Bingo!
In Florida we can charge $25/notarization for RON - so they keep $20 of it? Guess all there extra FREE stuff isn’t so free
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Per month? That depends largely on my sleeping schedule since I’m an insomniac and that I’m also doing this part time, but generally I try to do 5-10 a day (excluding weekends). I do that, personally, to avoid making mistakes from having to fight myself to sleep.
Getting 5-10 done is usually a 2-3 hour deal (most of that time is waiting and they’re fixing that soon), assuming you’re not getting large documents that have a lot of stamping to be done. So if I were to push myself and average out a bit I’d say it’s about $1,083 a month from the general ques by themselves just on the little I do. I plan to eventually start going about 20-40 but insomnia is a tough mistress .
I’m in Nevada, if you want your results to be similar to mine (Your results would likely be better regardless) then you’re going to have to pick a time zone you want to target, translate that into what time it would be for you, and then just get on at those times. Notarize is 24/7 so if you want to work in the dead of night then you’re free to do so.
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You’re really helpful. Thanks a lot God bless. Jesus loves you.
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Thanks man, Jesus loves you too. Hope everything works out!
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Forgot to ask you if you tried Mobile notary. I signed up with 10 signing companies, never got $1 from them.
I wanted to do Mobile Notary at one point but there were problems with that, risk of infection being one of them. If you want to do Mobile Notary I would suggest taking the Notary2Pro course, as some agencies like to pick up Carol’s students upon graduating her course, setting your profile up on Snapdocs and other signing services. When I was in the planning stage I made sure to come here to see the real experience people had with them before I added them to my “List” of people to work with. I’d suggest looking locally if you can and then expand from there.
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I’ve been told by a veteran to sign up for as many companies as you can. Regardless of the pay. Reason being, the way Signing Agencies work is they use an algorithm to decide who gets a text. But a live person will decide who gets the signing. It’s all about the numbers and when you first get started the numbers are not in your favor. Hang in there Someone will take a chance on you though. Once that happens the likelihood of your getting more favorable signings goes up. Each time you complete a signing your chances increase and you will get more and more. If that makes sense.
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Agree. I think that a lot of the services want an established track record. The worst situation for a new notary is learning on the job. If you have any errors on your package, you are going to be finished with many companies. Every successful error-free package will be a feather in your cap and propels your signing agent career. They do rate notaries and keep track of those who present a problem (errors). They do give priority to agents who have established that good track record over new notaries of which they know nothing.
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Get busy… I’m listed with 300 companies. Do I get business from them every week? Heck, no! Some are ‘one & done’, but the point is to do as many signings as are profitable regardless of where they come from and keep the pay-pipeline full as something is always coming out the other end! Seems to me that the hardest thing for newbs (who have never experienced SELF-employment) is there is no Friday payday. It’s hard in the beginning to get used to that, but if you take a job from a 60-days-to-pay company–60 days from now, you get some money. The hard part is that 1st month–getting the paypipe full.
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Agree 100% with Arichter - Get busy; listing with only 10 companies will get you nowhere; you have to get your name out there .further, from reading your other posts in other threads, you may want to be careful how you post - your words follow you and many companies read these sites and the forums - these forums could be your first best foot forward (aside from your profile) -
It sounds to me like you did not do much research on how this business (or ANY self-employed business-person) works and now you’re paying the price. It’s not an easy road to hoe but you really need to just dig in and start contacting companies and get signed up with them. Take the time you’ve spent here complaining about not working and put it to more constructive means - marketing. There’s a thread here “Best Companies” - find it, read that and contact the ones people have said are good - and keep contacting companies til you’re blue in the face; when you think you’ve had enough, rinse and repeat - start again and get it going. As a new businessman you are your best asset, but you can also be your own worst enemy Never expect any business to come to you easily until you’ve established yourself and, possibly, made yourself the go-to person for several companies - and trust us that won’t happen for a good two years or so…but in the meantime, if you’re serious about doing this you need to buckle down, dig in and Get Busy.
Good luck
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@TheFatMan here is a link to that thread about Best Companies - My apologies, it’s “Best Signing Companies” - at last look 471 comments. Read through that and you should find some nice leads…but the reading is up to you.
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There is no magic number of signings in order to make more money. There is no magic number of signings so that you can claim you are experienced.
That is a ruse to get you to work for next to nothing. As long as you work for next to nothing you will never get more money per signing even if you have 500 signings under your belt. Then when you realize you can’t make money you quit. Now the companies tell the new people the same thing. It’s a never ending cycle.
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Agree with glenntabor. Fees are pretty much set by how much competition is in your area and how desperate that competition is, I’ve been doing this for decades and still get $60 offers (which I decline, of course). And, fees have actually gone DOWN since I began! Only thing that makes the current fees somewhat acceptable is edocs have gotten faster only because printers are quicker and we used to get 'em on dial-up (yep–dial up–you probably don’t even know what thas is) internet which took FOREVER. So time spent is the only thing that improved.
