It's a good article, although depressing.  I've been in the business seven years.  Not terribly long in comparision to some.  Yes, we've done a ton of work and made lots of money the first five years.  The last two have stunk and continue to get worse.  I've laid off most of my employees.  Competition and less work is just one part of the problem.  See O'Connor title article for more info.  The other huge problem that has resulted in most of our lost work is all the on-line internet access.  The counties that account for over 80% of our work here in IL are all on-line.  Just about all our title and abstract clients are doing "in house" searches now.  We have lost most of our work because of this!  Now my days are filled with crappy orders from clients who cannot find it on line and require pre-computer searches.  Of course they are all big  rushes by the time I get the work.  My only warning to those who work in a county(s) where the data is not available on line or through a program yet, is to make hay while the sun shines and hope that the county takes a long time to make their data available.  Prepare to suffer a lot of lost work if your county is going on line.  It's enough to make me want to move to a small little "off-line" county somewhere and charge a fair buck for a search.  Just wanted to complain out loud.  Thanks for listening.   Good luck to all!!!