Thanks to the Internet, a lot of people are now making money from the comfort and convenience of their home typing out audio files for clients located all over the world. The transcription industry is huge. This is a multi-billion-dollar industry that is essentially decentralized. There are all sorts of clients from all over the world, who need their text transcribed into the written form.
What is online transcription work like?
There are many platforms out there that use different processes for transcribing audio and video to the written word. Despite these differences, there are certain commonalities that you need to be aware of if you want to make money as a home-based typist or transcriber.
The Basic Process of Transcription
The fundamental process for transcription work involves the following:
Get Access to the Audio or Video
This can take the form of a link, or you might have to login to a platform to access a video or audio file. You just need to click on the media and start listening.
Write Down What you Hear
This is the meat and potatoes of transcription work. You have to listen to the audio or pay attention to the video and write down what the person is saying. This is not as easy as it seems. If you are transcribing an audio file involving several people talking at the same time and at different rates of speed, that’s going to be a problem. That’s how you can tell whether somebody is a basic transcriber with very little experience, or somebody who does this for a living professionally. It can get quite complicated and confusing.
Format Your Report
Depending on the platform you’re on, you have to either copy and paste your transcription into a form, or you can save it into a .doc or .txt file, attach it to an email, and send it to your client.
Why do businesses and individuals need transcription work?
Why is there demand for home based typing work? Why does the market for online transcriptions exist in the first place? A lot of companies record a wide range of materials for corporate purposes. Maybe they’re interviewing a resource. Perhaps they are holding several meetings. Whatever they are doing, generally speaking, for any kind of corporation or establishment to benefit from such meetings, they have to have a written record. This is where transcribers or typists come in. They take the recording of the meeting, and they come up with a transcription. At its most basic form, corporate transcriptions are essentially minutes of a meeting.
Another big area of demand for transcription work involves legal work. A lot of lawyers would rather save time by talking into a digital recording device instead of speaking in front of a stenographer. In many cases, this is not practical because the lawyer might be in a car somewhere, and they brainstorm upon an interesting idea. They can easily give this recording to the stenographer, but generally speaking, they would rather hire somebody who works at a lower rate. Court stenographers and transcriptionists connected with law offices tend to charge a lot more money than home-based transcribers.
Similarly, in the medical context, there is a tremendous demand for medical transcriptions. This is an old industry. In fact, the idea of doctors speaking into some sort of recording device and having that audio transcribed by somebody else, either nearby or far away, is actually quite old. In fact, there are lots of dedicated standalone companies that specialize in medical transcription. The reason why you probably haven’t heard much about this industry in recent years is the fact that it’s going through tremendous change.
Nowadays, a lot of doctors use sophisticated software that automatically transcribes what they’re saying. These pieces of software are getting so sophisticated that it’s really taking a major toll on the medical transcription industry. It is having a tough time transitioning. On top of this, the heavy demand for electronic records mandated by the HIPAA law in the United States also had a generally disruptive effect on the traditional medical transcription industry. If you’re looking to break into medical transcriptions, you might want to think twice.
The good news is, there are other specialty markets out there for transcribers. The long-standing downside to medical transcription is the fact that not everybody can do this type of transcription. You have to be familiar with medical terms. You have to spell medicine names correctly. It’s not simple at all. It’s not like you can just listen to a doctors’ recording and come up with quality output. It doesn’t work that way. In fact, there were many transcription schools that would certify you once you pass several tests because you know how to transcribe a medical dictation.
The Modern Market for Online Transcriptions
As interesting and lucrative as some of the markets I described above, the fast-emerging market for home based typing work and transcriptions involves online content. If you had ever tried to type anything, you know that you can only go as far as how fast you think and type. Your fingers can only move so fast. It’s not unusual for writers who have very clear ideas to bog down and possibly type out 30 words per minute. In fact, if they’re really picky, their output on a permanent basis is actually very, very low. The problem is, a lot of online publishing companies pay per word. If you’re only going to crank out 100 words per hour, you’re going to be in trouble, especially of you get paid per word.
Online transcribers have saved the day. How? These words that you are reading, if they were spoken, they would be dictated at a decent average clip of 100 words per minute. That’s the average. In fact, a lot of people speak at a faster rate than that. When these words are spoken and then transcribed, the writer effectively produces at a much higher rate, instead of going over the stuff that you had written again and again because you are caught in some sort of closed editing loop.
