A genealogy business is not for everyone, especially if you’re hoping for a lucrative income stream. “Only a very tiny percentage of us actually support ourselves full time on genealogy,” said Barbara J. Ball, certified genealogist of Copestone Resources LLC.
But it is a relatively simple business to start. You don’t need official certification to call yourself a genealogist. However, it helps if you already have some of the attributes needed to be successful in the field.
In an article for the Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly, titled “Transferable Skills: You’re Quitting Your Job to Do What?!”, author and professional genealogist Pam Anderson identified five skills as key attributes that successful genealogists and business owners have. They both are:
- Self-starters
- Goal-oriented
- Analytical
- Effective communicators
- Client-centered
If this describes you, you’re off to a good start.
Launching a genealogy business
Depending on your level of experience, you may want to gather additional expertise before you embark on a career as a genealogist. The National Genealogical Society offers American Genealogy Studies as an online course developed by certified genealogists. The course is self-paced.
Boston University offers a Professional Education Certificate in Genealogical Research online. These classes are only available at specific times.
Genealogists we spoke to also recommended the ProGen Study Program, which is based on the textbook Professional Genealogy. This program covers both the practice of genealogy and the practical aspects of running a genealogy business.
A good next step is defining your business.
Craft your mission statement.
Define what you will do for people in a few interesting words. This can be the guiding star of your business. It will help you stay focused on the problem you want to solve without defining how you’ll solve it.
Here are some examples to consider:
- I help people of Panamanian descent find out more about their ancestors.
- I rediscover the past for people who want to understand their history.
- I solve historical mysteries for people who hit genealogical dead ends.
Define your revenue model.
How will you make money? There are many different ways to generate revenue through genealogy. It can help focus your efforts if you decide on one model that makes the most sense for your genealogy business. Three models in particular — fee for service, production and subscription — are the most likely to position you for success with a genealogy business.
Fee-for-service model
The fee-for-service model is the most common for people with specialized skills and the most common in the world of genealogy.
Think of doctors, lawyers, and fitness trainers. You pay them all (typically hourly) to provide you with their unique skills. Why? Because you don’t have these skills yourself — or maybe you do.
Consider the skills of a house cleaner or a babysitter. You can clean your house or watch your kids but, sometimes, you need the help of someone else.
Sometimes, it’s specialized equipment that requires a fee-for-service arrangement, such as a plumber or a photographer.
Genealogical research is another example of a unique talent. Most genealogists use the fee-for-service model.
Asking clients to pay by the hour is the most common method of billing. Being a genealogist is similar to being an auto mechanic in that you don’t know for sure what the solution is until you “pop the hood.” Genealogists never know for sure whether they will find what their client seeks.
Many genealogists start projects with an agreed-upon set of hours meant to address a particular question, such as, “Where was my mother’s father born?” If that research provides a tidy answer to the client’s question, so be it.
However, if more research is needed, the client can agree to pay for additional time. A client might approve extending the assignment to get records from an overseas archive, for example.
“I like to do it in small phases,” said Anderson, a genealogist in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. “I don’t like to do more than 20 hours at a time so that we can see how we work together.”
Production model
The production model is very simple: You make something and someone pays you for it. Some examples include car manufacturers, jewelry designers and farmers.
Genealogical research itself is not a product but you could turn it into one. You could set a standard price for a 20-page family history or for a family tree going back at least five generations.
Subscription model
Subscriptions are an increasingly popular model, thanks to the advent of automatic renewal billing. A fitness gym is a business that runs primarily via the subscription model. The basic idea is that you pay for access to a service, whether you use that service or not. The benefit to the consumer is convenience. It’s there when they need it.
Ancestry.com has proven that the subscription model is appealing for folks interested in genealogy. But subscribing to Ancestry.com only gives customers access to the company’s resources — the customer still has to do the research.
Perhaps potential customers would be willing to pay monthly for access to your expertise if they have the curiosity but not the time.
What’s the competition?
When people think of competition in business, they tend to think of two companies battling it out for supremacy, such as Coke vs. Pepsi, but competition for most businesses isn’t as simple as that.
Your competition isn’t only other, similar services. Your customer can also be your competition or your competition could come from completely different industries. Before you answer the question of who your competition is, you have to understand the customer’s problem, your solution and how to make that solution unique.
What is the problem your customers have?
The problems your customers have are likely to include one or more of the following:
- They have no information about their family background and are concerned about medical issues.
- They are researching family members and hit a dead end.
- They lack fulfillment in their life and seek a deeper connection with their past.
A silly hypothetical: What if you discovered a forgotten daughter of Henry VIII who has thousands of descendants? These people have a problem they never knew about — how to prove they’re royalty.
On a more serious note, as medical research continues to uncover the genetic causes of many serious diseases, reliable genealogical research could alert people to potentially serious health risks.
How is your service better?
