If you’re a professional genealogist (or have considered becoming one), you probably have come to discover that you need to know more than how to research. You also have to know how to run a business!
A new series of quick reference guides can help you. So far, the GenBiz Solutions guides include:
- Starting a Genealogy Business
- Creating a Marketing Plan
- Building a Business Blog
- Building Media Relationships
- Creating a Sales Process
The first guide, Starting a Genealogy Business, really gets you thinking about your business goals. Is there a particular niche you can carve out in the genealogy world? What further education or credentialing should you get? Should you work for yourself or someone else? For the beginner, I find relevant the brief introductions to legal issues, finances, taxes and budgeting. Where this guide really shines, though, are the many creative product ideas and a short intro to marketing and growing your business.
Consider this first guide the equivalent of taking a seasoned genealogy professional out for coffee and picking his or her brain. (Depending on where you’d go for coffee, this guide is probably cheaper!) And you don’t even have to write down all the websites and other resources on a napkin: Thomas MacEntee provides a full page of links to additional resources on every topic he addresses.
The entire series makes for great reading and reference for someone who has never started a business before and wonders how to become a professional genealogist. Click here to check out the GenBiz Solutions Guides.
Want to hear more ideas? Check out Marian Pierre-Louis interviewed me for her Genealogy Professional Podcast Episode 29 (listen here) and Gen Biz author Thomas MacEntee in episode 26 (listen here.)
