How to turn family scandals into a £31,000 per year home business!

publication date: Nov 30, 2007
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Hi

Today I'd like to share some dark secrets with you . . .

Two have caused scandals in my family.

The other, though directly connected, could
actually turn into a £31,000 a year home
business!

Let me explain: as my father is retired, he'd got
a lot of time on his hands. As well as learning
how to trade the currency markets and
uploading his wildlife photos to digital libraries,
he's tracing the 'Laight' family tree . . .

Now, I always thought that family scandals
were what happened to other people, but very
quickly my father uncovered 2 racy stories that
at the time caused a huge scandal in our family.

You see, it turns out one branch of my family
tree is Irish. Back in the mid 19th century one of
my forbears came to Birmingham to became an
'artist's model' (ahem) for the famous Pre-
Raphaelite painter Edward Burne Jones.

Once the family discovered that this young slip
of a girl was taking her clothes of for this
bohemian artist, she was quickly summoned
back to the home country.

Another relative from the same period was
engaged to a surgeon, but ended up running
away with his butler!

Yes, the butler did it! ;-)

This scandal brought so much shame on the
family that they upped sticks and emigrated
to New York!

OK, all very interesting, but what's this got to
do with making money?

Well, the real reason my father has delved into
our history is I'm encouraging him to start a
family research business. I've been
investigating this area for some time and was
surprised to learn that despite the huge interest
in family trees, the number of people who are
actually offering family research services is
tiny.

***********************

What dark secrets are hidden in your
family's past?

***********************

We've all wondered where we come from at
some time or another. Alas, tracing your family
tree can be very daunting and time-consuming .
. . at least to the uninitiated.  Most of us are put
off by the very thought of having to go down
the records office or trawl the obscure corners
of the Internet.

And yet the huge fascination with tracing our
family tree remains. Type in ancestry into
google and you get more than 17 million results.
When the 1901 census went online last year, the
demand was so big it crashed the servers for
days. Recent TV schedules have included
ancestry-related programmes such as 'Who Do
You Think You Are?' and 'Empire's Children'.
Even Friends Reunited has an ancestry related
spin-off with 'genesreunited'!

But what you don't see very often are services
designed to help ordinary people to track their
family trees. Well, all that is about to change!
You see, I've done some digging and
discovered that you could be filling this massive
gap in the market could make up to £30,000 a
year from home.

This is a great little business if you are looking
for a change of direction, a different lifestyle or
retired/stay-at-home mum looking for an extra
income or a new hobby.

You can be your own boss, set your own
working hours and actually enjoy getting up in
the morning to go to 'work'.  All you need is a
computer with Internet access plus a printer and
away you go!

And the good news is you don't have to spend
days and weeks trailing around cemetery
offices, records offices or public libraries; the
Internet has made it viable as a low-cost, part-
time, home-based business.

I've covered this before in the hard copy
WRMM newsletter and the more I investigated
this business the more its potential excites me.
And I thought today's eletter would be a great
chance to give you a detailed look at what the
business involves to see if you agree!

OK, so let's get the start up costs out of the way
first. Apart from your PC with printer and
Internet connection you're going to need:

- Subscriptions to ancestry websites - around
£150 per year (you could easily recoup this
from your first job!). I'll name a few later.

- Ancestry software - you can pick up the
professionally recommended Root Magic Basic
software as a download for about £18 and that's
all you'll need.

- Membership of The Society of Genealogists -
this is optional, though it will add some
credibility to your business by becoming a
member - £45 per year.

- Advertising: expect to spend around £15 per
month on Google Adwords and £20 - £30 for a
typical local ad (this alone could bring in a few
weeks work). The great thing is once you are
established a lot of business comes from
referrals (i.e.: free advertising!)

- Other sundry ongoing costs include A4 Paper,
inkjet cartridges, general stationery including
presentation folders etc.

By my reckoning you get away with £300 max
to start and then around £50 per month ongoing
costs for advertising. And when you realise you
could be making £600+ a week from just 2
customers that's a great return on investment!
Even if you ran this part-time in the evenings or
weekends you could easily be making an extra
£200 - £300 per week.

