CrowdSurf Audio Transcription hits.

I don't do transcription because the pay is ridiculous. Pros make $35-$75 per audio hour and while I realize nobody is going to make that on turk, I find it reprehensible that with all the money they save using mturk instead of freelancers; they choose to insult you by paying you in change. And then they have the audacity to write a novels worth of instructions and demand perfection. Rejection happens because nobody is perfect. If a Requester never rejects work from anyone, that's your cue that he's not paying you enough.

 

I hear to many complaints around here about pay. You stated professional transcriptionists make $35. - $75.00 per hour of audio. While this is not entirely true. A professional transcriptionist makes an average salary of $30,000-$40,000 starting out. While the top transcriptionists make upward of $70k a year. However, you did say a key word. PROFESSIONALS. From what I've read around here. The majority of people around here, aren't professionals. In fact, a large number of the people here might have never done a transcription in their life. Comparing a professional transcriptionists to a daily turker, is like comparing apples to oranges. Another thing to take in consideration. The original poster is from India. You have to factor in economy and average income for his country.

In my opinion, Crowdsurf pays $3 - $6 an hour after you develop the basic fundamentals of transcribing. Which in my honest opinion, is fair for someone who is sitting at home on the computer. And LEARNING to transcribe.

I believe you certainly can't be transcribing at a beginner level and expect professional pay. I've seen everything around this forum. Kids playing with negative reps all day? That tells me something about select people around the forum. If you waste your time negative repping people around the forum with childish remarks. Than, I wouldn't pay you minimum wage to pick cotton. Much less, transcribing beginner audio, for 70,000 a year. Sometimes the clips can be unclear, but have you tried transcribing the Med files yet? It makes Crowdsurf transcriptions seem rather childish.

To address the complaining. Any time you feel your under paid by sitting at home, watching TV, and eating chips. Remember there's someone on every prison unit. Working years of their life away in a field, swinging an aggie in the hot Texas heat until their hands bleed with bloody blisters. Until they have a heat stroke and can't take off their clothes because of the blisters from the scorching sun. And not being able to sleep on a pillow at night because the blisters from the sun are shooting puss out of their head. Not being able to sleep on blankets or sheets because you sweat the bed out at night, while you try to sleep in the 100+ degree weather. In which it's so hot that you try to wash your cell floor and watch the water evaporate off the floor before you can wipe it. Then wake up, shave with a .02 cent razor, in your rusted out sink with a rusted pipe coming out. Or your denied the right to eat your tiny 3 a.m. breakfast before your back to working in the fields in the heat again. All for .50 cents a day, if your lucky. And remember, there are innocent people that live like this every day. Innocent people who were convicted by the state for a crime they didn't commit. I was one of them, for many years. Making .50 cents an DAY for digging holes all day.

So complaining about the pay, while sitting in a air coniditoner, drinking coffee, watching TV, and doing some beginner transcriptions. Get's quite old.


To the original poster,

Keep up the good work my friend. Transcribing is a slow process when you first get started. But just like any other job, the better you get. The faster you get. Crowdsurf is very fair in my opinion for starting out. As Shego said, I certainly wouldn't try to make a living working for them. I do believe they are fair and have an excellent system for beginners wanting to learn to transcribe. Just make sure you review the Guidlines over and over. And you will be okay! Good luck!

 

Jubin,

You are most defiantly correct. Crowdsurf has steadily made improvements to their interface. And are constantly making more and more imrpovements. I highly suggest Crowdsurf for learning to transcribe. To improve your transcription skills. Studying the guidelines and knowing exactly what the requester is looking for will help you greatly. However, I highly reccomend you do a search for the e-book a fellow turker sells. It's all about transcribing and will teach you everything you need to know to improve your skills. Knowing how to type fast and accurately can help and is an area that always can be improved by the transcriptionist. Knowing English is excellent, but when your transcribing, it's a sort of thing you just have to develop a certain style. The e-book will tell you everything you need to know. It's worth it for a few bucks, just go grab it.

