Just Hit My First Milestone of Experience

I just completed my 150th signing this past Friday evening!!! Very excited that by my scale, I can now start raising my rates with SS. My fee with Title companies will remain the same but I believe it’s now time to raise my SS fees to $90 per for the smaller ones and $100 per for the big three.

While this may seem trivial to someone who is extremely experienced, it is monumental for me given that I opened the doors on Feb. 1st this year. I got my first signing on Feb 12th, and now just four months later I’ve completed 150 signings. When I reach 200, my fee will increase to $95 for the smaller SS and $105 for the big three. Then when I reach 250, it’ll be $100 for the smaller SS and $110 for the big three.

For this, I want to thank all of you seasoned notaries. I read your comments and took in all that I could and still do regarding this business. I also want to thank my fellow newbies who may have asked a question that I too needed an answer to that helped along the way.

With that, again thank you all for your help, and I look forward to the next milestone of 200!!!

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Let us know how raising fees across the board goes for you. IME, biz will still go to lowest bidder.

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Will do, but do you think that I shouldn’t raise fees?

No. I think you shouldn’t have worked for less.

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Thank you. I understand.

Congratulations! That is a great milestone for such a short period of time. It gives the rest of us newbies great hope. I wish you much success!!

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Ya think?! You took the words right out of my mouth.

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My apologies here but if you’re JUST raising your fees to $90, you’ve been working for too cheap from the get-go. Which is why you hit 150 signings so quickly. I would honestly suggest you seriously re- think your fee structure because not only are you not being paid fairly, you’re under-valuing yourself AND you will never be able to raise your fees incrementally like you suggest and still retain business…there will be others behind you just like you willing to take the signings for low fees. If you want this to be your “career” or your “business”, you need to treat it as such and charge accordingly.

JMO

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Congrats!!

Totally agree

Thank you LindaH. I value your advice and that of others. I agree that is why I’ve been able to get many signings by taking orders on average of $80-$85 per. I was unable to determine how the seasoned NSAs like yourself are/were able to start at higher fees without first proving your abilities with the numbers to back it up.

My business view was that since I was unable to determine ‘how’ to get the higher fees from the start, my best bet would be to get money coming in while proving my worth and using an incremental scale of experience as my reasoning for higher fees. My expectation of this model would be that I would end up working with fewer companies willing to pay my new fees, but for those that do, do it for the working relationship we built and my work product. Additionally, there’s someone or more in my area who are willing to take a Reverse Mortgage for $70. I’m competing with them already so I have to have some way to prove why my $135 asking for a rm is worth their time versus giving it to someone for $70.

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Thank you and welcome!!

Gah… an RM for $70…all I can say is when the IRS declares that notary’s work as a hobby and disallows all deductions… So sad. Too many drinking the koolaid. Work smarter not harder.

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Understood and I appreciate your reasoning for me, it was 25 years experience as a real estate closing paralegal - I handled the entire file and knew what was involved knew the docs and knew what they meant; I based my business and fee structure on that experience and marketed that experience - got BGCs that companies required and initially got certified by NNA just because - only did that a couple times though. I sat on my 25 years practical and professional experience.

And you can do that now too!! I would think that after 150 signings you not only know what you’re doing but you’re professional, efficient and diligent in your duties. Therefore IMO you’re worth more than $90/signing

Best of luck

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You are the only one to prove your “worth” to. The SS don’t know you and don’t care about your worth. They want to see if they can get the job done the cheapest way, and there you were. Do not sell yourself cheap. If you have the training (good training) you were worth higher fees then you accepted.
I say this ALL the time: DO NOT TAKE THE LOW BALL OFFERS. If we all counter for more then you won’t see the low balls anymore!!
I don’t walk out my door for under 125, and that is in my neighborhood. I counter for 150-200 (and quite a few 300) depending on distance. if I get it, good. If I don’t, it wasn’t worth it!

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Forget milestones, I’ve completed over 10,000 signing, no one cares. Just do perfect work (no mistakes) and get to me fast. The faster you are, the more signing you can do in 1 day, 1 week, 1 mo, 1 year.
You fees will increase over time, don’t price yourself out the market to early…

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Soooo, how long did it take you to reach 10K? Was there anything you celebrated along the way for your pricing structure? Given that you’re in CA, I’m sure there are many more opportunities for closings than there are in Ohio so you can probably write your own check there, right? I can see in your world of CA, no one cares about how many closings you’ve done, but are you stating that to be my world of Ohio also, because a lot of these places seem to say otherwise.

CA, OH…anywhere…cheap wins until cheap gets smart and stops taking low fees.

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Congrats and good luck!

Thank you very much.

I think what makes it challenging is that there is no standard fee or minimum fee paid to an NSAs per package. Banking in general absorbs bulk of the closing cost anywhere from 1k to 20k and more. Little bit goes to notaries and SS. Some SS are starving like some notaries while others make much more in the industry. Areas and opportunities all play a role in this too, as well as time working in the field. Some SS feel threatened by the movement which encourages direct signing because that means less work for SS. However one notary won’t be able to run around all day to different locations to sign and SS will always be needed too. A notary can’t drive both to a 1pm and a 1:30pm in another town, SS with multiple notaries will always be a thing. It’s just getting them to collect a fair fee for themselves and pay the notary a fair fee, that somehow needs to be streamlined. SS that hire and low ball notaries have to deal with a lot more loss and headache in my opinion with corrections and extra follow up and even paying extra FedEx overnight on that correction which is all too expensive. The truth is there is so much work available for SS and notaries, I think streamlining fair fees and uniting a lot more as notaries with building up the industry will make things more fair. We have to stop the scarcity mindset in this industry. I personally avoid low ball offers. I can’t afford to take them on. I got an offer for 33 bucks and almost rolled out of my chair. The FedEx label has more value in that transaction. I think many notaries fail to do the real math of doing this work. The wear and tear it takes on the vehicle. You drive around accepting low fees and the car breaks down costing hundreds or thousands of dollars to repair. Gas prices around here went up. Your putting more miles losing value on your vehicle. In my area FedEx and staples will charge an arm and a leg to print, copy or scan a document while lenders try to get us to do it for unreasonably low fees. We are not only providing notary services but printing services, convenience to sign documents by driving to signers location, scanning and mailing services. We also save lenders/title lots of money since they don’t have to pay our retirement and healthcare benefits. As NSA work continues to build, my hope is that reasonable standard minimum fee is put in place which covers printing, scanning, driving, stamping, etc. This will help NSAs not to get taken advantage of in the industry, especially when they are new.

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