© Somegeekintn
Afraid a membership to a reverse cell phone directory costs too much? What if you were able to use it to make money – maybe start your own business. Some of you have the skills to do just that.
There are some people who are just really good at finding information. Maybe you are one of those people. You can find anything on the internet, you know where to go when you have a question, you understand how to put pieces together to come up with an answer. You are a seeker.
There are a number of jobs for people with these skills but one I know of can be done from home with a little practice and the need for these skills is growing in light of the economy, increasing home foreclosures, and a rise in delinquent debt.
Not many people have heard of the term “skip tracing” unless you’ve worked in collections, as a private investigator or as a repossession agent but it refers to a service that is used thousands of times a day by major companies, small businesses, attorneys, and even consumers.
Skip tracing refers to the act of finding a person. Collection departments need to find the person who owes them a debt when the phone number and address they have on file is no longer valid. Repossession agents need to skip trace someone when they’ve been assigned to pick up a vehicle and they don’t have a good address. Attorneys need help finding witnesses who have moved. People want help finding relatives, friends, or ex-loves they have lost touch with.
While some companies do the initial skip tracing work themselves, they know it’s more cost effective to outsource that work to someone who specializes in the skill. It’s not size of the skip tracing operation that matters as much in landing new business as it is the success rate of that business.
If you are good at following leads, calling people, getting information form available resources and using logic to figure out where to look for a person, you could start such a business. Because the job is not actually that of a private investigator, many states don’t require special licensing in order for someone to start a skip trace business.
It’s also a very desk-oriented job. If you don’t have a good address for a person, you can’t just drive around and hope to find them. You follow paper trails – trails found in places like a reverse cell phone directory, among other online databases. You follow the leads from those databases, treating each lead as a clue of where to look next, who to call next, who might be in contact with the person you are looking for.
There are lots of ways to get started in this business, too. Maybe you start out small and just use your reverse cell phone directory membership to help your friends check out the people in their life. Have friends who are single and dating someone new each week? Help them find information about the new people in their life.
Other ways to make money with your own skip trace and reverse lookup service:
- Help your friends find out who is calling them from unkown phone numbers
- Track down lost acquaintances for your family and friends
- Put up a small website and advertise your service through articles and online ads
- Make business cards and post them on community bulletin boards (especially at colleges!)
With jobs as scarce as they are today and unemployment at a record high, people are becoming resourceful at making their own incomes from home. The trick is to find a niche you can be good at, that’s in high demand, and that you can start out with easily.
If you have never seen the inside of a reverse cell phone directory database, becoming a member usually only involves a fee of about $35-40. Join Reverse Mobile, for example, and start digging through all of the information that’s available. Use it to practice doing a few things for friends and see how good you are at finding people and problem solving using the available information. It might just lead to a brand new career.
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