we are having a debate here, do you think that genealogy, is easy, and are professionals overpaid. I think so.

Question

you dont need actual training, do you its a hobby mainly why not get paid loads of money for enjoying yourself.

Mistress i did my family history found it really easy, so yes i think it would be big money for old rope kinda job.

Answer 1

Its not very difficult back to 1837, but if you want to go further then you may be happy to pay someone.

Answer 2

No genealogy isn't easy. It's a great hobby and expensive and you hit a lot of road blocks. Some of which you just can't get past no matter how hard you try.
Paid professionals worked very hard to become professional. It's the same as if you worked hard at your job and got all the promotions to make you a professional. You would expect the pay of a professional. I've never used a professional, I thought about becoming one until I read the book on how to become one. Its gruling. I've been doing genealogy for about 20 yrs. I don't think I could pass the test. Now I don't mind looking up stuff for folks but I don't do it for pay. I believe in the pay forward system. I have someone that looks up stuff for me as she lives in the area I'm researching and I look up stuff for folks that are working in this area and so on.
So I guess the answer I have is no I don't feel paid professionals over charge. They do alot more then you realize. In fact it's probably things you wouldn't even think of doing. They also have to pay for the documents you need for your documentation. Sometimes they get the results sometimes its a dead end. They also spend many hours of studying to pass that professional test. When you're in a book store thumb thru a book about becoming a professional and see if you could pass the test.

Answer 3

Genealogy is FAR from easy and the ones that get paid to do it deserve every penny. Just your question indicates that you don't know much about it. Just because you enjoy doing something doesn't mean you should do it for free for everyone. It is something you need a lot of training to do. You might not need to attend a university, but there is a LOT to know not just in locating resources but about history in general. Also there is an accreditation program to follow.

If it is that "easy" to you then why aren't you sitting back in your cushy genealogy job milking the cash cow?

EDIT*** European genealogy is ALOT easier than researching in the states. I say this from personal experience. My ancestors were all from Europe. My husbands family, on the other hand was from the US. We have 50 states and official records began in those states at different times. Some states systems for keeping vital records weren't set up until after 1900. Arkansas, for example wasn't officially keeping records until 1914. I have yet to find the date of death for my husbands great grandmother. She died sometime between the commencement of the 1910 census and 1913, when my husbands great grandfather remarried. There is no stone in any cemetery listing her death date, no official record and nothing in the newspaper.... EASY??? I think not.

Answer 4

It's NOT easy! There are tons and tons of resources for genealogy, so that means tons and tons of information for one to sift through to gather anything pertinent. Many genealogists rely on non-standard documents, like family Bibles and graveyards to get their information. That means actually travelling to those graveyards, searching for the site you want, deciphering the dates and names on those old tombstones, and then putting it all together in an logical way. Some families histories are well documented and easy to gather names, dates and places. Others are not so well documented and take much more research.
So now you have a trip to the library and courthouse for documents and articles that may mention a family member's name. It's quite overwhelming actually...

Most people who make lots of money are getting paid to do their "hobby". Professional musicians, photographers, actors, writers and novelists, athletes...

If you think genealogists get paid too much, don't pay one to do your family history. Do it yourself and see just how "easy" it is.

Answer 5

genealogy may be fun and a hobby for many but it is still not easy. it can take years of researching. it does help to be able to contact professionals in other states when i don't have the resources available to me on the internet or in my state.

Answer 6

Genealogy is only easy when you can find the records. Unfortunately, the world hasn't always been full of good recordkeepers and time has also taken its toll on our ability to safely store our records.

Those coming into genealogy in the last 10 years don't understand how to really research properly. They think you only need to power up your computer and start clicking away and pretty soon you'll have all the records back to the beginning of time. There's little concept of privacy laws, veracity of the records they're reading, plagiarism, and where to go when the records you need aren't on the internet.

Entire countries don't allow any personal records (BMD or otherwise) to be put on the internet. They're closely held records and they can't be published. If your ancestors are Spanish, Flemish, Japanese, Korean, Greek or Cuban how do you plan to do the research? Can you read those languages? Can you read Latin? Can you decipher Japanese or the Greek alphabet? Can you understand the political and historical context of the places/people you're researching? All of this is necessary if you're going to trace families back beyond 1850.

As for not needing training, I beg to differ. Genealogy isn't all birth certificates and census records. You need years of training to be a professional genealogist. I've spent up to 10 years just finding records on one obscure person...waiting patiently for a seminarian from Poland to help me find records from a tiny village that no longer exists...waiting for records from a German archives that took their researcher almost a year to locate...waiting for a History student from Lithuania to go back home to search through a tiny archives that's been closed for 40 years with the records sitting in a building that time has forgotten. That takes more than "hobby interest". All of that work went into finding one man who came to the US as an orphan in 1871 at the age of 9 whose surname was slaughtered on the passenger records and who never used the same date of birth for more than 60 years in this country. But we found him. And we found his parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great grandparents. But we worked very hard to get that far and it was through serious research and nothing resembling a "hobby".

Do I get paid "loads of money for enjoying myself"? No, I get paid a reasonable fee for enjoying myself. I get to pick and choose my projects, plan my research around the rest of my competing family interests, and can even incorporate nice little trips into my research (nothing is better than researching in Montreal in May).

You don't need me to help you if your family has never deviated from the normal and always lived in an English-speaking country. But 1/2 of the world's population isn't like you. When you hit a brick wall and can't find a way around it, over it or under it, you might appreciate people like me just a little more...especially when we find people who you thought were aliens who just appeared on the scene at the age of 45 and have no other clues to their background.

Answer 7

I don't know! I think it would be hard enough!