General Notary Work VS. Loan Signing
Which type of work do most notaries prefer?
Let’s do a macro analysis of why it’s good to focus on the general notary side of your business. Many of our Notary Google Ad clients that we’ve received initially have trouble wrapping their head around the idea of earning a great living doing general notary work. They’ll tell us that it’s not possible to make any money doing a general notary appointment for $5 or $10 or whatever the per-signature fee is in their state. This is true. However, in most states, the notary is allowed to decide on a travel fee at their discretion for mobile notary work. This is where the money is. Once again, don’t forget to strictly follow the regulations of your state. If there is a certain maximum amount you are allowed to charge in your state, always abide by the rules and regulations.
Let’s compare loan signing work to general notary work. Many of our clients do appointments in both categories. What they tell us is that they prefer general mobile notary appointments compared to loan signing appointments for the following reasons:
No Printing
They don’t have to print hundreds of pages and watch their profit margins get eaten up by printing costs (paper, ink, upgrading to high-efficiency printers)
Instant Payments
They don’t have to wait weeks to get paid by signing services
Full Payments
They don’t have to split half or more of the signing fee with the signing services who are just acting as the middlemen
Low Competition
They don’t have to compete against dozens of signing agents in their area to be the first to respond when signing services send out a job on a mass text message list
Quicker Appointments
The general notary appointments are much quicker, usually only 1 or 2 signatures. Oftentimes, they are only at the appointment for 10 or 15 minutes plus the drive time, and the client usually already has their document in hand. By contrast, the loan signing appointments are much more time consuming, especially when you include the printing time.
Consistent Work Year-Round
Loan Signings are seasonal and depend on the housing and borrowing market as a whole. By contrast, the need for general notary work is steady year round. People are always having major life events, health crises, buying and exchanging personal property, etc. People get divorces year round, they need Power of Attorneys and Wills year round, there are hundreds of types of documents that need notarizing year round.
When asked if they would prefer to make $100 from a mobile notary appointment for general notary work or make $100 from a loan signing, they overwhelmingly say that they would prefer to make that same $100 from a mobile notary appointment. The question is, how does one get high dollar general notary appointments coming in. How can they receive more of these phone calls? There are a variety of ways to make that happen. Our #1 recommendation is to run Google Ads, because the calls start coming in immediately if done right. However, it is very hard to get good results unless you are experienced with Google Ads. There are a lot of traps you can fall into which result in you blowing a lot of money on advertising and getting little to no results. We would highly recommend you do not run ads on your own.
If you are interested in running Google Ads, you may contact us at team@notarypublicmarketing.com. These blog posts will focus more so on the top organic ways that you can utilize to grow the general notary side of your business, rather than paid advertising. Some of these strategies will also help you grow other parts of your business. Some people offer related services in addition to general notary services, like loan signings, apostille, fingerprinting, translation, and more. The focus of these blog posts will be general notary, but many of these strategies can very well grow your other related business as well. Read our other blog posts to learn how to grow your notary business.