The great thing about dictating an article is, once you have thought about the concept, and edited it in your mind and verbalized it; you’re done. You’re no longer stuck with this writing loop where you second-guess yourself, so you go back to what you wrote before and then you check out the previous paragraph, it’s murder. It’s no surprise that a lot of writers can barely produce a hundred words an hour. With online publishing companies paying writers lower and lower rates thanks to global competition, there’s a tremendous amount of pressure on writers in the United States and elsewhere to produce a lot more words faster.
Dictating your article or blog post is so much more efficient and enables you to cover a wider topical area than if you were just to slave over every paragraph and every sentence. This can especially be very annoying when writing a novel. When you dictate an article or blog post, or even a book, once you cover a topic, you’re done. You can move on. You’re no longer emotionally bound to what you said before. You can cover a new territory. You can take things to the next level.
What is the impact of software transcription on manual transcribers?
There are a lot of technological disruptions in the online transcription industry. This is not new. As I have mentioned earlier in my description of the medical transcription industry, technology plays a big role in the number of jobs available as well as the kind of training involved and how much those jobs pay. It’s always been part of the picture. However promising the rise of online publishing dictations may be for transcribers, there is one key challenge: A lot of writers do not trust transcribers with their work. These writers guard their words and their creative output just like a mother hen guards her chicks.
Not surprisingly, a lot of authors would rather speak into a microphone and have sophisticated automated transcription software like Dragon NaturallySpeaking transcribe their text. DNS doesn’t cost all that much money. For a couple of hundred dollars, you can get state of the art commercial transcription software.
How can you go wrong with transcription software?
Many authors are discovering that software transcription solutions are too much of a hassle. Like with anything else in life, there are many things that are easier said than done. It’s very tempting to think that you just need to buy a piece of software and a microphone, and all your content creation problems go away. If only things were that easy. The problem is, a lot of these authors find out that they have to spend a tremendous amount of time talking into their microphone to “train” Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Even then, the software screws up from time to time.
To add insult to injury, in order to ensure that all of their words are transcribed clearly and accurately, they have to slow down their speech. Tell me, what is wrong with that picture? Isn’t the reason why you’re dictating your articles and blog posts in the first place is because you want to maximize your output? While it’s theoretically true that people can speak at a rate of 100 words per minute, since Dragon NaturallySpeaking and other similar software pick up fairly slowly, you have to slow down. Instead of getting the full 100 words per minute output, authors and content producers are lucky to get a fraction of that.
In other words, adopting software can be self-defeating, because the amount of money you spend automating content creation that way is more than offset by the amount of time you lose training the software and slowing down your speech so the software can do its job properly.
The Rise of Google Artificial Intelligence and YouTube Automatic Transcription
A lot of people who don’t want to spend money on Dragon NaturallySpeaking has found a clever way to automatically transcribe their audio files. These are audio files involving dictated speech. These are not music files. They would turn an MP3 into an MP4 or video format file, and upload it to a private channel on YouTube. Nobody can see the videos uploaded to private channels because it’s only set to be viewed by the uploader and people the uploader has given explicit permission to.
These people are able to tap into YouTube’s extremely powerful transcription technology. Did you know that every single video on YouTube that involves speech can have a transcription? You just need to activate the close caption or the auto transcription feature of YouTube for you to access that material. The problem is, if you have turned that feature on, you would quickly notice that YouTube is maybe 80 to 70 percent there. In other words, eight times out of ten, the transcription is spot on. It’s accurate. It’s clear. You know exactly what’s going on. You’re not confused. But the problem is, what about the other 20 percent, or in many cases, the other 30 percent? That’s the problem. So a lot of people who try to save on Dragon NaturallySpeaking doesn’t end up saving money at all because they have to manually transcribe the remaining 20 to 80 percent.
The worst part to all of this, is that Google often times do not automatically pick English as the transcription language. I fooled around with this trick before. I’ve uploaded audios, converted them to MP4s and uploaded them to my private YouTube channel. I waited several hours, and then when I come back, I look at the transcription, only to be greeted in Dutch. Pretty weird, right? Unfortunately, you don’t have any control over this. Google has a auto-detect feature so YouTube will spit out whatever language it thinks you are speaking. Last time I checked, I couldn’t speak Dutch, not even a word, but that’s what I got. That’s definitely a risk that you’re going to take if you’re trying to save money on software transcription or manual transcription.
