what are typical charges for a genealogist?

[carubia]

I recently contacted a relatively well-known genealogist in Sicily about searching church records in the town where he lives. In my first email I didn't specify what I was looking for, but within one hour he responded with an image of the marriage record of my great-great-great-great grandparents from 1771. (I had given him a link to my tree on Ancestry, so that's how he knew who they were.) We exchanged several emails where he said we could discuss his fee and I gave him a sort of wish list of records I would like to find. The next day he sent me 3 more images of records not available on LDS microfilm. He said I could pay him by PayPal, but didn't say how much.

He sent the first image so quickly, he almost would've had to have had it in his possession already, since it was from a church in a different town from where he lives. He said he has indexes of all marriages, civil and religious, in those towns going back 4 centuries, and for one of the marriages I had given him the exact date whereas for the other 2 records I specified the year, so they weren't that hard to find.

My question is, how much would be a normal fee for this service? Obviously I'm going to ask him how much he charges, but I want to get an idea of what is appropriate.

[carubia]

I just wanted to update this with the conclusion.

The genealogist wrote me later, telling me his charges. He wanted a certain amount per document, which was much lower than I expected. It seems that he already has digitally photographed all the marriage records from late 17th c. up to 1907. He also sent me a list of all the marriages he has, so I can just go through the list and request files from it.

[justinfrombklyn]

can you provide the name of the town and church where in sicily?

[carubia]

The town is Ribera. I'm not sure how many parishes there are there, but he has marriage records from all of them. The first record I mentioned was from a church in Cianciana. It seems that he has comprehensive records for that comune, too.

[Marcello_DAleo]

In Ribera, as in Cianciana, in the past there was only 1 parish church.

[rp76226]

What fees did he charge? Who is the genealogist and how does one contact him? Normally, if there was more than one church in a town, all the records are held in a master church. That's how it was for Racalmuto, Sicily.