Other things to be considered: 1. Are you asking for lookups? If so, are you asking for specific heads of families or is the person to find your ancestor as a child? 2. If he spends six hours looking at Millers in PA (just an example) and doesn't find anybody for you--does he deserve to get paid? That's a lot of time he spent, that you won't have to...assuming he told you which reels he looked at...so that it won't be duplicated by someone else looking for the same person. 3. If you're asking for research, we all know that one can spend hours looking through records and not always find what (or anything) we want. Now the person might be a certified professional and know better where to look for a particular solution to a problem, but some folks are going to be disappointed if they don't have solid names & generations. Some professional researchers are going to charge by the hour for doing the research whether they find anything or not. Other professionals will spend extra time beyond what they've been contracted for to try to find something tangible to send. Does this mean the first one is dishonest? 4. (Many professional research companies insist on a several hundred dollar retainer before they even begin.) One way to avoid being taken is to request small amounts at a time--except sometimes it takes a lot of looking to solve a problem--and eliminate ten of the eleven "John Miller's". If you're paying for lookups, and not research, you may have to pay for copies of the records on all eleven John Millers so that you can make your own value judgment. Perhaps the best thing to do is to discuss what both individuals want: just copies of existing records, or copies of the proof of someone's ancestry. Does the researcher absorb parking & copying fees, or is that going to be extra? If he looks something up in an index, is he supposed to get just the family that has a son John, 9 years old; or do you want copies of all the families by that surname. If what you want is going to be more than a few dollars, it isn't unreasonable to be expected to send a retainer. He's going to have expenses involved in putting your things together. But negotiating ahead of time, so that both know what is expected, and when, is a must. Both should keep in touch if it is a long term project. Genealogy is a fun project, but it's not inexpensive, whether one does all the work, or contracts it out. Now, if we could only convince the few to STOP TEARING THE PAGES OUT OF THE BOOKS (or taking the very books themselves). Some of them have my ancestors on them too. Karen