Another drawback is potentially fatal. Depending on the workload YouTube has, you might have to wait 24 hours or even several days for the transcription to be processed. In fact, I’ve had files that I tried to get transcribed never get transcribed. Sure, this happens once in a blue moon, but if you are working on something that’s urgent, you probably would be better off with another option.
Why Human Transcribers Will Always Have a Job Online
Given the drawbacks that I’ve described above, it should become clear to you that you will always have a job as an online transcriber, assuming that you’re any good. That’s the bottom line. Human transcribers beat Dragon NaturallySpeaking because of the following factors:
No Training Involved
Well, this is not absolutely true. When somebody is applying for a home-based transcription job, they probably are going to be given several tests. They would have to pass several quality control stages. They might even receive continuing feedback to step up the quality of their output. However, once that training process is done, they’re good. They’re able to produce content that meets a certain minimum quality standard.
I wish I could say the same with software. Based on my experience with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, I was still training it six months after I started. It was ridiculous. Worse yet, I had to do it slowly. It’s as if I was doing my job three times over. In fact, I got so frustrated that I stopped doing it and just went back to manual writing. Believe it or not, I was able to produce more work writing manually. (Of course, this means typing on my keyboard)
Humans are able to tell Words Apart Better Than Software
Even if you spend a ridiculous amount of hours trying to train Dragon NaturallySpeaking, there is still a low percentage chance that it will screw up. Based on experience working with online transcribers through an agency, it seems that their failure rate or error rate is much lower. This should not be a surprise because the human brain can tell nuances and context.
For example, if I say the word “seam” in the context of sewing blue jeans together, the transcriber would spell it S-E-A-M. All bets are off when it comes to software, because Dragon NaturallySpeaking could easily screw it up and spell it as S-E-E-M. Completely out of context, the words make absolutely no sense. Human beings, thanks to their brains, are able to tell these words apart.
The Deal Killer
The number-one deal killer for software like Dragon NaturallySpeaking and the YouTube video transcription hack I described above boils down to editing. I’m not talking about somebody editing their work output. I’m talking about editing as you talk into the microphone. Those people think in idea fragments. They believe that they have a clear enough idea of what they’re about to say, but things really crystallize at the last moment when the words leave their mouth.
The problem is, we sometimes think that there is a better way to capture our thoughts, so we double up. We say the same sentence slightly differently one right after the other. In other words, we are verbally self-editing. You’re not spelling out a list, nor are you repeating yourself unnecessarily. You are editing yourself. When you are dictating audio to be manually transcribed, you can use all sorts of verbal editorial calls, like “note to transcriptionist” to draw the transcribers attention to what needs to be edited.
Often times, when they have processed your audio enough times, they know whether you are self-editing or not. It’s very obvious to them. Because when you keep seemingly repeating the same sentence with small variations at the end or in the middle, they sit up and pay attention. That is their cue that you’re not just repeating your words like an idiot, you are editing yourself. The general rule being, that the later sentence is the “official” or final version of the thought that you’re dictating. Good luck doing this with software. This is murder on Dragon NaturallySpeaking, because you can do it, you can say, “strike that,” you can verbally hit the back button, if you will, but it takes a lot of work. The worst part is it disrupts your train of thought.
Highly effective authors think at the rate of 10 million miles per second. You have to. The problem is, if you’re going to bring everything to a screeching halt because you have to hit the mental back button, it destroys your train of thought. There are big gaps that are produced in your work. As inspired as it was as it seemed before, isn’t going to be as good. When you’re dealing with human transcribers, you can use “note to transcriptionist” or “scratch that” to let them know how to process large chunks or significant parts of your dictation. The best part to all of this is you can do it rapidly.
How to Become an Online Transcriber
Now that you know that you will always have a job as an online transcriber because of the technological limitations I described above, how exactly do you become one?
The Good News
The good news is, you don’t have to have some sort of degree, certificate, or formal training. As long as you have good English writing skills, and most importantly, listening skills, you’re good. It all boils down to your ability to listen in context. Even if you don’t know exactly what the words mean, like the blue jeans example that I mentioned above, the fact that I’m talking about blue jeans, and then I dropped the word “seam” should be your clue that I’m talking about something that involves tailoring or the clothing manufacturing process. You are able to spell the word correctly. This can only happen if you are an active and careful listener.
