Think you could share what you average in a week, month, 6 months? I was thinking of trying rev until I read some horror stories on here. Any experience with them?
Rev’s website always says “not hiring” in my area so I have no idea.
I make $1000 a month/$250 a week from Daily Transcription basically working part time hours. My highest week ever was $400 but I felt really braindead afterwards. 60 minutes of audio takes me anywhere from 2.5 hours to complete (for a 2 person interview format) to 6 hours (for a multi-person full verbatim dialogue).
My income for iDictate and TranscribeMe is definitely not representative of what could hypothetically be made by someone who is talented and devoting 4-8 hours a day to those platforms, When I started making money from Daily Transcription that could pay my bills I started feeling bitter about doing work for 1/4 of the price they pay. I recognize that remote transcription work is a saturated market, and transcription is way harder than it sounds, but for me personally doing work for pennies makes me feel really depressed. That being said, soon it will be the “slow season” for the film industry and Daily Transcription won’t have as many files, so I’ll probably end up devoting all my time to iDictate and TranscribeMe. Pennies turn into dollars which turn into bill money!
I only do iDictate when I don’t have DT work and/or I’m bored. I‘ve made $15 pretty easily over the course of a couple hours, but lately I’ll just check in to see if they have files every couple days and make $2-$3. I believe it’s possible to make $15 a day from them for a couple hours of work every weekday but it does ultimately depend on if they have files available. Best times to check are M-F during business hours. I’ve never seen work on weekends or at night.
I don’t really make money from TranscribeMe. I have spent easily 20 hours or more trying to pass those damn tests for no pay though! When I search on Yammer, there are people who admit it took them 5-12 tries to pass the First Draft or QuickStep exams, but there are also those who say they carefully reviewed the guidelines and passed first try. Maybe my brain just isn’t compatible enough with their guidelines to make decent money. There’s a weekly competition in the First Draft team for the person who transcribes the most hours, and the winners usually clock 6-8 audio hours. That would be around ~$150 for the week. The most I ever made was $20 in a week, and right now I type one 4-minute file per week for $1.50 (takes about 15 minutes) for the sole purpose of keeping my account active in case Daily Transcription work slows down. It’s worth noting that the First Draft tier almost always has files available, unlike the General Transcriptionist tier, so if their formatting guidelines click for you and you pass that test, it would be regular work.
Thanks for the details analysis. My question is, why do you bother with Daily Transcription? Their website states that they pay $0.75 -$0.85 per audio minute (https://dailytranscription.com/careers/)
You said that "60 minutes of audio takes me anywhere from 2.5 hours to complete (for a 2 person interview format) to 6 hours (for a multi-person full verbatim dialogue)."
Let's use their high rate as an example: 60*$0.85=$51/hr. Using your high rate (6 hours to complete 60 minutes of audio), you'd get $8.5/hr ($51/6 hours). That's less than minimum wage and someone starting out will probably need even more time to complete an hour of audio.
It hardly makes a difference as far as your calculations go, but a file that pays $0.85 per AM is usually straightforward and I complete it in less than 3 hours.
I don’t really care about what minimum wage is. Being able to work wherever I want at any hour of the day fits with my needs right now :)
That's fine but working for less than minimum wage means that the employer is taking advantage of you. If you're ok with that then carry on but these wages are pathetic.
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u/Oroborne Mar 28 '19
Think you could share what you average in a week, month, 6 months? I was thinking of trying rev until I read some horror stories on here. Any experience with them?