A guide to high survival in a low-ball world.

These days, so many Notaries are complaining more and more about SnapDocs. In fact, the drama is so intense, that posts about SnapDocs are the most popular articles on our blog these days. SnapDocs is not bad, they just have a system which you haven’t mastered yet, Grasshopper! SnapDocs caters to companies who care about price, but don’t care about experience. Those who want top-notch seasoned Notaries come to 123notary as we focus on having the highest caliber of Notaries at the top of the list. So, read this and you’ll learn the secrets of high survival in a low-ball world.

(1) CALCULATE TIME
Calculate how many minutes you’ll need to fulfill the request.
Some Notaries complain if the fee is too low without looking at the time involved. $40 is not bad if the job is within ten minutes and there are no fax backs and very few pages. For a ten page signing ten minutes away, you might be there and back again in less than an hour. How many people do you know who complain about making $40 per hour? Read the text and see where the address is and how many pages are involved.

Regardless of the specifications, calculate how much time you need to:
Print, Drive, Call, Sign, Fax, and Fedex.

(2) BACKGROUND CHECK
Background Check the reliability of the company making the assignment
Tired of screwball signing companies? Low-balling is not the worst thing. Not getting paid, or being held hostage for three hours waiting for edocuments while your other clients are waiting is. You can background check companies on www.123notary.com/s using your iphone. I just updated the “votes” on all of the signing companies on our list in May 2016.

(3) MAKE COUNTER OFFERS
If you get a job from SnapDocs that comes as a text, you’ll be alerted to the location, number of fax backs and other basics about the job. You can use that information to calculate the amount of time needed to fulfill the order. Based on the time involved, you can decide how much to charge. If you have a base rate for your time (make it more expensive during the last week of the month) then you’ll know exactly what to charge. You might discount your fees a little for SnapDocs clients as they clearly don’t want to pay much.

If you get an offer for $50 to do a Refinance for two signers with twenty pages of fax backs, you can make a counter offer of $85. Some Notaries bid $125 and never get called back. You have to price your bid within the market otherwise you might as well just not use SnapDocs at all.

If you bill your time at $30 per hour and a job will require 54 minutes, ask for $27. Or if you’ll need two hours, then ask for $60. This is a very reasonable way of quoting rates that is fair to you as well as the client.

(4) NEWBIES — GAIN EXPERIENCE!!!
If you are new in the Notary business, I advise not being too picky about what people pay, providing they pay within 45 days. You need to get at least 1500 loans under your belt to be taken seriously by the big guys such as prominent title companies. You should pass the 123notary & NNA certification test if you want to be taken seriously as well. If you want to get experience in a hurry, SnapDocs is one way to do it. You’ll get tons of jobs, and all you have to do is drive, fax, and sign. You might not get paid that much, but experience is worth its weight in gold, so consider that your payoff.

Our list of signing companies that hire new signers is another way for newbies to get started.
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=7059

(5) FILL IN YOUR EMPTY TIME
If your other customers book in advance, and your daily schedule has some holes, SnapDocs might be the perfect way to fill in those unused hours. Although you might not get paid that much, at least you will have something to do so you (and your printer) won’t get bored. If you make $200 a day average doing signings for your regulars and you can pick up another $60 from SnapDocs, that is not a bad daily average.

(6) WIN OVER NEW CLIENTS
What a new client will pay you is different from someone who knows and trusts you. Once you build up trust with a client over the course of a few jobs, or a few months, you might be able to charge more. If they have a written track record about your service and know that you won’t screw up, they might pay you $20 more than they would pay another guy even though they are low-balling. So, you can use SnapDocs to meet new clients, and then once you have them hooked, jack your rates up a bit — but, not too much of a bit as you are still dealing with low-ballers.

(7) THE FIRST 3 WEEKS OF THE MONTH
Business is normally sluggish during the 3rd to the 22nd. So, that might be a great time to augment your business by using SnapDocs! You might need to save time during the end of the month for your regulars, but when things are slow, you should be willing to work at a somewhat lower rate.

(8) LOOK FOR CLOSE JOBS
Working for cheap is not that bad if you can find close jobs. If you get twenty texts per day from SnapDocs, and one or two is really close, you can try to nab those close ones and make some fast money. The key is having something to do during the other seven hours of your work day. If you make $60 for a signing ten minutes away, you might be making $50 per hour when all is said, done, and faxed.

(9) GET PAID UP FRONT
Ken is on our forum all the time offering some old school common sense to our Notaries. The message is — you are not a bank, why do you offer credit to strangers with no collateral? You don’t know if or when those signing companies will pay you. So, why not get $85 up front via Paypal? If they really need you they will pay you!

(10) THE CARMEN METHOD — ABSTINENCE
Carmen thinks that Notaries just shouldn’t use SnapDocs as the fees offered are too low. You can use abstinance as a way of dealing with this situation. Seasoned signers will never get paid what they are worth on SnapDocs, your experience is just not valued enough. With all of the faxing back, they can double check a newbies work and get accurate work at half the price by micromanaging. So, if you are “all that,” then get Elite Certified by 123notary and stick with us as you’ll get paid more from leads from our site — and forget about the cattle callers!

A final note from Jeremy — “Why am I promoting my competitor?”

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You might also like:

May best signing company gossip
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=15417

My interpretation of how the Notary industry went South
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=16500

List of New Signing Companies Feed
http://blog.123notary.com/?cat=419

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