The good new is, to be a careful listener. You don’t necessarily have to be a slow listener. Although, when you are starting out, you probably would need to slow down the audio using VLC or some other software package out there, so you can get a feel for the flow of the words as well as the general context. Once you work with a speaker for a long period of time, you probably would know that persons’ verbal quirks and other peculiarities, because different people talk in different ways, and we have all these verbal quirks. So once you figure out their verbal style, things start to flow naturally for you. It’s not a surprise that a lot of experienced transcribers no longer have to slow down the audio. But if you’re just starting out, you probably would need to do that to get used to the process and a particular speakers style.
Excellent English is Required
If you want to be a transcriber, you have to have good English writing skills. I’m not saying that you have to be good enough to be a freelance writer, instead I’m talking about being good enough to not only listen to and write down the words of another author, but to polish the material so that it is as effective as it could be.
This is what’s so awesome about transcribing dictated work. You don’t necessarily have to be an excellent writer if the speaker is an author or an experienced writer. You only need to stick with their text to produce good work. Why? They’re already composing the materials for you. You don’t need to jump in and reword things, or move things around and make strategic editorial decisions. You don’t have to do any of that. In fact, most of that is just unnecessary.
Instead, you can leverage whatever fitting English writing skills you have to make sure that the transcription is smooth. Because if you are a halfway decent writer, you know if a word is out of place. You know if you have constructed a sentence “incorrectly.” In other words, when the speaker says several clauses together, you may have strung them out the wrong way. You can tell when you read your transcribed text again.
What process should you follow as a manual transcriber?
Here is the process that you should follow to maximize the quality of your work as a transcriber:
#1: Listen to the audio file at least twice.
The first time you listen to an audio file, you’re essentially just establishing context. Depending on how long the file is, you should be able to discover the context and the themes that are going to be discussed. You can play the audio at 1.25 or even 1.5 speed. You can zip through the audio by increasing its playback speed. As long as you can clearly make out the words and understand the ideas, you can speed up the audio. Once you have listened to the audio at least twice, then you’re ready for the next step.
#2: Listen carefully to the audio
The good news is, careful listening doesn’t necessarily have to mean slow listening. Careful listening simply means that you know exactly what went on before, what’s going on now, and what would probably happen soon. You have a sense of your bearings. You’re not drifting in the audio. You’re not confused. You have a general sense of how the ideas are strung together. That’s what careful listening is.
#3: Listen actively
When you’re an active listener, it’s like you are engaged in a discussion with the speaker. I know this sounds weird because the speaker is just talking into the microphone. It is a completely one-way affair. But an active listener is constantly thinking while taking in the audio. A great transcriber would have several questions in her head saying, “Okay, where is this leading to? You already said that, so if you are saying that again, and you’re talking about another subtopic, it might lead to this, or it might lead to that.” When she hears the next part, she starts to map out these concepts in her head, and a general picture arises. This is reflected in her output. It is clear, carefully thought out, and effective.
In other words, the professional transcriber is involved in some sort of two-way conversation with the text. Again, I know this sounds crazy, because this is just a one-way dictation. However, the feedback from her, the questions in her head on how she is going to respond to the audio that she is transcribing, she is strategically mapping things out so things are easier, cleaner and accurate.
It’s all about the learning curve
Highly effective transcribers understand that there is a learning curve involved. They know that this sophisticated “dance” between the dictated audio and their reasoning and processing capacities and capabilities are always influx and oftentimes, it takes a while for them to get accustomed to how an author speaks out. Eventually, they get the hang of it because they know that there is a learning curve involved.
The biggest favor that you could do for yourself as a transcriber, is to assume that there will be a learning curve and get ready for it. The worst thing that you can do on the other hand is to assume that when you just in with both feet, everything will fall into place, and you would produce top notch, world-class transcriptions. Fat chance. That is not going to happen.
Chances are, you’re probably going to be impatient. The whole process would be frustrating to you. The worst part is you did it to yourself because you didn’t come in with the right mindset. Expect to learn. Expect feedback. Sometimes, if you drop the ball so bad, you will get a very stern, and depending on how you look at it, extremely negative feedback. Learn from it. It’s not an attack on you personally. It’s an attack on your work output. These are two entirely different things. Attacks on the person are always unacceptable, but attacks on our output, whether we like it or not, that’s fair, because there’s always room for improvement. If you are able to understand this and accept this, then you can mature as a transcriber, and you will have a good career ahead of you, whether you do this part-time, on the side, or as a full-time activity.
How do you get an Online Transcriber job?
