I became a transcriber sort of by accident. This is my story of how I did it and hopefully, it gives you an idea of how to do the same if you’re looking to earn an extra income, intend working from home or want to make it your career.
Firstly, I had the opportunity to live with my family in Australia in 2016. Since I only had a tourist visa I couldn’t work in Australia. When I got on the plane to Melbourne my intention was to work with South African businesses via the internet. I advertised my administration services on Gumtree but received no responses so I did a Google search for ideas on finding online work.
I ended up on Reddit and a beer money site. They spoke about transcriptions as one way of making money online and Scribie.com was one of the sites they mentioned. I barely even knew what transcriptions were, but I took the entry exam for Scribie.com. All similar websites have an entry test, by the way.
I remember sitting in the back garden of my sister’s house in Melbourne and doing the test for around two hours. I waited a few days and got an email to say that I passed and was now a transcriber on the Scribie.com platform. I quickly got into the flow of work and before long I had moved up to be a reviewer which meant more money. At that time Scribie paid US$1 per completed 6 minutes of audio which doubled if you reviewed the file. I was making decent money.
But I also advertised my transcription services on Gumtree and then a German UCT doctoral student found me. I was asked to transcribe the interviews for her thesis. There were maybe about 10 interviews, of varying length, with some of the most interesting people who I never knew lived in my hometown, Cape Town.
This work plus Scribie.com kept me busy for my time in Australia while the rest of the family were at work during the day.
When I came back to Cape Town I decided to continue transcribing. By this time Scribie.com had reduced its rates to half of what it was, so I looked around for another online platform. Their test is a much more difficult test and failed it a few times. Eventually, I passed and found another source of income.
My Gumtree ad was still bringing in a steady stream of clients, mainly master’s and doctoral students and a few disciplinary hearings. During one less than a prolific week, I came across Upwork and registered and added my CV to their platform. I got quite a bit of work through Upwork but my intention was to use them to supplement my other sources of income. I wasn’t too happy with the 25% commission fee that they charged.
Currently, my work comes from Gumtree and TranscribeMe and occasionally Scribie.com.
I will elaborate in future blog posts on the various platforms and the pros and cons of working there.