Once you’ve identified your competition, you need to identify how your service will be a better solution for your customers than the competition can provide. Winning products and services are often:
- Simpler
- Faster
- Higher quality
- More efficient
- Less expensive
- Some combination of the above examples
Which of the above benefits are you uniquely positioned to provide to potential customers?
If you have 30 years of experience in the genealogical research field and a Ph.D. in American history, you may be able to provide a better service than your competition. If you’re a fast researcher and writer, you may provide research more quickly than your competition could or you could charge less. If you have specialized knowledge about Portuguese immigration in the 1830s, you may fill a niche that no other genealogist is addressing.
Anderson, the genealogist in Pennsylvania, lives in a rural part of the state. She’s the only person in her area who offers genealogical services. When people from outside the state want to research an ancestor who lived in the area, Anderson is the best resource they have.
Why would someone choose you over the other options they have to solve the same problem? If you don’t have a reason, you don’t have a business.
Once you come up with a competitive advantage, you’ll want to adjust your mission statement to align with your niche or advantage.
Marketing
You’ve already thought deeply about the problem you want to solve for customers. Now, it’s time to think about the customers themselves.
Creating a customer persona
Customer personas are a key tool that the most successful marketers use. A company like Nike creates detailed customer or buyer personas about the people most likely to buy athletic shoes and apparel. When Nike creates products, plans advertising campaigns or writes social media posts, it does so with these personas in mind.
Creating personas for your business maximizes your marketing efforts. To complete them, you’ll need to answer questions about your potential customers like these:
- How old are they?
- What is their education level?
- What is their salary?
- What motivates them?
You’ll probably find you have more than one potential customer but keep your number of total personas manageable. Three to five personas are a good starting point.
Reaching potential customers
Now that you know who your customers are, it’s time to find them.
Where does each segment of your genealogical research customer base hang out? Here are some possibilities:
- On social media sites
- In front of the television
- Listening to the radio or history podcasts
- At gathering places like churches, malls and parks
- At community events like festivals and parades
- At gatherings of groups dedicated to genealogy or history
Where do they go to get information to solve the problem you’ve identified? Here are some of the most likely options:
- Search engines
- Online genealogy forums
- Genealogy or history magazines
- Local historical societies and archives
Once you know where your customers are, you can go about delivering your message to them.
Advertising
Advertising is the most direct method of sharing your service with customers. Most advertising is interruptive, so your message must be clear and direct. Below are the most common forums for advertising.
Social media
On social media sites, you can target potential customers based on their demographics and their interests. For example, if one of your customer personas is women in their 40s who live within 10 miles of you, you can create an ad that’s shown only to them. You could also target anyone in your state with an interest in African history. Learn more about using social media pages below.
Television
Television ads are expensive to produce and place. Usually, they only make sense for companies selling at a high volume, such as fast-food restaurants, or companies selling an expensive product, such as car dealerships. A genealogy business doesn’t fit either of these criteria.
Radio
Radio ads are less expensive than television ads but they also reach a broad audience. You’d likely reach people in your target audience but you’d reach many more who aren’t. Radio advertising is unlikely to be cost-effective for a genealogy business.
Podcasts
The podcast industry is flourishing and most of them are targeted to niche groups.
History podcasts are among the most popular categories and people who are interested in the past are likely interested in their own past as well. Podcast sponsorships are also relatively inexpensive. The right podcast might help you reach your audience.
Employees, contractors and timesaving services
Running a business means wearing many hats. Some people enjoy it when their day consists of being a salesperson, office manager, financial planner, bookkeeper, social media manager and administrative assistant. Others do better when they focus on what they do best or when they can cherry-pick a few of the more interesting additional tasks.
Think about the tasks you’ll have to perform and whether you’d rather have someone else do them, such as scheduling appointments, bookkeeping and writing social media posts.
You have many options for delegating these common business owner tasks to employees you hire, contractors you pay or, increasingly, subscription software services.
As you launch your genealogy research business, you aren’t likely to spend substantial time on administrative tasks. You may want to keep monthly expenses low by handling these things yourself and then outsourcing them as the business grows.
Tips for a successful genealogy business
If you’re thinking of leaving your current career to transition into genealogical research, you aren’t alone. Nearly everyone who becomes a genealogist started out doing something else.
Your business can be stronger if you find others like yourself who are starting in the genealogy world. “You work by yourself so much,” said Anderson, “it’s important to develop a network.”
Anderson stated she’s met many valuable contacts at conferences and research institutions. Such contacts can turn into resources if you get overwhelmed with requests or if you need help with specific issues that arise. “It’s good to have people to bounce ideas off,” said Anderson.
Most importantly, be prepared to continue learning. Genealogy is a study of the past, but the tools that genealogists have are growing constantly. DNA research is relatively new and yet some genealogists completely specialize in it. If you don’t have your niche now, you may develop one over your career. At least you won’t be bored.
Skye Schooley and Donna Fuscaldo contributed to this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.