I can tell you from experience that you are probably not going to get rich with genealogy. I doubt that it is really even possible to make a living with genealogy. I can think of a few ways to make money but I doubt that any of them would produce more than $25,000 per year.
You can perform research for clients but that is a lot of work for a relatively small amount of money. A certified or well-educated researcher could charge $100 per hour but you will get few clients. You could charge $10 per hour, and get more clients, but is your time worth that little? I tried $12.50 per hour for a long time, doing it for side money. I made a few thousand dollars per year but the headache was not worth the hassle. I pretty much gave up on making money as a researcher.
You could also try to rent your services as an advisor to other researchers, ones from out of town that want to use your local library - the one you know by heart. They may need to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time and your expertise can help them achieve that level of efficiency. I did this once, and made $100 for only a few hours, but the opportunities are few and far between. Most researchers like to find things on their own – that is half of the fun.
You could also trying public speaking but how many times a month does someone need a genealogy speaker? You are not going to make a killing at Shady Acres and the Knights of Columbus.
Another way to make money is to write articles for magazines or other publications, maybe even write a book. It is difficult to get published and you generally do not get paid much, if anything. The market is mostly flooded with how-to books so the odds of getting one published is likely slim as well.
Unless you want to live off prestige, you will probably starve as a genealogy writer. Don’t even think about making money off your own family history. There are few people really interested in the Urlacher family of Sunflower, Kansas. You will probably lose money when you pay to have the book printed.
The Internet was a good way to make money – a few years ago. Around 2005 you could have set up a genealogy site with some Google ads and made a killing off the clicks. However…Google changed the game in 2006-2007 with their Adsense program. Instead of getting paid $5.00 each time someone click an ad, you started getting $0.05. They decided to let advertisers choose how much money to pay for clicks on non-Google sites, what they call the content network. This means that a click on Google gets them $5.00 but a click on your site only nets you $0.05. People that were making thousands of dollars on ads a few years ago are now making less than $100.
To be continued...
You can perform research for clients but that is a lot of work for a relatively small amount of money. A certified or well-educated researcher could charge $100 per hour but you will get few clients. You could charge $10 per hour, and get more clients, but is your time worth that little? I tried $12.50 per hour for a long time, doing it for side money. I made a few thousand dollars per year but the headache was not worth the hassle. I pretty much gave up on making money as a researcher.
You could also try to rent your services as an advisor to other researchers, ones from out of town that want to use your local library - the one you know by heart. They may need to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time and your expertise can help them achieve that level of efficiency. I did this once, and made $100 for only a few hours, but the opportunities are few and far between. Most researchers like to find things on their own – that is half of the fun.
You could also trying public speaking but how many times a month does someone need a genealogy speaker? You are not going to make a killing at Shady Acres and the Knights of Columbus.
Another way to make money is to write articles for magazines or other publications, maybe even write a book. It is difficult to get published and you generally do not get paid much, if anything. The market is mostly flooded with how-to books so the odds of getting one published is likely slim as well.
Unless you want to live off prestige, you will probably starve as a genealogy writer. Don’t even think about making money off your own family history. There are few people really interested in the Urlacher family of Sunflower, Kansas. You will probably lose money when you pay to have the book printed.
The Internet was a good way to make money – a few years ago. Around 2005 you could have set up a genealogy site with some Google ads and made a killing off the clicks. However…Google changed the game in 2006-2007 with their Adsense program. Instead of getting paid $5.00 each time someone click an ad, you started getting $0.05. They decided to let advertisers choose how much money to pay for clicks on non-Google sites, what they call the content network. This means that a click on Google gets them $5.00 but a click on your site only nets you $0.05. People that were making thousands of dollars on ads a few years ago are now making less than $100.
To be continued...
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