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kazmeyer posted:The funniest thing I ever saw was when I Googled my pen name and found people citing me. It's turtles all the way down. Lol yeah like, my ghostwriting has been on Forbes lmao, don't trust anything online
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Jun 18, 2022 16:48
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i wrote a ton of how to articles back in the content mill glory days for things like emt certifications and how to get them. i mean i did my best but the idea that someone is an emt reading my dipshit advice *tugs collar*
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Jun 18, 2022 22:44
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It's like the first thing you learn from content mill writing is how to recognize other content mill writing. C'mon guys. 
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Jun 19, 2022 00:22
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Hello fellow husslers, can anyone shed some light on the current state of transcribing? Is it something what people still look for and could one consistently find work? A buddy of mine bought me a certificate for this account because he loves this place but I'm still trying to maneuver thru topics so I hope this is the right one. If so any info would be great, thanks!
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Jun 22, 2022 19:13
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I was getting constant transcription work until I sort of screwed up just getting sick of listening to corporate mumbo jumbo (let's use 500 words to say a sentence that could be expressed in 50 - if I hear one more motherfucker ask for more color I'm gonna blow.) Now they only send me qualitative interview stuff, which is fine with me. At least it's science and some things are interesting. Even an old client emailed me a few months ago asking if I'd work for him. I guess AI isn't there yet, so it's still going. I hope to get this forklift driving job though if I passed the UA (honestly sick of gig work where I don't know when work is coming/how much I'll make a month). I was making up to maybe $1,800 a month pre-tax (I haven't paid my taxes in two years because I'm too poor). So, yeah. It's still viable if you have a low cost of living (my rent is $500 in Kansas, lol). Try Daily Transcription - they were hiring a few months back. Also, check the Craiglist of LA/NY. That's where I've found most of my clients. Also there is also this thread for WFH jobs mostly: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3977556 unbuttonedclone fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Jun 23, 2022 |
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Jun 23, 2022 05:05
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unbuttonedclone posted:I was getting constant transcription work until I sort of screwed up just getting sick of listening to corporate mumbo jumbo (let's use 500 words to say a sentence that could be expressed in 50 - if I hear one more motherfucker ask for more color I'm gonna blow.) Now they only send me qualitative interview stuff, which is fine with me. At least it's science and some things are interesting. I see, considering Im from Croatia the pay is more than enough for me to live on but I understand the want to have a dependable pay at the same time of the month as I was gaming for rent during pandemic. I also saw people saying there are tests that one needs to pass first but I cant seem to find that by just googling. And thanks for that topic link, I'll check that out now
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Jun 23, 2022 10:32
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Astro7x posted:Hey fellow WD writer. I tried registering on WD but it seems they are not taking new registrations at the moment. Do you guys know if they ever even take new people? I'm trying the waitlist but it doesnt look promising. Im a croatian thats been immersed in English culture since i hit 18 and started working oversees and I can easily translate anything that isnt extremly legal or medical but all sites that I tried, like Lionshare or Appen either require transcribing experience or are not interested in croatian translators. I was hoping for something like a test or preview pro-bono work to prove my competence. Sadly the pandemic killed my carrier on cruisers and gaming doesnt seem to pay enough for me to survive. Good news is I live in Croatia now where the standard is still low enough where I could survive with 700-800 euros per month but I cant seem to find a legit gig. I'll keep going thru the topics here and all the stored knowledge but if anyone has any advice, I'm looking forward to any! Thanks for reading my regular boring life stuff while the smallest violin in the world in playing in the background Funky Monk fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Jun 23, 2022 |
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Jun 23, 2022 17:41
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Funky Monk posted:I tried registering on WD but it seems they are not taking new registrations at the moment. Do you guys know if they ever even take new people? I'm trying the waitlist but it doesnt look promising. They are quite transparent with when they add writers, and they haven't done so since January/February. They just don't need more, all the work is posted each day is written by EOD. Back then the queue just kept getting bigger and they needed to get it back down. They usually announce on the internal message board when they need more writers, and I posted it in this thread back in January. They also have a Reddit account where they've made posts looking for writers, but they last did that in April 2021 https://www.reddit.com/user/writersdomain
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Jun 23, 2022 19:00
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Astro7x posted:They are quite transparent with when they add writers, and they haven't done so since January/February. They just don't need more, all the work is posted each day is written by EOD. Back then the queue just kept getting bigger and they needed to get it back down. Thanks for the info, it's all very new to me so sometimes even the obvious info gets past me it seems. I'll join the waiting list and hope for the best even tho I guess there are thousands in front of me in the line, planting seeds heh
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Jun 23, 2022 19:25
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Yes, they do pull from the wait list in order of application. But they've admitted that like 95% of the people don't respond when invited to take the grammar test after being on the wait list for years. I believe one of the issues with WD for the longest time was that they never deactivated anyone for inactivity. So you could have people that didnt' work for years suddenly come back. Now they deactivate you if you don't write one article in a year. So there is more likely to be churn in writers. Because people do just stop writing over time for various reasons and the queues get bigger, then they need to hire writers
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Jun 23, 2022 19:57
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I was unpleasantly surprised to learn I'd been deactivated and needed to reapply, but I hadn't written anything for WD in years so I couldn't be mad about it.
