In my many years of being in the Notary directory business I have encountered many types of Notaries. Some work for cheap and try to make money with volume. Others try to do a great job for their customers and just do one or two jobs per day for a large sum of money. Then there are people who are clueless who take $40 jobs that are two hours away and end up just complaining only to take more jobs just like that in the future.

Every time you take a job, you are using up your phone time, patience, wear and tear on your car, gas, toner or wear and tear on your printer, paper, and more. Every time you drive somewhere, you should calculate how many minutes it took, how many miles, and whether they were highway or surface road miles. Highway miles put less wear on your car unless it is stop and go by the way. If you do a job for $40, and your total expenses are $15, and you put three hours into the job including phone calls, driving, signing, and dropping the package, you just made less than $12 per hour for your labor.

On the other hand, newer Notaries might have trouble attracting the higher paying jobs. So, if you turn down all of the lower paying work, you might not get any work, or might not have any work on particular days.

So, what do I recommend? You need a complicated pricing strategy. If people book in advance, you might offer them a lower price. That way you can keep your schedule medium booked. For same day orders, you can charge according to how your schedule looks.

Or, you could have a minimum price for signings. You could set your minimum at $90 and then charge extra for printing, long drives, and signings that are 150 pages or longer. For me, I charge based on my time.

Or you could book your first job of the day at a lower price, and then charge more for subsequent jobs. That way you will make money every day, and still have a shot at the big bucks.

Experienced Notaries often reject most jobs and stick to a much higher minimum like $125 or $150. They have the client base to be able to get away with that. If you have signed less than 5000 loans, you probably cannot command such high rates all of the time. You might get high pay on a third or a half of your signings, but not on all.

But, whatever you do, calculate the costs and time invested in each job, and try to figure out what your hourly rate would be for particular jobs before you accept a quote. And if you have signed less than 1000 loans, don’t be too picky because you need to pay your dues and get more experience so that you can become more valuable.

It is common for Notaries to go to a job where the signer refuses to sign, or the job gets cancelled. What can the Notary charge for a travel fee since he/she/they didn’t “do” anything? The answer is that the most important aspect of this issue is not what you charge but what you explain over the phone. The client/signer needs to be painfully (the more pain the better) aware that the notary’s schedule is not for free and that they have to pay x amount of dollars even if nothing gets done as well as waiting time.

It is a generally prudent policy to get travel fees in cash at the door upon arrival before seeing the signer. This is because you need to be able to be impartial and have no beneficial or financial interest in a document being signed. If your $50 travel fees is contingent on Sammy signing the Affidavit, you will be tempted to notarize it even if the ID doesn’t match completely. As a Notary, you need to not be tempted to wiggle on state notary rules, and having your travel fee in your pocket puts the power and integrity back in your pocket. It’s hard to be integrous when money is at stake.

If someone gives you $40 travel fee which includes the first 20 minutes waiting time, and then keeps you waiting more than that, since you have the $40 in your pocket, you can demand cash for the next twenty minutes or threaten to walk. People will string you along in this line of work so it is important to keep the upper hand, or as Mrs. Meao likes to say — the upper paw!

The bottom line is that communication of signing fees over the phone before the signing is the most important solution to the travel fee issue. Fail to communicate — you might not get paid at all. So, communicate not only what the client will have to pay, but terms and conditions for what gets paid when and how much. Also, be careful with checks. Signers who cancel jobs sometimes bounce checks or stop payment. It happened to me after a very time consuming jail job. I bet Mrs. Meao would have something to say about that!

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I spent a lot of time watching a relationship coach in Atlanta on youtube. She was tired of working with women because they were all unrealistic. She worked mainly with black women and found that the majority of women wanted a guy who was 6’2″ or above, handsome, well dressed, made $100,000 per year or more, and had a great personality. The problem was that the height metric eliminated 97% of men just like that and the other qualifications made it difficult as well. Basically, most women wanted a guy who was the top (.1)% of guys. These women were frustrated that they could not attain the type of man they wanted. And the ones who got that type of guy often got cheated on because so many other women also wanted that type of guy. The relationship expert got so fed up with these unrealistic women that she stopped working with them altogether. My question is: what makes average women think they merit the top 1/1000 caliber of guys?

I watched a youtube interview with a black guy who drove the perfect car, made 100K per year, was handsome, tall, and charismatic. He said that there are 30 available women to 1 available guy in Atlanta due to the high gay population. He easily got women. But, once they got him they nagged him and didn’t treat him well. The moral of the story is that most women only want what they can’t have and then don’t value it when they have it. The other moral is that women who are average want guys who are exceptional and in real life it rarely works out that way.

Notaries are similar in this respect. The vast majority of Notaries do not have the notary skills or experience for them to merit the good jobs. Yet all Notaries want the $200 per signing jobs from great companies that treat them well and pay them on time. In real life, people like Carmen merits these jobs, but most of the rest of you not only don’t have the skills, but are completely against the idea of getting them as you think you are already perfect. You can’t become a better Notary if you think you are already perfect.

The moral of the story here is: improve your value instead of complaining about how little you get paid and how little respect you get. Notaries with proven value can get $150 per signing on a regular basis. I read about this in my blog comments which is proof.

Notary pricing is across the board and the people responding to my blog articles might be on the more experienced or successful side. I’m not sure about that claim though as I have no way to verify. Here are some results to my question about — what do you charge?

See the entire list of comments with what they charge for fax backs, printing, and other types of signings.

