I think that Kevin is on the right track here.  I'm going to take a page out of a past life in automotive manufacturing.  The key to staying alive is to have a "Value-Added" process.  In other words you need to define what "Value" you add to the process of Document Examination as an Abstractor.  Quality, expertise, knowledge (of documents or specific counties), analysis; any and all of these are "Value" you add to the process by reviewing and reporting the documents.
          A few on this board have questioned why the companies paying for a $50 to $75 search are pushing for automated online searching, when there are so much more expensive pieces of the process to reduce cost.  The reason isn't cost, it's speed.  Speed to completing a loan a "value-added" service to the lender.  The less time they have to wait for the search (or any other piece of the process for that matter), the less likely the client will have time to rethink their decision or go with a different company, the more time they have to underwrite and (in general) the happier the client will be.  
     Right now, the simple service of finding and retrieving the documents is becoming a "commodity", especially in web-enabled counties.  Persons and companies in any location can perform the serach service and thus the price is being driven down accordingly, due to the excess supply.  What we need to sell to our clients is the Value of our expertise in the counties and the documents that they are asking us to review.

Charles W. Skinner
National Vendor Management
Consumer Marketing Services, Inc. (CMS)