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Jun 23, 2022 21:36
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IIRC I was one of those people who applied for the wait list and then never followed up on the invite, because by then I had moved away from the mills in general.
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Jun 23, 2022 21:42
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Anything in that realm of gigs as an alternative to WD? Ideally something that relies on a test of sorts rather than a lot of experience needed as my knowledge of the langue mostly comes from traveling and real life immersion. Sadly, I've found nobody that cares about that kind of experience.
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Jun 23, 2022 22:37
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Funky Monk posted:Anything in that realm of gigs as an alternative to WD? Ideally something that relies on a test of sorts rather than a lot of experience needed as my knowledge of the langue mostly comes from traveling and real life immersion. Sadly, I've found nobody that cares about that kind of experience. Nobody reads the articles. It just needs to meet SEO standards and have proper spelling/grammar. It's just blog spam to bump up Google search rankings.
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Jun 24, 2022 00:27
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Astro7x posted:Nobody reads the articles. It just needs to meet SEO standards and have proper spelling/grammar. It's just blog spam to bump up Google search rankings. drat, I really should be able to land one of those mindless jobs if thats the case..
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Jun 24, 2022 01:28
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"We're giving you .25 extra a minute because this job requires some research." The research I'm used to: Googling names of individuals and companies for spelling purposes. The research they required: reading articles about Yoruba mythology to identify spiritual terms, pasting Arabic script into Google and trying to work out the transliteration spelling of the correct root words. It's really fun when the dude says something you don't understand and your first decision has to be whether to search a Bantu dictionary for it or an Arabic one. Then watching as Grammarly utterly poo poo the bed when I ran it. NO YES I MEANT TO TYPE OLODUMARE GOD drat IT (The good news is I'm totally reading more about Yoruba beliefs, the structure is really fuckin' cool.) kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Jun 30, 2022 |
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Jun 30, 2022 22:39
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kazmeyer posted:Huh. I've actually got published stuff under my pen name. The bad news is it's Demand Studios content-mill poo poo. The only things I had in my portfolio when I was hired there were random blog posts from other content mill sites which didn't have my name on them. I'm not sure how they actually verify anything you fill your portfolio with, but I've had friends who eventually got hired there with only 2-3 10+ year old articles they wrote for gaming blogs.
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Jul 1, 2022 14:55
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Day 10 of scouring the internet for any work where I can utilize my knowledge of both English and Croatian on a somewhat high level. Applied to all the big ones for transcribing and such but Croatian doesnt seem to be needed much. Running out of idea where to apply or dig but even a lovely $ / hour lead would be highly appreciated as my condition wont let me get a "real life" job for at least a year. And I gotta eat, my government doesnt provide any assistance for my situation. Thanks
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Jul 1, 2022 16:09
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I'm just waiting for this to turn into an "everyone hates reading now, this is how you get your OnlyFans" going thread. Hey, anybody know anything about voice over work? I've done some auditions on ACX and actually completed one project so far, just wondering if people can recommend any other platforms. And yes I know ACX pays poo poo, I just needed something to dip my toe in with that didn't involve paying money for bids.