Now I should point out that I have not conjured
up these figures from thin air. In fact I have
tracked down someone who has spent almost 25
years researching family histories and run his
own successful family research business for the
past 3 years. He runs his own ancestry service
and makes around £30,000 a year. So all the
numbers I quote and details of tracing are based
real world.

Right, let's get cracking and figure out the first
step of this business:

***********************

1.Finding clients for your service

***********************

One of the good things about this project is that
you can start marketing it from day one - and
get things moving before you've even set up the
business fully. You can advertise effectively
initially by:

- Having some business cards or A5 flyers
printed and placing them in local shop windows
and other businesses that accept this kind of
advertising.  Many even do it for free to attract
customers to their own businesses.

- Local publications are another cheap source of
ads.  Free weeklies, local advertising pamphlets,
parish magazines etc. etc.

- Google Adwords.  A short advertisement with
Google can be very effective and will attract
people looking for this service from right across
the world.

And here's the best thing . . .

Once your business is 'up and running', it will
actually generate its own leads through the
power of referrals. This is the kind of product
that people are sure to discuss with friends and
colleagues and if you can offer some kind of
incentive to recommend your service then you
could have all the work you'll ever need simply
from these referrals.

Don't be put off by the idea of having to sell.
After all, you're offering a service that your
clients already want and have probably started
some of the research. Because you are actually a
specialist in what you do (or soon will be!) you
will be able to do it faster, better and cheaper.

***********************

What do you charge?

***********************

My contact recommends you charge on a fixed
fee basis. You can also specify how far to go
back in time with the tree. Some people may
only want you to go back 4 generations, while
others will want you to go back as far as
possible. For example:

- 4 generations - £85 - £95 (it will take about
half a day to put together)

- 7 generations - £250 - £265 (one and a half
days)

- 10 generations - £380 - £400 (this is a good 3
days work)


***********************

How much could you make?

***********************

I won't quote exact figures as so much depends
on how much marketing you do, what sort of
clients you find and how much work you do.
But based on the above figures and working at a
normal, steady pace full time it is quite feasible
to complete a 7 AND a 10 generation tree in one
week. This would provide a basic income of
£600+ per week or £31,000 per annum. (I
always allow for minimum two weeks holiday
in these projections!)

Of course, you don't have to run this business
full time - you could easily just do it evenings
and weekend and still make a very nice sideline
income.

***********************

So how do you construct a Family Tree?

***********************

I can't go into detail here, but anyone with a bit
of common sense and comfortable searching the
Internet should have no problems. There are
plenty of resources out there that will give you
the steps

First off, get your hands on some decent
genealogy software. This is essential but only
costs around £18. The best on the market is
Roots Magic and can be easily found online. It
will help you to record the information in a
concise, logical way whilst also being able see
at a glance the relationships that exist between
all the members of the 'tree'.

The software is also essential for generating
reports: once you're satisfied that the tree is
complete and falls within the remit specified by
the client, you then use the software to print the
information and present it in a professional
manner. After all, no one who is spending
several hundred pounds on a product of any
kind would expect it to look anything less than a
thoroughly professional job!

Here's a quick step by step on how to research:

Stage 1 - First steps

Firstly make sure you collate as much
information as possible from the client, starting
with the 'subject' of the tree. This may be
themselves, their children, their parents or a
spouse.

Stage 2 - The Censuses

Now you have information going back and
linking to individuals and families in the 1901
census, it should be fairly straightforward from
here on.

This is how you build the tree, step-by-step
and generation-by-generation.

You would then move on to the 1891 census
and then 1881 (censuses were taken every 10
years from 1801 - however only the ones from
1841 onwards contain any names) each time
noting the addresses occupations, birth dates
and children of our subject's ancestors and
slowly constructing a tapestry of the
background to the life of each person and
generation in the tree.

Stage 3 - Pre 1841

If you need to go back beyond the start of the
census information, you need to turn to the
Parish Register information. Compulsory
registration of birth, marriages and death and
the issue of certificates commenced in
September 1837 but prior to that date, the only
formal record of birth was the baptismal register
at churches. Some birth-dates were recorded,
but this was not mandatory. Hence, most of the
time, only the date of baptism will be recorded.
Similarly, there was no official recording of
death dates prior to 1837, only burial dates in
the burial registers. Parish registry was made
compulsory by Henry VIII in 1538 but was not
strictly adhered to until the late 1500s.