There are several platforms you could use to get online transcription work. It all depends on what you’re used to, the process that you use, and how competitive you are in terms of pricing. Please understand that there are a lot of people from all over the world, who are gunning for transcription work. This has the effect of driving down transcription rates drastically. Back in the day, American transcriptionists could actually do transcription for a living. We’re talking about $40,000 t0 $80,000 a year. Those days are over, thanks to software, automation and outsourcing.
Nine times out of ten, if you are starting out as a transcriber, you’re probably going to be competing against somebody from places like the Philippines, Kenya, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, and many other countries where there are lots of people who speak English as a second language. That’s the nature of the game. This is probably not going to go away anytime soon. In fact, it can get so frustrating. It feels that it’s a race to the bottom.
There are many transcription jobs out there that pay close to one penny per audio minute. Think about that for a second. For you to transcribe an audio minute, it actually requires you several real minutes. How can you live on a penny per minute? That’s the standard rate in some places, and also it depends on the platform you go on.
With that in mind, I’m going to list down the platforms, starting out with the most competitive to the least competitive. I suggest that you start out with the most competitive first, cut your teeth in the online transcription industry, and get your game done. Once you become really good and efficient, start working your way to less competitive platforms. That’s where you can get higher pay for less work.
Fiverr
Fiverr is ultra competitive. There are a lot of people out there who would transcribe many minutes for close to nothing. You have to start somewhere, so I suggest that you try Fiverr. Don’t get too crazy. Don’t say, “I would transcribe two hours for five bucks,” there’s no need to do that. You just need to get started somewhere, and Fiverr is a good place if you’re just looking for any kind of online typing or transcription work.
The downside to Fiverr is that you only need to get one bad review, and your Fiverr career is pretty much over. This has given rise to a lot of scammers. Basically, what these people would do is, they would intentionally place an order, knowing full well that they will reject the work product, regardless of how good it is. They know that the freelancer on the other end is deathly afraid of getting a negative review, but that’s precisely what these scammers would say. They would say, “Hey, I paid $5 and this is not exactly what I expected. I’m going to give you a negative review.” So what are you going to do? You basically refund the person, and you ended up working for free.
It breaks my heart to see this, but it happens all the time, and the worst part is, it’s intentional. I can see it happening unintentionally, but nine times out of ten, people actually go in to do this, and it sucks for a large number of people who are just trying to make money online. They essentially work for free.
The workaround
The work around to this is to basically take it in the chin. For maybe five orders you get, possible one would result in a refund or possibly two. It all depends in your work quality. If you’re not all that sure about how professional your transcriptions are, or you’re just learning, or you’re just doing this as a part-time kind of thing because you have a main job or a regular job, you probably don’t need the drama of Fiverr because you can easily be blacklisted. I’m not talking about a formal blacklist instituted by Fiverr itself, but you’re on a blacklist in yourself because you get so many negative reviews that nobody wants to order from you.
Upwork
Slightly better than Fiverr is Upwork.com. Upwork is a platform where people looking for transcription work post the job description. People like you join Upwork and then bid on the work involved. The main thing I hate about Upwork is that it can easily be erased to the bottom. Now, a lot of American companies, they don’t even bother with people based abroad. So the moment they can tell that you are not based in the United States, they’re not even going to entertain your bid. Even if they did, oftentimes, they have really high expectations, so expect a lot of back and forth.
A lot of times, this can be cured. A lot of times, you can clean up your work so well that they are satisfied and everybody walks away happy. The problem is, they’re not going to give you a nice review. They’re looking for something quick. They’re looking for something perfect the first time around.
Also, it takes a lot of reviews to get a steady stream of work from Upwork. Finally, if that isn’t challenging enough, Upwork has a reputation for cutting off successful contractors. I know this sounds crazy because it seems so self-defeating but unfortunately this is the truth. I’ve heard horror stories from so many freelancers who say, “Well, I started making really good money with Upwork, and all of a sudden the work just dried out.” In some cases, they canceled the freelancers account.
So you really have to be very careful with Upwork. Make sure that you follow all their terms and conditions. Also, don’t be so eager to undercut the competition that you develop a bad reputation for that. I think that last details played a role in why some of the people I know got banned from Upwork.
LinkedIn and Direct Contact
One of the hardest ways to get transcription work is to simply approach companies directly. For every 100 companies and contacts you reach out to, maybe five or less than five will get back to you. Of those who knows how many would actually want to do business with you, this is the nature of the beast. The good news is, if you land a client this way, and you produce excellent work, you would be able to charge a nice rate for your transcription work. It’s not unusual for people to get paid $5,000 to $10,000 a month doing this type of deals.
