I sometimes wonder how many people are seduced by the advertising. Websites tend not to explain at the outset the amount of research and evaluation will be needed - they craft their advertisements to make the process appear easy.
There have been posts on Rootschat mentioning how some people subscribe to a paysite believing that all they need to do is type in their name and they will be given an instant tree.
There are doubtless people who have invested in a DNA kit hoping for a quick and easy way to contact descendants of unknown ancestors or find new cousins - they do not realise the technicalities involved in interpreting DNA results and how distant matches might be. These are the people most likely to give up easily.
(There may well also be some people who will happily take but never give information).
A few years ago my daughter offered to buy me a DNA kit for Christmas. I did some research into how matching worked and decided that I would need to invest many hours in understanding the process before I could begin to interpret results, then I would need to spend much more time finding spouses (and perhaps also children) for all the siblings of the ancestors I had found in my direct line. Regretfully, I decided that this would require much more time than I could spare (so she bought me a new lawnmower
).