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Jul 1, 2022 19:31
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Funky Monk posted:Day 10 of scouring the internet for any work where I can utilize my knowledge of both English and Croatian on a somewhat high level. Applied to all the big ones for transcribing and such but Croatian doesnt seem to be needed much. Running out of idea where to apply or dig but even a lovely $ / hour lead would be highly appreciated as my condition wont let me get a "real life" job for at least a year. And I gotta eat, my government doesnt provide any assistance for my situation. Thanks If you're outside of the US (or an English speaking country), a lot of the things mentioned in this thread aren't going to be available to you. There is one thing that may be available to you, and it's mentioned in the OP, but as far as I can tell from looking back a bit never really gets brought up anymore: search engine and social media evaluation. I don't know why this thread doesn't discuss this anymore. Maybe text stuff pays better, or maybe the US state contractor laws that have been passed over the few years have made it less viable for most people. I do work for Appen, who seem to have gobbled most up their competitors over the past few years. It works like this: You get access to a system and have to evaluate search results or social media posts for different things. Like 'is there commercial intent in this post?' or 'is this search for a movie, tv show, or is it misspelled?' You have to hit certain quality thresholds and maintain a certain rate per hour goal. Where I am, the pay is ok relative to low paid offline jobs, $17 per hour. It may be different in Croatia. A friend of mine in Italy who signed up said rates were lower there, without telling me exactly what he would make. Payout happens every month through Payoneer. You can get a debit card from them, or you can withdraw the money to a bank account. I like the work because the rate per hour goals are slow enough that I can do this while I do some general internet browsing. It only feels like I'm working half a job. A great way to use down time between my real freelance projects. I work on one project that I've been on for four or five years already (working 10-20 hours per week), and take on other project, which invariably end up being more short term. Those long term projects are really great if you can get them. They may not currently have projects going on for the Croatian market, but it's worth a shot. This is an affiliate link, so I get $25 if you end up signing up and doing 150 hours of work, so go to connect.appen.com manually if you want to sign up and don't want me to know about it: https://connect.appen.com/qrp/public/jobs?uref=44a4f224b2fa2cc2cd338326a87f5c2c
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Jul 1, 2022 20:13
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Not sure what the market is for it but maybe language tutoring for Croatian on italki or preply could work?
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Jul 1, 2022 20:23
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So, trip report. With things slowing down I decided I'd try applying to Allegis to see what their situation is, because they've been advertising a lot. They took one look at my resume and took me into their training program. Had to do a lot of talking about "hey I don't just work with you guys" because they're used to having transcribers at their beck and call but they insisted that they'd be flexible to work within my existing workflow. So, first of all, their transcription suite involves their own transcription software, a VPN connecting you to their servers, and Veracrypt to encrypt your files. What they don't tell you is that there's a "monitor" program that installs along with the transcription suite. Now, when I found the logs, all it was logging was when I was pressing my foot pedal-- but it was doing since it had been installed, not just when I was running their transcription software. I told them I couldn't have their program collecting data while I was working for other clients, and they allowed me to disable their programs when not in use instead of having them run at startup every single time. I get the feeling they weren't happy about that. (They also swore that it wasn't collecting any other data and they weren't looking at the logs, but you know how that goes.) So the pay rate didn't seem to be abysmal. It's a per-page rate, and you're logging insurance calls, so there's a lot of one-word answers and "yeah" "uh-huh" that move you down the page relatively quickly. Compared to a lot of the places you can get hired on as a newb it didn't seem too bad. For the sample files it was looking like somewhere around .80-1.00 per minute. The dealbreaker was the audio. These are all recorded phone calls, and the audio was loving abysmal. One of the test files was basically Charlie Brown's teacher, and they griped at me for using [inaudible] tags. I think of the nine test files I did, one of them was what I'd consider acceptable from another client. So right now I'm sandbagging the last part of the testing process so they'll can me. (If you quit, you're supposed to reimburse them for the background check.) Fortunately, I stumbled across a WAY, WAY better client basically three days after I signed up with Allegis, so I won't miss 'em.
kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Jul 1, 2022 |
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Jul 1, 2022 23:47
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LMAO Allegis. They should know better. If they want people to act like employees they need to offer salaries and benefits. I worked for them for about six months a very long time ago, and their proprietary transcription software was abysmal. They had their own shortcuts for everything, and you couldn't change any of them. That slowed me down to a crawl. They wouldn't let you download anything, so you'd be streaming the audio. Remember Real Player? They were professional enough to work with though. They did a lot of medical/legal type of stuff. The background check thing is new.
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Jul 2, 2022 02:12
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Now it's all done with a weird-rear end Word template. It's honestly not super bad, but there are all these insane, fiddly little rules depending on where the file's coming from. And God help you if something seems off, getting a response is like pulling hen's teeth unless it's before noon. Now their software lets you download the mp3, but it's encrypted and deletes itself when you shut down the program. It's still clunky as all gently caress though and a huge speed bump compared to my usual workflow. Now they've got two sides. Insurance is the basic one, pays okay but the audio and work is just a septic tank fire. They've got a legal side, but you either have to work your rear end off in the insurance side for a year first, or take some $200 transcription course (that they say they'll reimburse you for) to get into the legal stuff. The legal stuff is apparently less horseshit to deal with and they say it pays better, but honestly, the bureaucracy around it turned me off from the get-go. I much prefer the "hey is there work to do great send me something" model most of my clients go with instead of quotas and tiers and work stoppages and poo poo. Still, if you're completely new to this and can put up with a lot of bullshit, it looks like they'd pay pretty decently to start with and then once you've got some experience under your belt you could look for better gigs. Getting off the ground floor's getting harder and harder in this business, so finding places that just aren't utterly loving you over is at least a start. I got into an argument with some goober on Reddit who was defending TranscribeMe, who starts you at .25 a minute but supposedly if you bust your rear end for four months you can get up to .90 or so on their QA team. Just gotta put in your time making $3.75 an hour.
kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Jul 2, 2022 |
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Jul 2, 2022 02:34
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kazmeyer posted:"We're giving you .25 extra a minute because this job requires some research." I've had to do a lot of files with indigenous words in it -- last one the interviewee just seemed to expect people to know what the hell she was talking about. Anyways I turned in my last transcription invoice today and tonight I spent 8 hours in a row at a normal job (for the first time in like 10 years) learning how to drive a forklift. The staffing agency didn't give a gently caress about my weird internet work history and just said yeah they'll train you but it's kind of sink or swim. Think I can manage.
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Jul 2, 2022 06:47
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Yeah, I'm used to research, but this job was loving nuts. I totally want to convert to the Yoruba religion, though. (Massive oversimplification and western limited understanding incoming, apologies if there's actually anybody who really knows this poo poo here, this is just what I picked up in like two hours of tape.) It's set up sort of like Catholicism, in that you've got a big creator God who's too busy creating to worry about your little human problems, so there are a bunch of lesser deities called orisha that each have a purview. But unlike saints, where you shop around depending on what you need at the time, the Yoruba generally pick one (sometimes two) orisha and follow them exclusively. Now, whichever orisha you pick, you get certain perks and restrictions. Like, say you pick Shango. Shango's the orisha of lightning and thunder and drumming and dancing (among other things). So right out of the gate, you get a lifetime pass for being a big swingin' dick, because everyone knows you follow the coolest orisha there is so they kind of just expect you to be a jerk. But you can't eat cowpeas, because another orisha Shango has beef with will wreck your poo poo, and you can't go into deep water because one of Shango's exes might get jealous and steal you away from him. Other orisha do things like you have to go tell a river every time you're doing something important, or you can't climb trees because you might just disappear or do certain dances because they have beef with Shango and he'll hit you with a lightning bolt for showing off. It's like D&D classes meet religion. But the best part is, the restrictions and poo poo are all personal. If you're a child of Shango, you can't go into the lagoon, but if you're a child of Oshun, you can go swimming all you want. It's all "my god doesn't let me do this, but you do you." Which I really wish western religion would get on adopting like tout-suite.
