I just started mturk a couple of weeks ago. I haven't done any of the transcription hits yet. Is there any kind of tutorial, or basic instructions, that I should look at before I start them?
naturegirl has a badd ass ebook she wrote on that topic. If you don't feel like spending tons of hours trying to find the info yourself it is only 2.99 through amazon and lendable for free also. Her site is transcriptress.com. You can find the linik in her avatar if you search for 'naturegirl' on the forums here
Yes, it is a good book and available as a "lending" book through Amazon. Each transcription company has their own guidelines, so you can copy those; but Amy's book takes a lot of the extraneous stuff out so you can get started and feel comfortable. Good luck on Turk! I really like it!
Aww, thanks, 2muchTurkin and pieper! It's been great to hear from everyone who's found the book helpful. The "origin story" of the book is in a thread here on the forum, for those who want to know. It's the first link in my sig. Roon83, let me know if you have any questions! OP, you too. (BTW, thanks to those who've reviewed it on Amazon or on my site. I don't know in every case if you're from these forums, but in case you see this, I appreciate it!)
wdworkman start with the Claritrans audio hits, those are usually 35 sec or less long and you can listen to them before you accept the hit. Once you get the hang of transcribing then it will be a bit easier to move up to the longer, better paying transcribing jobs on here.
Neona's suggestion is definitely one way to approach it. As with anything else on MTurk, anyone can always just jump in to doing the HITs, and in that case it may not matter much which requester the work is for. Kinda depends on whether you're in it because you want the bigger money soon or just because you want to try a new HIT type. It is a huge (and classic) misconception, though, that the longer transcription jobs are the ones that'll make you the best Turking money. I wrote a post on my blog about that last month to help folks understand the bigger picture there.
I bought this book and it helped me immensely! I had never done transcription before, started doing it on mturk, but was very frustrated. I bought this book and improved immediately. I discovered that I was going about it all wrong. I still stick to shorter transcription jobs because I don't type very fast, but I highly recommend this book!
Yay! That's great to hear, nomad. It's exactly what I was hoping when I wrote it---that it'd save people a bunch of frustration and open up transcription to folks. I'm so happy it's doing that. And wdworkman, good luck!
