I noticed today that we have had several notaries signing up on Source of Title so I checked our "referrer" logs and came across a post on Notary Rotary about Source of Title recently.  Many of the comments seems a bit harsh; including: "...for $199 it ought to include a free bottle of champaigne, free box of chocolates on Valentine's day and free fireworks on the 4th."  While it is kind of humorous, it is not entirely accurate. Nobody that uses our site is required to pay anything, we offer many services for FREE; though we certainly appreciate the support of those who do upgrade their free service with subscriptions and/or enhanced listing. 

There seems to be a large misconception about Source of Title out there.  I wish they would take the time to find out more about us before they jump to those kinds of conclusions.

Here is the reply I posted on Notary Rotary:

I noticed that we, Source of Title, have had an unusually spike in traffic from notaries and I have managed to trace much of it to this forum. I have heard many good things about Notary Rotary, in fact, we even have a link to this site on our links page.

I wanted to take a moment to clarify a misconception that seems to be developing about Source of Title. The $199/year fee that is mentioned is not a requirement to use our site. Registration is FREE and includes a basic listing in our directory, access to our forums, and access to select articles and directory listings.

We do offer two fee based services: Subscriptions and Enhanced Listings. Subscriptions provide access to all of the free listings in our directory for those searching for vendors. Enhanced Listings make listings available to all of our registered users with no subscription required, as well as preferential placement in our directory.

Subscriptions are $199/year, and Enhanced Listings are charged based on the number of counties you cover, starting at $99/year. The vast majority of our users pay us nothing and utilize our services. We don't mind that at all, and we try not to do the "hard sell" to promote the fee based services - but they are there for those who desire those benefits.

I apologize if this post is too "commercial" or appears to be "self-serving." It is not my intention to offend anyone. I just wanted to clear up what I perceived to be a misconception.

As has been observed here, Source of Title's main focus in on the title industry and the majority of our services are targeted to the title agents and abstractors. We offered the listing category for "signing agents" in recognition that they play a large role in the title and closing process. We are by no means a replacement for Notary Rotary. I have often referred signing agents to this site when they inquire about other sites that are out there.

Perhaps we need to do a better job of explaining the services we offer for FREE and what benefits we offer with our Subscriptions and Enhanced Listings.  I know its complicated, but we have to try to balance what we offer for FREE and the value we provide for the fees that keep the servers on.  I hope my post above helps clarify the issue.

Best,
Robert A. Franco
SOURCE OF TITLE