Cyndi's List supplements operating expenses with affiliate advertising.
The list was first created as a short list of genealogy bookmarks that was shared with the members of the Tacoma-Pierce County Genealogical Society[1][2] at the September 1995 meeting.
[3] The website opened in March 1996; by the end of that year, it had more than 10,000 links.
In 2012 the links directory of Cyndi's List was duplicated by a rival website.
The top level divisions in November 2007 were: There were several other indexes, and a search facility using Google.