Census help please

David Lang · Post by **David Lang** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 9:25 am

The paying for the search is one thing that annoys me, i dont mind paying for the certificate when i have the right one (not very often first time around!!!) but paying to look at the records is annoying.

If we could put in the same infor we do now and then get the same screen , then choose which cert/certs to download that would be a lot better/cheaper more user friendly imo.

Or i am just frugal and look to save credits were ever i can !!!

trish1 · Post by **trish1** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 9:56 am

I find the certificate images so cheap in relation to those from other places (England/Australia) I really don't mind paying for the searches. I do play around with my searches attempting to get the maximum number that may be relevant to my search for the one credit. What I pay does vary with the exchange rate and at the moment it is in my favour - this is not always the case, but regardless I can get 5 or 6 Scotland certificates for the cost of 1 from England.

What we do have for most Oz indexes is that parent names are included on the birth/death indexes - this tends to limit buying wrong ones - they are very expensive (cheapest I have found $AU17 - at the minute over 8 pounds) but it is rare to buy the wrong one.

Trish

Currie · Post by **Currie** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 9:03 am

The real cost of Scottish certificates is the total expenditure on seeking and obtaining those certificates divided by the total number of correct certificates obtained. I think people would get a bit of a shock if they ever worked it out. Especially for the beginners, who would probably find that the real cost far exceeds 5 credits.

Alan

Susan · Post by **Susan** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 12:48 pm

Hi Alan

Interesting point. Being fascinated with facts and figures and creating spreadsheets all the time to cost or analyse just about anything lol - I actually created a spreadsheet when I first started uing SP - to monitor how much it was costing per image.

To date I have 2347 veiwed images of which 49 (2.0878%) are not relevant and 3671 searches. This gives a cost of £1.3408 (6.704 credits) for each of the 2298 relevant images veiwed.

However some of the searches I carry out are purely for index info - they are for dates after the image cut off points but I can still make good use of the data in the index. So I factored these searches out of the equation to obtain a more acurate cost per relevant image. At present I have 507 searches purely for index info - leaving a balance of 3164 searches for images and 2347 images. This gives a cost of £1.2967 (6.4835 credits) for each of the 2298 relevant images.

One more calculation I carry out is the projected cost of relevant images - there are many images on searches I have done still to be viewed - so I want to know how this will affect the cost per image when I get round to viewing them. Of the 3164 searches for images carried out to date I have viewed a total of 2347 images - but there are a further 768 still to view - giving a total of 3115 images - now assuming that my hit rate for relevant images carries on as before - 16 of the 768 will probably be irrelevant, therefore 3050 will be relevant out of 3155 viewed. This will give a projected cost of £1.2288 (6.144 credits) for each of the 3050 relevant images.

I certainly can't complain about the return I am getting for my money on SP so far.

Susan.

Post by **Anne H** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 6:45 pm

Hi Susan,

You're obviously an expert in many areas but unfortunately, most of us are not!

There's no doubt SP is the worlds best and cheapest...that is as long as you choose the correct certificate. I don't care to calculate my losses since I have 12 overstuffed file cases with hundreds of certificates that could be mine, but aren't. I've spent a little fortune - especially in the first few years of searching!

Let's face it people...you can't beat SP but they do have a monopoly and it's time for them to do the right thing and come up with a subscription service such as Ancestry, then we can all be happy campers.

Just my opinion!

Regards,
Anne H

David Lang · Post by **David Lang** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 7:33 pm

Subscription is the way forward, they would probably in the long run get more cash out of me.

Some month si spend nothing (too busy etc.) , other months i firing money in there every week.

A good subscription package would be brilliant , and with new stuff being added every year it wouldnt be a waste