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Jul 2, 2022 07:37
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blerich posted:This is an affiliate link, so I get $25 if you end up signing up and doing 150 hours of work, so go to connect.appen.com manually if you want to sign up and don't want me to know about it: Hey my goon I thought I'd let you know that I signed up using your link here.
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Jul 3, 2022 21:20
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Whew, Allegis told me to gently caress off. I was worried I'd have to go through another week pretending I wanted to transcribe blown-out compressed-audio static for sub-par rates. EDIT: God drat their bullshit software is a pain in the rear end to get rid of. They configure it without a password, so you have to go into the VPN/monitor, lock it with a password, unlock it, and then you have a brief window to uninstall it before it re-locks itself. kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Jul 6, 2022 |
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Jul 6, 2022 16:11
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Plastic Pal posted:Hey my goon I thought I'd let you know that I signed up using your link here. Thanks! I hope there's nice projects for your market! More for you than for my $25. It really is good work if they have a project that you can stick with and will have enough jobs every week. There's been months that I've made over $3000, but that's only when there's the blessed combination of nothing going on in my normal freelance work, and enough work available on Appen.
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Jul 7, 2022 17:40
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Some cheap Prime Day headphones for transcribers, if you're in the US https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G12Z1HR
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Jul 13, 2022 00:46
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ohnobugs posted:Some cheap Prime Day headphones for transcribers, if you're in the US https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G12Z1HR I don't know about their headphones, but I'm using one of their mechanical keyboards right now and it's loving ACE!
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Jul 17, 2022 17:43
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Holy poo poo, this current version of the thread, the new one, started a decade ago. Living forum history.
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Jul 19, 2022 20:58
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Good lord, it sure did.
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Jul 20, 2022 00:26
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Golden Bee posted:Holy poo poo, this current version of the thread, the new one, started a decade ago. Living forum history. It did indeed. Wow, I've been in business for a decade now because of advice from this thread. Thanks folks for helping me pay mine and my dog's way in the world.
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Jul 21, 2022 20:12
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Same. Pretty sure when I took over this thread I was just stepping into content mills and doing Leapforce stuff for a few hundred bucks a month. I'm currently on track to top 100k this year from my writing, so, glad I picked it up and kept it going for folks (even if I haven't edited the op in, uh, years.)
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Jul 21, 2022 21:48
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Could probably use a spit polish.
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Jul 22, 2022 00:55
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Nighthand posted:Same. Pretty sure when I took over this thread I was just stepping into content mills and doing Leapforce stuff for a few hundred bucks a month. Oh goddamn, congratulations! I didn't realize the writing side was so lucrative. Transcription is good. Not that good, but the captioning has got me in a place where if the market moves just right I'm going to be a homeowner in less than three years. Which considering where I started I'm pretty pleased with. There's been some real successes here. Uh, still jealous of the people who got to caption porn though. Sounds way better than all those moto cross events I had to work on.
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Jul 22, 2022 01:04
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Honestly tbh I'm still not getting paid enough, I just have a pretty high volume. I have a couple of writer friends doing similar things to me and making near twice what I am. Turns out when you hustle random CEOs into letting you ghostwrite their marketing ebooks or whatever they just throw money in your direction. Kind of wild what's out there, but it's all invisible, you can't just go to a website and sign up and hook those clients, it's all chains of networking from business to business before you end up in that position.
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Jul 22, 2022 01:59
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Networking is why I failed at the job I got a degree for (marketing communication). I'm just not very personable or care. On the other hand driving a forklift is fun and chill.
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Jul 22, 2022 04:41
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I wish I could go after those higher paying writing jobs, but I don't think I can doing it as side gig work. Content mills sort of work for me because I can just stop doing them for a while if I get busy with my day job. It pays decently enough to make it worth it, but sucks to know I'm making less than I could doing other work that I hustled to get.
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Jul 22, 2022 13:59
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