"Once the pandemic ended, fees dropped back down with increased interest rates and less demand for our services."
My fees haven't "dropped back down" at all. I set my own fees. That was the whole point of my post. I believe it's important for us to understand that, as business owners, we have control over what we're willing to accept for our time and effort. All our costs have gone up during that time, as well, just like all their other vendors' costs have. Just by way of comparison, I had to have an electrician come to my home a few weeks ago. Their fee to just show up was $150! [Thankfully, it was just a minor problem...  ]
I can't think of any push-back I've received from from my clients (or new or old GNW customers) on my fees. Hiring parties can drop what they say they're offering, but we don't have to accept that. We can choose instead to go find new clients who are willing to pay fairly, regardless of supply and demand. And you have enough experience under your belt by now to expect to receive fair pay. If your signing service clients are choosing to respond to lowering supply by keeping more of the notary fee for themselves than they did before, then, as I said, it may be worth the effort to work on finding some new clients.
If that doesn't work, I recommend taking a hard look at your profit margin and evaluate whether it's still worth it to do this work. When I have the time, I'll do another take on a post I did years ago on that topic (unless I can find that one to reference). In the meantime, wages are on the way up in many other businesses, possibly making a part time job more attractive for some.
BTW, I haven't looked at the numbers of notaries in our state in a long while, but I suspect they're way down again, in spite of all the new people getting into the field. When they find out how difficult it is to get started (and how much it costs, in this state, at least), I think most move on to other things pretty quickly.
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