Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Need a research job done? Try Genealogy Freelancers

The web site http://www.genealogyfreelancers.com/ was announced last week by IRBO, Inc. The headerr says "Connecting your family through genealogy specialists around the globe." The site summary says:

"Genealogy Freelancers is an affordable way to connect you to a genealogist, researcher, translator and other genealogy specialists in any country of your ancestral roots. Let the specialist come to you rather than lose time searching for them so Post your project today! For the specialist; we offer freelance professional genealogists, researchers, translators, publishers, village photographers, and more the opportunity to work independently in their genealogy field. Choose from posted projects that suit your specialty and bid NOW!"

This site is sort of the eBay of Genealogy Services - if you need a research job done, you can post it to the site and researchers will bid on it. If you are a researcher, you can bid on jobs and if you are the accepted bidder than you do the work. An interesting concept. Here is a screen shot of the top of the web site:



And a screen shot of the middle of the web site page, with the latest projects being bid on.



For the Genealogy Seeker: "Just post your project, compare the bids you receive, then choose the best specialist for the job. Let us help you to connect to a freelance genealogist researcher, photographer, translator or people locator at rates you can afford."

For the Genealogy Specialist: "We can help you find clients from all walks of life. Just browse the right project for your expertise and place your bid. Sign up for free and start working full time or part time in the field you love."

What's interesting to me is that, in the screen shot above, all of the "Latest Projects" listed are not in the United States! They are in Europe and Mexico.

I signed up, for now, as a Seeker. You have to agree to the Terms and conditions before submitting your information. The T&Cs are very detailed - you can see them at https://www.genealogyfreelancers.com/index.php?action=register - scroll to the bottom of the page.

Project guidelines are detailed here. An example of how the site works is here. There are fees involved for both the seeker and the specialist, as detailed on the "how the site works" page.

For Genealogy specialists, the registrant needs to the categories in which they have expertise, their location, their language translation capabilities (source>target), and their membership level (free, silver or gold).

It seems to me that this web site business plan is very well thought out, and that the terms and conditions cover many, if not all, potential problems. It would be useful for an attorney to review them to determine any problems for seekers and specialists.

It will be interesting to see how this web site expands, and succeeds or fails, in the genealogy marketplace. The concept is novel, and might be a welcome alternative to the classical methods of seekers contracting with a researcher and for specialists in finding clients.

4 comments:

starrie said...

Hmmm, very interesting idea. I think I like it. I read over the website and it seems that it has been put together by a group of people who know their way around genealogy as well. It seems very well put together. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Anonymous said...

Think about this.
If you really did find a working formula that made you, say $1,000 a week online on average and it kept producing income no matter what, would you want to sell that idea to a bunch of noobs for $47 a pop and expect to retire on the proceeds? No way, man! It does not compute. It does not add up. And it does not make any sense to do that. I certainly don’t go shouting from the rooftops how I make my money online. Hell, I don’t want the competition taking a slice of my pie and neither would anyone who really does make good cash online.
homebased

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