How to Make Money as a Notary in Virginia: Fees, RON, and Costs

Making money as a notary in Virginia means working around the state’s fee caps rather than against them. The statutory ceilings are low — $10 per traditional act and $25 per electronic act¹ — so the notaries who actually earn a living here stack three things on top of the base commission: uncapped travel fees for mobile work, loan signing assignments that pay per appointment, and remote online notarization that lets you serve clients anywhere in the state at the higher electronic rate.

Everything below assumes you already hold, or are about to apply for, a Virginia commission through the Secretary of the Commonwealth. The commission itself is a $45 application, a $10 clerk’s fee at the circuit court, and a four-year term tied to your birth month.²³ That is the baseline. The income comes from what you do with it.

What You Can Actually Charge Per Act

Virginia caps the fee for a standard paper notarization at $10. The same $10 ceiling applies whether you are taking an acknowledgment, administering an oath, certifying a copy, or certifying an affidavit.¹ Charging more than the cap for a notarial act is illegal.

Two features of the statute keep this from being a dead end. First, a single appointment usually involves multiple notarial acts. A residential real estate closing can carry five or six separate acts across the package, so the per-act fees alone can reach $50 or $60 on one visit. Second, the law explicitly allows you to recover actual and reasonable travel expenses on top of the notarization fee, provided you and the client agree to the charge in advance.¹ For electronic acts, the per-act cap rises to $25.

One boundary to know up front: if you serve as a member of an electoral board or as a general registrar, you cannot collect notary fees during your appointment, and deputy registrars and election officers cannot charge for notarial services tied to election administration.¹

Mobile and After-Hours Work

Travel fees are where mobile notaries turn a $10 service into real income. The state does not cap them, so you set your own rate based on distance, time, and convenience, as long as the client agrees before the appointment. A typical structure is a flat trip fee plus mileage, with the statutory notarization fees itemized separately on the receipt.

Premium pricing lives in the hard-to-reach appointments. Hospitals, nursing homes, jails, and corporate offices with urgent deadlines all pay more for immediate availability. A client facing a late-night deadline on a power of attorney is not comparison shopping. Keep the travel fee and the per-act notarization fee itemized separately on every receipt. That protects you if a client later questions the total and keeps your records clean for tax purposes.

Loan Signing Agent Work

For most Virginia notaries, becoming a certified loan signing agent is the highest-paying lane. Signing agents handle mortgage closings, walking borrowers through document packages that often run past 100 pages. Lenders and title companies typically pay $75 to $150 per signing appointment, with complex commercial closings paying more. That fee is for the signing agent’s time and expertise and sits on top of the per-act notarization charges.

Getting into this work costs more than the base commission. The NNA’s signing agent certification starts around $199. Lenders generally expect errors-and-omissions insurance with at least $25,000 in coverage, and many experienced agents carry $100,000 policies to qualify with a wider range of lenders. You will also need to pass an annual background screening that checks criminal records, motor vehicle records, and national security databases across 104 offense categories.

Demand is strongest in the Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, and Richmond metro areas, where the real estate and corporate markets stay active. The fastest way to get consistent work is building relationships with title companies and signing services. Law firms handling commercial leases are another reliable source of repeat business, because they value accuracy and turnaround over the cheapest quote.

Remote Online Notarization

Virginia was one of the first states to authorize remote online notarization, and the infrastructure here is well established. To offer it, you need an active traditional commission first, then you register separately as an electronic notary with the Secretary of the Commonwealth. The electronic registration costs an additional $45.⁴ You also need a state-approved technology vendor for your electronic signature and seal, and a separate RON platform if you want to run sessions over video.

The financial case is simple. You can charge up to $25 per electronic act instead of $10, and you can serve clients anywhere in the state without burning time or gas on the road. The trade-offs are vendor platform fees that add to your overhead and a required electronic journal of every act, kept for at least five years.⁵ The journal must record the date, time, type of act, document description, signer’s name and address, how you verified identity, and the fee charged.

The Self-Employment Tax Break Most Notaries Miss

Notary fee income has an unusual tax treatment that directly affects your take-home pay. You report notary fees on Schedule C of your federal return, but those fees are exempt from self-employment tax.⁶ You still pay regular income tax on the money. You do not pay the 15.3% self-employment tax a typical sole proprietor would owe on the same dollars.

The exemption covers the notarization fees themselves, not everything you bill. Travel fees, signing agent compensation, and other services bundled into an appointment are regular self-employment income and are subject to self-employment tax. Keep your bookkeeping clean enough to separate the two categories on every invoice. That separation is what preserves the exemption at tax time.

What It Costs to Start Earning

A bare traditional commission runs roughly $100 to $125 before you take your first appointment:

Application fee: $45, nonrefundable, paid to the Secretary of the Commonwealth²
Clerk’s fee: $10, paid at the circuit court when you take the oath⁷
Seal or stamp: $33 to $45
Journal: $10 to $25 (legally required for electronic acts, worth keeping for traditional acts too)

Add $45 for the electronic notary registration if you want to work remotely, plus vendor platform fees that vary by provider.⁴ Signing agent certification adds around $199, and an E&O policy runs roughly $100 to $200 per year depending on coverage level.

What Will End Your Income

A revoked commission means zero earnings from every lane above, so a short list of hard limits is worth keeping in view. The Secretary of the Commonwealth can revoke or suspend your commission for prohibited acts and for the unauthorized practice of law.⁸ You verify identity and witness signatures. You do not advise on what to sign, explain the legal effect of a document, help fill in blanks, or recommend a course of action. Knowingly committing official misconduct is a Class 3 misdemeanor, and lying about a felony conviction on your application is a Class 1 misdemeanor.⁹ Clients who lose money because of your errors can also sue you in civil court, which is the reason to carry E&O insurance even if you never plan to touch a mortgage closing.

1
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 47.1-19 – Fees
2
Secretary of the Commonwealth. Notary Commissions
3
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 47.1-21 – Term of Office
4
Commonwealth of Virginia. Learn About Becoming an Electronic Notary
5
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 47.1-14 – Duty of Care
6
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 525 (2025), Taxable and Nontaxable Income
7
Secretary of the Commonwealth. Notary Application Process
8
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 47.1-23 – Grounds for Removal from Office
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Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 47.1-28 – Willful Misconduct a Misdemeanor