What do you charge for Notary work & signings?

For straight refinances people responding charge:
85
90
100
100
100
110
125
150-250
200-250 (must be a pro)
175-200

Summary
Of the responders who are not looking like they represent the community as a whole, but might represent a higher percentage of very seasoned Notaries, the mean price seems to be about 100-110 per refinance, but the average for them might be more like 125.

Most Notaries are complaining about being low-balled, and having to take low offers. Perhaps they are too busy working for peanuts to respond to my blog.

It is quite possible that the average Notaries get paid these days for refinances is 70 or 80 because most jobs come from Snapdocs. However, in our defense, the higher paying jobs normally come from 123notary although people low-ball using our site as well.

A handful of Notaries responded to an old article about doing some job with fax backs and eDocuments for $75. The question was, is it worth it? I also mentioned that in India people would cut off their left arm to have such an offer, but I got only sarcastic responses stating that they didn’t live in India.

Many Notaries wrote back that when calculating your fee, you should consider:

1. Cost of commission, licenses & memberships
2. Study time
3. Cell phone cost per month
4. Equipment costs
5. Advertising costs & the time spent generating business
6. Auto expenses
7. Printing expenses

The fact is that expenses from 1-5 are fixed expenses and have nothing to do with a particular job. Expenses 1-5, if too much, should influence your decision to stay in the business or leave altogether as those expenses do not go up or down based on whether or not you take a particular job.

The real cost is whether you could do something else with your time such as a more profitable job, billing clients, sleep, spending time on errands or with family. If $75 is your best offer, then take it whether it is “fair” or not. There is no fair in business — only relativity.

Additionally, if you lived in India, you would be working all day long for a few dollars and would not get to eat in restaurants hardly ever unless you had a swanky job. You would have bare bones conditions and people nagging you all day long. Don’t take for granted that you live in an affluent society because that can be taken away from you in the long run. Yes, sarcasm is good, but try to see what is going on in other countries and realize how good you have it compared to the 3rd world folks.

LINKS
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Each state has a maximum notary fee per notary act or procedure. Some charge by the signature, Florida charges by the stamp if I’m not incorrect (better look that one up.)

But, if you are allowed $5 per signature, the signing has four signatures, but pays $200, then what? Are you breaking the law? Or are you being paid for mobile fees and supervising fees? The truth is that you are being paid for a bunch of responsibilities within your service:

Printing documents
Confirming an appointment
Supervising the signature and initialing of documents
Answering simple questions (perhaps)
Not answering questions you are not supposed to (unless you are a know-it-all who is looking for trouble)
Notarizing
Waiting while people read or have long conversations by phone with the Lender.
Getting the documents safely back where they belong
Availability for after service.

All of those combined definitely merit at least $125, don’t you think?

So, how do you document this in your journal? $5 per notary act. Two people x two notary acts per person is four lines in your journal each stating $5 for the notary fee. And then in the additional info section for the first notary act of the set, put down you got $180 travel / supervising fee for a loan signing. Then it is all documented just in case the IRS has any questions. Notary fees are not subject to self-employment tax but travel and supervising fees are. Look it up in the SE instructions.

But, what if you live in California and the Notary fee is $15, you have ten signatures, but the job only pays $100. You could charge $150 plus travel for that signing, but your Lender or signing company isn’t paying that. Just put whatever you want for the notary fee between zero and $15 per notarized signature in your journal. And do a reasonable estimate for what the travel and supervising fees should be — just estimate and try to be proportionate.

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Just out of curiousity, the market has changed since we wrote our various pricing oriented blog tutorials. Those were written from 2010 to 2016. We want to know, what do you guys charge now?

Signings
eDocuments
Extra Miles

Regular signings for general notary work.
Other

Thanks!

As a newer Notary, you tend to get pushed around by more experienced companies. They set the terms, they give you the run around, make you fax back far too many pages, cancel jobs at the last minute, and then don’t pay you. Seems like you get a raw deal. Unfortunately in this business, as a new Notary, you have to pay your dues and work for the less than wonderful companies. The question is, how soon can you start being pushy for payment terms?

Ken in NYC is very aggressive for payment terms. He makes people pay up front. He is not a bank and he does not lend money to the signing companies. He charges more than others because he is the most solid Notary in town and people know that. But, he has thousands of loans under his belt. How much experience do you need before you start setting terms? There is no set answer.

You can test your terms out and see how much work you lose. If you demand that the signing company sign a contract with you for your terms, you can see if they sign it. The terms might go over last minute cancellations, printing fees for cancelled jobs, or incomplete signings, second trips, etc. You could even fine them for paying late.

How much experience do you need to bill people up front? Or what if you reduced your fee a bit to charge up front? Would you rather get all your money up front but get less? If you wait to get paid, you will have bookkeeping expenses, lost time doing collections and not get paid part of the time, so giving 10% off seems like a reasonable arrangement for me.

Or perhaps signing companies who don’t have a reputation with you yet would be asked to pay up front. Different terms for different companies. There is another approach. If you trust a company more, few terms or no terms, but if they have a bad rep or you don’t know them then more stringent terms.

In short, there are many ways to manage your terms. It is up to you how you do it. My suggestion is not to have any terms until you get 1000 loans under your belt as well as certifications from three companies. At least that shows you are not fooling around. If you don’t know your job up to my standards in my opinion you don’t merit terms! (ooh, that was mean)

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