As Oldohio says, there are probably quicker and easier ways of making money over the summer
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I was writing this, so some of this was covered by marmalady just now.
A few more thoughts.
Can you do lookups in your home area for people whose family have moved away? For example, 'my gg grandmother was born in <your town>, can you find her birth record? It's not online."
Figure out what you can do that someone can't do for themselves in a few hours at the library.
Pick a price per hour for open ended research, like "my grandfather left his wife in the 1920's and was never heard from again. Can you find out what happened to him?" -- If I had $1/hour for the time I spent looking for my wife's grandfather I'd be a rich man. Many people might not be interested in their whole ancestry, but they have one or two questions like that, or a family story they want proven true or false, or a skeleton in the closet, etc. Lots of questions on rootschat also center around "out of wedlock" children and trying to find them. Can you do that? And finding birth parents for adoptees, and adoptees for birth parents.
And the hardest part of getting started is figuring out how you are going to get the word out widely enough to get customers. For my real job, I went from store to store and office to office with calling cards. But genealogy research is a bit more difficult. I never really got past that hurdle. If you do a few, you might start getting word of mouth references.
When I said above to just pick one family and do it, maybe do a friend's for free, preferably a friend with a lot of other friends they can tell :).
Talk to your local library's research librarian. He/she might get requests for more than they will do in house, and also might know others doing the same work you are trying to get into. Also, is there a local genealogy society? The members would be your competitors to some extent, but also might help network starting out. Weigh the two and decide.
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I'm afraid that I have to agree with Marmalady. There are so many forums such as this and on places such as FB, where people with far more experience than you will do research for nothing. If I was going to pay for any research I would want to know what qualifications the person had.
You also need to check, if you use subscription sites such as Ancestry and Find My Past to help you, whether or not you are breaking their T&C and copyright laws.
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I don't know where you're located, how big your town is or what you're studying but maybe you could get a start [and some advertising] by writing a few articles for your local newspaper about interesting historical events or people in your town. You could do it with a genealogical slant. If the articles are well received and generate positive comments from readers, the paper might even pay you.
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Now: that last idea sounds like the best one to me. There have been other posts about people wanting to take on research tasks for fees, and with so many talented amateurs, I suspect you'd have to have exceptional access to resources, and lay out quite a lot on subs to sites to manage anything that would prove financially rewarding.
Offering local interest columns for a small fee might work. Take well-known ( and numerous!) historical local family names, and start hopping about in early church registers and censuses. Don't come too up to date in case you hit family secrets! ... you never know, a descendant of a family might ask you to do more ( for a fee)?
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Hi all,
Sorry I wasn’t sure which topic/forum to post this to.
I am a final year university student and in the past year have found a great passion for searching my family history. I have a long summer ahead and came up with the idea to maybe lend out the research tricks I have learnt in the past year to find other people’s ancestors.
My idea was to offer a service whereby people would ask for maybe 3 generations back including names, locations, occupations etc of their ancestors. (I would be offering this in my local area only)
I was wondering what other people’s perspectives were on this? Whether you think it’s a viable thing to get into for the summer? And any tips/tricks on going about it. Or how I could charge for what information?
Thankyou for any input, I appreciate your views.
Ruby
Simple answer : Sorry but no.
Pre-internet it was a way to make a small income but now the type of people who would use your services are more likely to do it themselves online using one of the many online companies that offer massive databases of information.
It is still possible to make a living out of research but to be successful you really need experience and a proven track record to promote your image.
It is a sad truth you would probably make more money in less time flipping burgers.
Cheers
Guy
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It is a sad truth you would probably make more money in less time flipping burgers.
Cheers
Guy
Maybe combine the two and sell burgers outside a Cemetery?
;D
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I have had some success doing research for others - but it's not lucrative!
I am now an accredited Independent Researcher at the Manx Museum.
Which simply means that the Museum sends a list of researchers, their specialities, and contact details to interested parties.
And there are other researchers, too.
Some then contact me, and I explain my charges and how I work.
If they are interested, then we come to an agreement.
Currently looking into a Bridson family; last commission was for a Kennaugh family.
Local knowledge helps, as does knowing my way around the various records available.
I also take photographs of gravestones and houses of interest.
BUT I still get people who expect to get all this for nothing! :o
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So, all round, the O P's question draws the answer from us - "Not very likely, try something else as a vacation job"?
Better to be realistic.
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So, all round, the O P's question draws the answer from us - "Not very likely, try something else as a vacation job"?
Better to be realistic.
Agreed. When you have built up several years' experience, and perhaps retired from your remunerative day-job, some genealogical consultancy may bring in a bit of pin money. Until then, do it as a hobby.
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I think Marmalady has summed it up perfectly. As we on here know only too well, you can spend hours researching and come up with very little, you can't charge by the hour if you don't get results. Many people who enlist the help of genealogists want professionals who can root out the elusive relatives and would want the results printed out in a professional manner. You can expect to spend months rather than weeks as your research would need to be backed up with supporting documents to ensure that your research is accurate.
You may be better off finding employment with a guaranteed income.
Good Luck with your degree.
Carol
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https://www.cyndislist.com/us/ut/professionals/
This would be some of your competitors. RootsChat is a major source of genealogical research. Would I use a researcher. Yes if I was seeking a family from lets say Switzerland or Poland or Lithuania. And I had the money to fund the research. I have had success on a complex South African line
from RootsChatters there. Most clients for researchers have money and the desire to trace their ancestry and the lack of their own time/desire to research themselves.
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Researchers are very useful for niche areas.
Myself, I have paid for Railway research at TNA, and Jersey (CI) research. Well worth it each time.
If you want to offer your services it has to be in an area that a member of the public would find difficult to research themselves.
Otherwise they will simply use Ancestry, FindMyPast, MyHeritage, etc., etc.
3 generations is something anybody can do, with minimal effort.
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Most people nowadays like to do their own research and for those of us who know the ropes, it is comparatively easy to go back three generations from one family member with a date and place of birth. However, here's a thought for you:
What holds a lot of older people back is that they are not very computer literate and need a helping hand to get started. I was involved in a local project a few years ago, obtaining funding for computers and offering basic IT training for local people. The aim was to enable people to have the confidence to shop online, use skype to contact family members who lived away etc. We also asked what recreational uses people would like to learn. Family history research came very high up on the list.
So, if there was anywhere near you (a library perhaps?) which had computers you could use, you might find it useful to run courses teaching people how to access data online so they could do their own research. If people had their own laptops/tablets, a room or hall with wifi would suffice. I have no idea how much you would charge. However, several places around where I live do arts/crafts workshops which are very popular and the charge for these is generally about £35 per head for the day which includes a light lunch and tea/coffee. So maybe if there was a pub/cafe/hotel near where you are which could provide the room and the food, for a max of say, £15 a head, you might have yourself an earner here.