The problem is, you can’t just stick with one client. They’re not going to pay you $5,000 to $10,000 per month. Forget about it. You’re going to have to have many different clients, but because they pay a higher rate per head, your overall income increases tremendously. As you can well imagine, only the cream of the crop of transcribers are able to pull this off, because companies are very, very picky when it comes to quality. Oftentimes, they will cut you off if they noticed that there is a slight decline in your work quality. They just simply cannot tolerate that kind of thing, so you have to be very careful. The worst part to all of this? Burn enough clients, and you will develop a bad reputation. People will talk about you, and then they basically would say, “Hire everybody, except for that guy”. It happens, so be very careful.
Join an Agency
To me, this is the best of both worlds. You dispense with the headaches of dealing with Fiverr and Upwork, and the brutal dog-eat-dog environment on those platforms. You also don’t have to hassle with direct company contact. Make no mistake, getting a direct company contract for transcription work is like pulling teeth. You have to send thousands of emails to maybe land a few jobs, and those jobs are very, very sensitive. One false move and you’re out.
The good new is, there is a middle ground in joining an online agency. You basically get tested, sometimes it takes one or two stages, and then they put you on a mailing list. Depending on what kind of work is involved, they will contact you directly via email, and then send you an audio link. You download the audio link, listen to it, transcribe it, edit it. Use an online grammar checker, put it back in a notepad file, attach to an email, and you’re done.
Be very careful though. Some agencies drag their feet. I know full well that some agencies take up to a month to release payment. They make up all sorts of excuses why they can’t pay you immediately. You know you’re dealing with a legit operation when you receive payment within hours of your submission. You know they’re professional. You know they mean business, and you know that they are serious about what they’re doing because good companies will not want to burn their contractors. Remember, you are providing value to them. Sure, they’re cutting you a payment, but you are providing the value. Wouldn’t it make sense for them to take care of you by paying you quickly?
That’s why you have to be very careful, because there are a lot of agencies out there that will pull all sorts of games why they can’t pay you immediately, which brings me back to Fiverr. Fiverr takes 14 days to pay you for your transcription. Fourteen days to get less than five dollars. You heard it right, less than five dollars, because if you’re charging the $5 base rate, Fiverr takes 20% off.
It’s bad enough you’re working for peanuts. You also have to wait two weeks, and sometimes they delay on the PayPal end as well. It’s really too bad if you live outside of the United States, and you work through Fiverr, because Fiverr uses PayPal and there is a foreign-currency conversion. So you end up losing twice. You end up paying the PayPal fee, and you have to take the low foreign exchange rate that PayPal says your local currency is worth.
So be very careful with which agency you go with. Ideally, you should go with an agency that pays you within 48 hours to as little as a couple of hours after you turn in your work. You know that they’re solid.
Stepping up Your Game as a Transcriber
The sooner you find a job as an online transcriber, how do you make more money? Let me tell you, when you start in this industry, you probably won’t make as much money as you hoped, but to make more money, you have to focus on work quality. That’s the bottom line. Work quality is crucial. So if you produce work that needs absolutely no editing, eventually you’ll get more and more work, and you will be able to get a higher rate in the same company structure.
You also would be able to attract more regular work. Think about it. An agency will be crazy to send work somewhere else when they know that they can be pretty much assured that whatever output you produce will be the same as last time. If you produce top notch work, they’d rather deal with you, rather than somebody who is new, somebody who just joined the team, or somebody who has been a team for a while but is very spotty in terms of their work output.
Be Reliable
When you say you’re going to deliver on time, do it. If you deliver on time, then you are more valuable to the team than somebody who may produce solid gold work, but good luck guessing than work will arrive. With everything else being equal, organizations would rather send work and give more responsibility to a team member who is reliable. So operate within the deadline, and deliver on time like clockwork.
Produce your best work
Feed your text through an online grammar checker. Follow formatting rules properly. Read through the transcription and edit for maximum readability. Do these and your agency client will come back again and again
The Final Word on Online Transcriber Work
Working from home as a transcriptionist can be challenging but it can be quite rewarding. It all boils down to giving yourself enough time and space to learn what you need to learn.
To learn about 24 other free ways to make money online, check out this post I wrote.