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Orange county, Ca. Last year my monthly avg. is $19,300 per month… That winning.
Why would you cure out a signing company? Got off this forum, and sign up with more companies.
You need to build your business.
Your information is very helpful! Can you jump on at any time on Notarize or do you have to sign up and be obligated to a shift?
Notarize isn’t doing it for “free” lol…
It’s free to you, as in, you aren’t the one paying for their infrastructure, advertising, system keeping, data storage and so forth. The system runs regardless of how often you use it, if at all. That’s “Free to you.”
It was running functionally before it was popular or profitable and it doesn’t need the help of a thousand independent notaries to maintain that status. You can avoid touching Notarize for months and you won’t be charged for any of the above, even if they kick you off the platform you won’t be paying for anything. You’re paying them a portion of your profits to use what they built and that’s it, all of the storage and sourcing of customers and user experiences and etc. is free (to you).
I feel like I have to explain something. Notaries are not a pure benefit to Notarize. Please give me a moment to go through how much this is nowhere near what you should be paying.
For future reference, 1 Terabyte is 1000 Gigabytes. 1 Gigabyte is 1000 Megabytes. Alright, SO!
A typical 1 Terabyte (TB) NAS Drive runs for about 60-134 dollars (discounted) if you take Amazon’s pricing as a standard.
1 Minute of 1080P video at 60 Frames Per Second (like my webcam) takes up 175 Megabytes of space. Remember, that is PER MINUTE. Most calls run about 10-15 minutes, assuming the signer has everything they need for the signing and there are no technical errors, or misunderstandings or hand-holdings you need to go through.
This means in a typical call, I will consume about 1,750 to 2,625 Megabytes. Meaning I am consuming about 1-2 and a half Gigs per session. Assuming I get to finish the notarization.
I’ve had sessions run as long as 20-30 minutes to an hour, simply because the signer is an elderly person or it’s a large notarization and they need to be guided through the process or the aforementioned technical errors - only to find out that I can’t notarize for them. Meaning on those calls I’m eating about 10 or so Gigs a session. However, even if you don’t get to finish a notarization, Notarize still keeps the recording. The space is still getting used. So not only did I run through 10 gigs, I did so on their dime.
I’ve had entire days where all the customers I seem to be getting, can’t have their stuff notarized by me and I just go “Screw it” and log off for the day. I’ve probably got like 40-50 maybe even 100 gigs of failed signings. Note, I am not the only notary on Notarize. There are thousands. I know of a guy who did 2000 (successful) signings and wanted to be promoted to the next level but they weren’t open to invites at that time. If we assume a super conservative and lucky 5 percent rejection rate of those signings, and that he never had a signing last longer than 10 minutes, he has at least 100 failed signings all running about 175 gigs off the failures alone. In total he’d likely be using 332 gigs (assuming my math is correct). If he kept going, he’d obviously get over 1000 gigs and likely have paid off the space he’s used in spades… but only if he continued. If he stops then his space is eating up 1TB by itself every day, every week, every month, every year without any positive reinvestment. That’s not small.
Storage Costs only go up (drastically so if you’re a public facing entity). They do not go down, they do not even out. Notarize keeps the recording for 7 years after it’s finished. Meaning Notarize will continue to eat the cost of storing his videos, regardless of if he continues or not. Notarize has kicked off a lot of people for not following their platform rules and a lot of people have just found that the platform isn’t for them after a while. Notarize is still paying for the space they’re using. Imagine how many notaries stopped using Notarize or got kicked off, imagine how many long sessions and rejected calls they’re holding onto that will never be paid back by the person recording them. That adds up very quickly (we’re not going to get into the numbers required to maintain a corporate server setup, we’d be here all day). Suffice to say it’s not hard to run through 1TB of space on Notarize and that is expensive.
Now, Notarize COULD make you pay for the space usage. I know there are notary platforms that make you pay month to month to use them and charge you per stamps and signatures and whatnot, without giving a payout higher than Notarize’s. They could very well ask you to pay for all the space and storage of the videos you record, failed signings included. But if they did that, you’d wrack up a debt so quickly that it’d be financial murder of your business.
If you sat down and let a session go on for (God forbid) three weeks straight, and then reject the call, Notarize would not ring you up for payment nor would they kick you off for it (unless the signer complained in which would be unlikely at that point), meaning you would be free to waste even more space if you so chose. Even if by some miracle they found out (They don’t look over rejected signings) and kicked you off, they’d still keep that massive space dump.
So no, it’s not “Free” in the strictest sense. I don’t think anyone took it that way but you. But it is free to you since regardless of if you make money with them or not, the resources you have consumed will continue to be with them for years to come and you’ll never hear them badger you about it. In respect to the amount they could charge you and by all rights should charge you, but don’t, you might as well be paying nothing.
Forgive the long winded rant, felt like that needed to be pointed out.
Edited for clarity.
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Question - how do they handle those states that required 10-year retention (like Florida)?
They probably just keep it for longer. My state has the requirement of 7 years after I finish being a notary, so that’s where I got the figure from.
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