I was excited to get my speechink qualifications, but I had to return the first hit because of poor audio, and my second hit took three hours for an 8 minute transcription. The phone interviews are almost impossible to make out. Are they all like that? I could have done a lot of hits in those three hours. I know I'll get faster, but I'm afraid it's not going to be worth my time to do Speechink hits. Are they all this hard?
Hi there, Some HITS have terrible audio and some have great audio. Some are in the middle, quality-wise. I found I got very good doing the verbatim insurance interviews, but at first I sure wasn't even paying attention to every, "Uh, ah, so, m-, m-, my car was st-, stopped at the light." It takes me near the limit of time on many non-verbatim lectures or presentations, but I like those better. The people that speak super-rapid are not worth doing, because they require 3x the amount of typing. A normal, conversational tone is much easier (and more fair) to work on. Believe it or not, I've waited 8 weeks for SpeechInk to pay for a transcription. Most of the time it's between 3 or 4 days, however.
The ones I did were very hard. Also took me an hour to complete. Not a good HIT to get your feet wet with.
If you want to get into transcription and are just getting started, then I think it's definitely worth it. You'll learn how to use the equipment/programs and work on a pretty tight deadline, your typing speed and listening comprehension will improve, and you'll have something to put on your resume. Then you can apply for contracts with other transcription companies and start getting paid more. And transcription can pay REALLY well. There are probably better ways to make money on MTurk. Judging by the screenshot in adaaaam's signature, there definitely are! But if we're JUST talking about SpeechInk, I consider it a viable way to make a living. If I had to, there is no doubt in my mind that I could get by entirely on work from SpeechInk -- pay my share of the rent and bills and have money left over for groceries, gas and other necessities. Your mileage may vary. It's definitely worth it to me, though. They usually pay me pretty quickly, too. Once I had to wait a week to be paid for a job, but it's usually only a few days. I've been doing SpeechInk HITs for 3-4 months now and have two years of experience in transcription. A few things that might help you improve your speed/turnaround time: -There's a reason professional transcriptionists use foot pedals and specialized programs: It's a hell of a lot faster. If you're doing Transcribe Now, stop. Download and Transcribe instead. Get a foot pedal (used is fine), some noise-cancelling headphones (mine cost $25 at Walmart and have served me well, but you could probably find cheaper ones online) and the free trial version of Express Scribe. Uninstall it whenever the trial period ends, then reinstall it. I did this for nearly two years; there's no limit. -Use shortcuts. I type my transcripts in WordPerfect and have added all kinds of shortcuts to QuickCorrect. For instance, when I type ym it expands into "Yes, ma'am." If I'm working a job where they're saying "Lucky Dog Productions, Inc." over and over again, I'll set ldpi to expand into that. That sort of thing can be a HUGE time-saver. You can also set it to automatically insert speaker tokens. -Don't waste your time on difficult audio. It's better to just wait or spend your time looking for a relatively easy job than it is to struggle through a hard one. -Be selective. Don't be afraid to return a HIT. If you have trouble making out the words while previewing a job, don't do it. If you transcribe a few minutes of a HIT and there are too many parts (I'd say one per minute is too much) you can't make out even after listening to them several times, return it. If you're not sure if a job is worth it, transcribe five minutes of it. Make a note of when you start and finish, then calculate your hourly rate (5 times 60 divided by however many minutes you spent working on it). If it's lower than 15 audio minutes/hour, or maybe 10 if you're new to it and/or not working with a foot pedal, return it.