There are a lot of people who look at
making money through transcription.
These people image that this is something that isn’t that hard because
honestly all you are doing is listening to some audio and typing it up. When you look at it that way it doesn’t seem
that hard. The problem is that the whole
concept of transcription is misleading because it is actually very hard and a
very fickle mistress.
There are a lot of things you need to
consider before you delve into the world of transcription. These things include the type of
transcription you are going to do, the equipment that you need, who you are
working with and just how much you are actually going to be getting paid.
The
Types of Transcription
When you think about the different types of
transcription you will think that it’s all the same. You listen and type. This is not true and there are a number of
different sub-sections of transcription that you have to know about. There are legal transcriptionists, medical
transcriptionists and general transcriptionists to name but a few. The big difference between them is that the
legal and medical people need to study.
Yes, you actually have to do a course or
have experience in the field to get these jobs.
This is why they are the high paying ones because not everyone has
hundreds to spend on a course that they may fail.
The
Equipment
From personal experience I can honestly say
that you need to have the right equipment to do this. I started out with the headphones that I use
to listen to music. While this offers
really great bass and tone it is not actually good for transcription. I ended up buying a pair of transcription
headphones from Olympus that are possibly the weirdest things that I have every
put into my ears, but the sound difference was amazing.
Not only do you need to look at the
hardware that you have, but you need to check out your software. Using Windows Media Player is not going to
cut it because the player sucks and is not made for transcription. Luckily you can actually get transcription
software for free and this is what I did.
I got Express Scribe which offers a free version and a Pro version,
obviously I took the free one.
Who
You Work With
If you have everything you need you are now
facing the tricky part of making money with transcription. Who should you be working with? My first stop was oDesk because that is my
first stop for most things. The people
on oDesk do look for transcriptionists, but you don’t want to work with all of
them. You are going to find the people
that are good to work with and then you are going to find the nightmare
people.
The audio that you get from people on oDesk
will not be the best. There will be
crackling, mumbling and large amounts of background noise. This makes it really, really hard to figure
out what people are saying. The turn-around
time is also generally quite short when you look at these jobs. This is annoying when you think that 1 hour
of audio can take up to 4 hours to transcribe if it is very clear.
Steering clear of oDesk is an option
because there are a lot of websites that look for transcriptionists. These websites and companies will vary in
what they want. Some of them will have
you transcribe from your browser and others want you to be onsite. Most of these websites will ask you to
complete a test before they put you on their books. The tests are not always very hard, but
sometimes they can be a real nightmare.
What
You Earn
Now to the important part and that is what
you are actually going to be earning. In
the world of transcription the earnings vary so much it is both funny and
scary. Some people are able to earn $50
for an audio hour while others earn $10 or less. The amount you earn will depend on who you
are working for.
I have noticed that a trend with oDesk is
to offer around $10 per audio hour. This
breaks down to $10 for 4 hours which for some people just does not cut it. Of course, you do find the random oDesk
employer looking to pay more, but then you are going to be competing with
hundreds of other applicants.
Legal and medical transcriptionists will
earn more because of the expertise that they need. For this type of work you should go through a
transcription company because they will offer you better rates than freelance
sites.
I have found some general transcription
sites that offer really good pay. There
are also certain sites like Quicktate that offer transcription work for a
decent pay. Sites like this are different
to normal because you transcribe short messages or parts of a full transcription. You will then get paid for the number of
words that you have transcribed. If you
hit a busy time with them then you can make some decent money.
Making money with transcription is actually
a lot harder than you might imagine. It is
also not for everyone as you need to be able to understand a range of different
accents and mumbling. Of course, trying
it out never hurt anyone.
