I’m curious. I have read quite a lot of posts about how much money people are saying that they get for an average closing and how they avoid the “low” paying gigs. There seems to be quite a lot of people who say that they won’t do anything for less than $125 - $150. That said what’s an average day/week look like? 3-4 per day! 10-15 per week? How many signings do you do? Anyone out there clearing 6 figures!
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Location, location location
The answers you get here are going to vary immensely dependant on geographic location, marketing techniques, connections made and maintained, saturation of notaries in a given area, experience/expertise brought to the table, etc etc. AND location, location location.
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As Linda H stated there are many factors that will determine what an “average week” will look like. My goal, when I first started, was to average 3 signings a day M-F with a fee of no less than $100. That would equal to $1500 a week or $78,000 gross per year. Some months are better than others, some years are better than others.
“Average”? What is this “average” word? This isn’t employment. No one is paying you for a set amount of your time. Some weeks it will seem like every offer you get is for the same time slot. Some weeks you will market, market, market and pray. Some weeks you will run from signing to signing, scrambling for time to print that inevitable delayed package. What is this “average”?
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I’d like to know who is making 6 figures as a notary. If you make that much, you have a good sized signing agency and have a number of notaries in your database and several schedulers.
Stefanie I don’t think it’s necessary to have that many other people on your team in order to make 6 figures. I think that you need to be efficient, you need to have good title company business that pays more than $100 a signing and doesn’t require you to have to print documents and a few good notaries to subcontract to that are also very good at this job and don’t require much handholding or supervision.
I do all of my own scheduling, I occasionally subcontract to two other notaries and in May and June I made more than what you would have to make monthly to hit the 6 figure mark. I only did 5 signings for signing companies, the rest were for title companies in their offices where I did 3-4 easy signings per day, I didn’t have to print documents, during regular office hours (9-5, Monday-Friday) so I “worked” less than 8 hours a day.
Admittedly it has taken me 10 years of marketing, hustle and hard work to get to this point in my business, and this is the first year where 6 figures appears to be possible, but it is doable without working yourself into the ground or hiring a lot of other people.
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This question seems to come up one way or another every month. Any average you can calculate will depend on your market. An average in San Francisco will not be the same as an average in Billings MT. The best way for you to approach your earning potential is to determine what’s possible in your market and what it will take to get there. You should restrict this question to notaries in your area and like markets. A broadcast question on a national forum will yield mixed results.
A six figure income is always possible. How hard do you want to work, and what are you willing to do to earn it? I suggest a better way to go about getting to this is to set a monetary goal (weekly or monthly), calculate how many signings at what fee per signing it will take to earn that amount. Since there is no standard fee across the industry for various types of signings, you will still need to determine a range among your acceptable fees. But, just a response to an offer is not enough. You have to bring something to the table. You have to be an excellent notary = virtually error free! Track your error rate as well as your earnings, and track what type of errors you tend to make, if any, so you can watch for those. Compete against yourself. Your name gets around in the industry and trust me, they track! And, your customer service matters. They survey and ask the signers about their notary experience. All of it factors into your worth. You can request $100-150 per signing all you want. But, if you have not produced that kind of work in the past, you will not see those orders dropped into your inbasket. Also, time in business is going to be a factor. It is unlikely you will come out the gate with consistent $100-$200 signings. But, maybe. I took a lot of $50-$80 orders in the beginning of my career. It took about 8-12 months to find my secure earning level. I work part-time (1-3 signings/day; maybe 3-4 times a week}, and I turn down as many orders as I accept. If I worked full-time, I would be near that six-figure mark, with no outside subcontractors. It’s doable.
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What area are you working in. How did you make contact with the title companies to land these jobs. What does a title company pay per signing ?
I’m in San Antonio, TX.
One title company I met through a referral - an escrow assistant left the company to become a signing agent. She asked me for advice on how to get into the notary signing industry and after we spoke she referred me to the title company she left to do signings for them in her absence.
Another title company I met because I did a signing for them at the behest of a realtor that I work with. They loved me and asked me to do more for them.
In order to get title company business you cant be a basic “sign here” notary, you can’t be average, you have to be awesome at this!
And there is no “set” fee that title companies pay, although it is generally more than $100. And if they like you they have no problem paying you more! I consistently give my title companies exceptional service and they sometimes offer to pay me more than the usual fee for even the smallest amount of “extra” work (ie if there are 3 signers or if the signing is a POA).