{"id":706,"date":"2010-06-23T21:29:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-24T02:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/genealogy-as-a-profession-i-need-some-advice\/"},"modified":"2013-07-09T16:48:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-09T21:48:00","slug":"genealogy-as-a-profession-i-need-some-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/genealogy-as-a-profession-i-need-some-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"Genealogy As a Profession? I Need Some Advice!"},"content":{"rendered":"

For this month\u2019s ProGen Study Group<\/a> assignment, we are to design our business plan.\u00a0 Since starting this study group several months ago, I\u2019ve been trying to figure out what exactly I want to be \u201cwhen I grow up.\u201d\u00a0 I have lots of ideas rolling around in my head, but I feel very limited in my knowledge at this point, so it\u2019s hard to make any decisions.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Back when we worked on our education plans for ProGen, I decided I could focus more on the writing aspect, considering corporate communications is my primary profession and I love it.\u00a0 I figured it would require the least amount of \u201ceducation,\u201d since I know how to write and follow guidelines.\u00a0 Plus I\u2019ve read several types of genealogy articles, papers, and books and I feel comfortable with that aspect of genealogy.\u00a0 But my main concern is:\u00a0 Is there a market for this type of work?\u00a0 It seems like many of the genealogists I know love not only the research, but the writing aspect as well.\u00a0 I would think that there are others who simply like the hunt, but dread putting it all together in some usable fashion (i.e., a book, paper, article, website, etc.).\u00a0 At any rate, my educational goals at the moment focus on general genealogy (learning about various record types) and writing.<\/p>\n

But in the back of my mind, I still want to help people with their research (I love the hunt and learning all I can about the people I research!!).\u00a0 The problem is, I am not necessarily well-versed in a specific record type or a specific area or region.\u00a0 Right now, I know a little bit about many things\/areas, but not really anything that I could specialize in.\u00a0 On the flipside, I don\u2019t know enough about \u201ceverything\u201d to be a generalist.\u00a0 Again, my educational goals are structured to fill this void, but it\u2019s going to take some time (years I imagine) before I would feel comfortable taking on paying clients.\u00a0 Sure, I can find just about anyone in the censuses using online databases, but there is so much more to genealogy than census records.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s my dilemma, or maybe not.\u00a0 Perhaps I\u2019m just too close to the situation and my insecurities to find my mojo.<\/p>\n

What do you think?\u00a0 Is there a market out there for simply the writing aspect that I should pursue?\u00a0 What about the research side of things?\u00a0 Should I think about focusing on a specific record type (or set of record types) and\/or a specific region?\u00a0 To all the professionals out there, how did you decide which direction to go, and did you stick with or evolve over time?\u00a0 I\u2019d certainly love for everyone to weigh in\u2026I\u2019m sure there are plenty of others with the same types of questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For this month\u2019s ProGen Study Group assignment, we are to design our business plan.\u00a0 Since starting this study group several months ago, I\u2019ve been trying to figure out what exactly I want to be \u201cwhen I grow up.\u201d\u00a0 I have lots of ideas rolling around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genblog","cat-25-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3HcLI-bo","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3579,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions\/3579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}