Of course, the amount of information available
does diminish with distance in time, but there is
still plenty of data even if only dates and places,
to make your handiwork an important family
'treasure' for generations to come, for your
clients.

Stage 4 - Presentation of results

Embedded within your genealogy software is a
facility to enable the production of various
reports. The most important ones are:

1.      Pedigree Chart: It is obviously not
possible to include a full, printed
relationship chart using a printer that is
only capable of printing on A4 size
paper, so this is the next-best way of
showing the relationships through the
generations.  Each sheet is indexed by
no. and denotes the continuation page
no. for each family line. (I would
strongly recommend that you get the
client to purchase the full chart in order
to see the full tree 'at a glance'.)

2.      Narrative Report: This is, as the title
suggests, a narrative depiction of the tree
split by generation and using the
standardised 'ahnentahfel' numbering
system. Yes I know it looks like
gobbledegook, but it is apparently the
standard reference system.

3.      Family Group Sheet: A series of sheets
grouped by nuclear family, commencing
with the subject's own family, his/her
siblings' families, parent's families and
so on through the generations.

4.      Finally, the Wallchart.  This is the most
difficult bit to produce 'in-house'.  In
fact if you don't have a printer that is
capable of printing on this scale paper
then you will have to outsource this
item.  There are several good genealogy
printers available - just check the
Internet for details. All you do is email
the 'gedcom' file produced by the
program to the printer of your choice,
stating the title required, colours, format
etc, pay online and they will dispatch the
chart back to you normally within 2 or 3
working days. The cost of a chart
containing say 400 people would be
about £35-£40 and you can apply any
mark-up you choose to this. I would
suggest £10-£15 is not unreasonable and
this cost can be added to the cost of the
overall 'package'. You will also need to
add postage and other expenses to the
final invoice.

So there you have it, a great little business that
has huge proven demand and income potential,
low start up costs and is above all fun,
intellectually stimulating and fulfilling.

Sound good to you? Seriously, the more I look
into this, the more I realise it's a market that is
completely underexploited and ripe for
enterprising people like you to get involved in.

Seriously, this is the perfect home business
for stay-at-home Mums, part-time
entrepreneurs and retirees - you don't need
any prior business experience, nor any specialist
skills... there are no qualifications needed and
no exams to pass... you can get started straight
away!

I've listed some resources at the end of this
email to get you started. Alas, there's no single
'business in a box' type programme available to
help you get started.

Well, there isn't until 8th December, when I'm
publishing the first of its kind available
anywhere!

You see, I've hooked up with my family
researcher contact and have persuaded him to
spill the beans ion EXACTLY how to set up and
run this business from home.

Look out for more details then . . .

OK, I'm at the World Money Show in London
tomorrow to check out all the latest trading
software, systems, strategies and tipsters. I will
let you know if there arte any promising forex
or spread betting. I'll let you know if I come
across anything interesting . . .

Regards

Nick

PS: Here are those family research links I
promised:


Websites

http://www.ancestry.co.uk/
Useful family history site.

http://www.cyndislist.com/
Useful directory of genealogy websites around
the world.

http://www.familysearch.org/
Free site

http://www.familyrecords.gov.uk/
The official source of family information on
births, marriages, deaths, census returns, divorce
records, wills and religious records.

http://www.familyrelatives.com/
Birth, marriage and death indexes - chargeable
service.

http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificate
s/
General Records Office - Birth marriage and
death certificate ordering service.

http://www.freebmd.org.uk/
Birth, marriage and death indexes - FREE
service.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
Lists births, marriages and deaths and military
records - mainly older information.

http://www.findmypast.com/home.jsp
Birth, marriage, death and migration indexes
and relatives search - charge applies.

Genealogy Software

http://www.rootsmagic.co.uk/

Recommended Books

The Genealogist's Internet by Peter Christian.
ISBN 1-903365-83-X

Tracing Your Family Tree by Kathy Chater.
ISBN 1-84309-974-8
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