TranscribeMe – Transcription Jobs

TranscribeMe offers audio typing jobs with a difference – and the difference is that you simply log on and transcribe very short recordings, typically a minute apiece. Quite often you’ll just transcribe short 8-10 seconds bites of audio. There are no long interviews to transcribe. And, the good news is, the rate of pay’s quite decent at $20 per audio hour transcribed.

High Profile Clients

Clients include big names including: Oracle, KMR, Bose, Medallia, Genesys, Deloitte, Facebook, Kaplan, BNSF Railway, Ipsos, Cisco

The rate of pay for typing jobs at TranscribeMe is per audio hour transcribed as they can measure the length of each of the individual digital recordings that you transcribe. But, it takes longer than one hour to transcribe one hour’s audio tape. The industry standard says it’ll most likely take you four hours (4-6 hours in some instances) to transcribe that one hour. Of course, your first hour is the slowest and once you’ve got the hang of it you can fly through.

You can speed up or slow down the audio – you’ll soon find your sweet spot where the speed of speech matches your typing speed, so there’s no need for you to rewind it and have to listen again.

Personally, I can usually transcribe at a rate of 1:2.5 or 1:3, so that’d be $7-8/hour for me. Many regular transcribers state their earnings at $8/hour.

The real beauty of TranscribeMe though is the way they have chopped up the audio files. Instead of you receiving a full hour of audio to transcribe, they’ve broken it down into many pieces and you simply transcribe as much, or as little, as you’re able to transcribe, at a time that suits you. This method of working is called crowdworking – a crowd of people gather and produce the total job, rather than one person being wholly responsible of producing the whole end result.

And, there’s a TranscribeMe App, so you can even use your downtime on trains or waiting for friends, to earn a little extra.

Some audio is, obviously, illegible. That might be for a variety of reasons – e.g. if one person with a bad accent, who mumbles, uploads to their website a 4 hour dull meeting, then you might find it’s best to walk away from the site for the rest of the day and return once that audio’s been dealt with by other people. On the other hand, some people might be 100% clear and a joy to transcribe!

They are well worth checking out! It’s almost instant money – and a good long-term bet. The income potential won’t pay your huge mortgage, but it can certainly provide you a good “fall back on” task to do if you’re able to live by earning just $30-40/day.

TranscribeMe will make you do some tests before you start, just so they know you can do the work. This is their way of filtering out people who are totally unsuitable for the work. If you can listen and type what you hear, then it’s good to give it a go and see how you get on! Judge the potential for yourself and how it fits into your income needs and schedule.

Once you register, you will be asked to take the first qualifying transcription exam and training module. All successful candidates will go on the waiting list and be rapidly deployed to the next available project.

It’s not just in English either – there are other languages sought after by TranscribeMe.

The payout rate threshold is quite low and a lot of transcribers cash out after every session, transcribing enough to meet the minimum payout each time they log on. It can be nice and motivating to set this as a personal goal!

Website: http://www.transcribeme.com

Transcription Equipment

With files arriving electronically, you’ll need some speakers to be able to listen to the audio recordings. Controlling the recording is something best done with a simple foot pedal. Although audio transcription software enables you to speed up/slow down, rewind or forward the tape manually, if you’re typing then you need a better/faster solution in order to really hammer out the typing and not get annoyed at having to stop to rewind the recording a little.

Footpedals plug into your USB port and you then use the simple pedal to rewind just a few seconds. Once you’ve got the tape running at the right speed that’s all you’ll need. One tap of your foot on the left hand side of the pedal and the tape rewinds about 2 seconds and continues playing. To rewind further back just hold your foot on the pedal. Restarting/replaying happens automatically when you take your foot off the pedal. Audio transcription foot pedals are the real key to doubling your income by being able to just type without stopping! Really worth the investment – and they keep their value and are easy to sell on at any future point!

^{Last checked: October 2016}