 

This "learning to transcribe" thing is one of the key factors as to why I'm not too upset over the pay when it comes to transcription. True, you're not being paid well and rates could be a little higher. But on the other hand, you're literally being trained at a particular skill that might open doors for you in the future to better paying gigs. Someone good enough to "graduate" from Crowdsurf may actually wind up being able to do more lucrative jobs for other people. In fact, I read somewhere that a turker contacted requesters on the side and was able to do jobs for them privately for more money. This type of arrangement is almost similar to a college internship where you don't get paid to work at a business for a semester but on the other hand gain enough experience to find good work when you graduate.

 

You couldn't have used any better words my friend.

 

I've been doing the Crowdsurf hits for several months now, and they are my favorite requester. I can do a 25 second hit in about 1-1.5 minutes, depending on the speaker. At .10 for a minute of work, that translates to $6 an hour, not too shabby for sitting at home in my sweats barefoot. And they are quick to respond to questions/comments. I usually just double the time of the audio to get my transcription rate. It all depends on the speaker, there are some that I just skip because they're too hard to understand.

You will probably improve with time, it just takes time to learn the requirements and the keyboard shortcuts. For example, I use cut and paste for common or tricky terms.

One trick I have learned, thanks to another job, is to hit the tab key twice and then Enter to submit the job. Once you're done transcribing, hit tab twice to take you to the green Submit button, hit Enter to 'click' it, then use your mouse to click on the red button in the popup box. I hate using my mouse, so this shortcut cuts down on having to switch from the keyboard to the mouse.

Make sure to review the guidelines when they post an update, I read somewhere that they are going to start enforcing that more closely soon. Any questions, feel free to post them or PM me.

 

If you aren't a fast typist, I would also recommend practicing to get your speed up, and that might also help with your completion timing for these hits. There are several websites with typing tutorials that can help you.

 

Yeah, people forget that a lot of how poorly or how well they get paid per hour has to do with skills and other factors. There are things you can do to get the extra edge so you're not making $2/ hr, stuff like getting a foot pedal or developing a knack for keyboard shortcuts and the like.

 

I just finished reading a book about Transcribing on MTurk - it was really good and very, very helpful! I found it over at Amazon and it was by Amy Marre.

 

I hate the computer program ones. It seems like that's all they're putting up right now. Makes me long for the ones where they have five people who can barely speak English all talking at the same time.

 

It seems they go in cycles. Most of the ones I had over the weekend were of Photoshop and other image editing software tutorials, mixed in with math lectures. For awhile recently there was nothing but math, computer, and science lectures and most with heavy accents, so I just passed on them.

There were some interesting ones a few weeks ago, with writers, actors, directors, and other technicians talking about doing Broadway plays. I want more like that!

 

Every now and then they put up college professors speaking directly into the camera in pretty much flawless English that I like, but they are very rare.

 

I asked Crowdsurf about the emails on our ever-increasing transcription score, and Mark said to just ignore them. They've tried to get Amazon to stop sending them, and we see how well that worked. As long as your score is over 90 and your hit approval rate is at least 95%, you can do the hits.

I'm going to be honest here, and I don't mean to offend you, this is just my opinion. You are taking this thing way too seriously, jubin, and wasting time by listening to the full audio before you accept it. Returning hits doesn't count against you, so if you get into one you don't like or can't do, just return it and keep going. What I do is listen for a few seconds before accepting the first one, set it to auto-accept, and then start transcribing hits until I recognize one I don't want and then I pitch it back and start the cycle over. I've been doing it long enough I can tell by the video in a few seconds if I've done the speaker before and whether or not I like them.

The way to making money on mturk is to be fast and accurate, maximizing your effort to make the most money. Work smarter, not harder, is the maxim for a lot of jobs, this one especially.

 

It's been my experience that I only get the emails when they've looked at it and approved it manually. This is generally the result of putting a iii, sss, /g, etc. in the transcription. Other than those, most of mine are auto approve, in which I don't get the email and my score doesn't change.