|
I've come to view transcription as a field where the clients are always trying to put one over on you and get more work for less money, and you have to be diligent about checking each job to make sure they're not sandbagging you. I screwed this one up because I'd done probably a dozen of these for the client before and every one was reasonable, so I had no reason to expect they were going to gently caress me. I didn't realize it was a death march until deep in the holiday weekend before the file was due and then it was too late to kick it back and tell them to go pound sand. I like my client who pays by the hour so much better. 
kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Sep 6, 2013 |
#
?
Sep 6, 2013 00:16
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 19:45 |
|
|
I just argue I would like clear, deliniated instructions,tell me what you want and you can have it. Not having a guide sheet, and only having a sample which is very, very broad, and nowhere near correct is just insanity. FAKE EDIT: I apologize, that was ranty, but DT folks, the gently caress is going on lately?
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2013 01:34
|
|
|
I haven't been able to get any word back from Daily Transcripts after I send in my info through the careers button on the home page. Any insight about this? Also, Textbroker is slooow. How do I hope on those sweet team deals I see on there?
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2013 01:44
|
|
|
Apply to teams from the last page first. New teams are posted at the end, so the first dozen pages are likely all inactive. Ones for managed clients are probably faster to accept or deny you but the actual article approvals can take longer since they turn off auto-accepts. More teams = better, it gives you more options. Things should pick back up next week now that the holiday is over and people need more written. I also wouldn't be surprised to see a team or two pop up for Halloween stuff.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2013 01:51
|
|
|
kazmeyer posted:It really depends on what you mean by poor on a technical level. If you're misusing words and punctuation, you probably won't get far, but if your sins are more like overuse of passive voice and the Oxford comma, those are probably survivable. A good way to kind of test yourself is to write an article, turn on every option in the grammar checker in Word, and see how much of a seizure it has. That won't catch everything, but if the screen doesn't fill up with red and green lines you may not be as bad as you think. Thanks for the advice. I suppose one of the problems with being kinda bad at something is it can be difficult to accurately place yourself on the overall scale, personally my reference comes from work emails and forum posting both of which are low effort with a low bar for acceptability. The fact that I live in England may end up being the key obstacle to actually making any money, but I still think it'll be an interesting way to improve grammar at least. Drowning In Terror fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Sep 7, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2013 10:16
|
|
|
For the last couple weeks most of the work on WA has been in casting calls/solos, so definitely respond to as many casting calls as you can. WA recently lost two of their major clients, which means the open board work has been limited. I haven't noticed a decline in income because I was already on a bunch of favorite lists, but it probably looks a little bleak for new users. The only thing I can say is that it gets better really fast. I haven't noticed a specific amount of hours that the work comes through... for me it seems to come through throughout the day. I've been communicating with a lot of people on the boards, and the consensus is that it's really easy to make at least a couple grand on the site a month.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2013 10:28
|
|
|
Yeah, so far I'm not very impressed. The only content order I see posted is $3.78 for a 300 word blog post and I have to pitch the idea. I did apply to the one casting call that wasn't either hilariously underpriced or incredibly specialized, but haven't heard back yet.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2013 23:26
|
|
|
My list has still been a long list of $21 articles of 500 words each, but that's because I'm on casting calls. Those casting calls are ones that almost everyone active on the site are on, though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2013 01:12
|
|
|
Yeah, I've seen a total of three open orders (all vanished and weren't very good) and about 7 casting calls total, two of which were two-star. The rest were roofing, painting, or cosmetic surgery related. Like I said, I did apply to one that was in my wheelhouse, so hopefully I can get a boost to my star level soon. Definitely sounds decent once you get your foot in the door, but starting from scratch it's pretty bleak at WA.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2013 02:08
|
|
|
What's the consensus on the best three writing places to work for? In that I mean you get paid a decent amount, ability to move up and somewhat quickly. Maybe eventually get a portfolio from it all and work locally somewhere as a writer. I'm trying to piece together some plan outside of working for Butler Hill because that income alone isn't cutting it. It seems the captioning stuff that kazmeyer does has a steep learning curve and not really up my alley. I'm looking at more just writing and there seems to be a sea of options but it's filled with a lot of crap. Any input? Seems kaz and kilo might have some good experience in this area.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2013 03:43
|
|
|
If anyone finds a place like that, let me know immediately. Basically, there's two types of content mills -- the ones that pay well (but are nearly impossible to get into or have zero work available) and the ones that pay for poo poo (and are fairly hard to advance in). In neither case would you really want to show the resulting work as a portfolio; it'd be kind of like interviewing to be head chef of a restaurant and citing your six months experience working the fries at McDonalds. If you want to build a portfolio, your best bet is probably one of those sites where you get to write whatever you want and get paid by views, but don't expect to be able to quit your day job for a while. Transcription really doesn't have a steep learning curve. The only tricky part is really remembering the few tetchy rules each place has (like about ums and uhs and the like) and making your transcript look like the sample.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2013 04:03
|
|
|
Okay, I was under the impression that there were a few decent ones that sucked but had promise after you slaved away at it for a few months. Thanks for the clarification. The whole deal about buying a pedal and everything kind of gave me the impression that transcription was kind of difficult. Are there good areas to start there then? I'm willing to invest in the pedal and learn everything, as long as there's some promise in moving up the ranks a bit. Especially if it's a transferable skill that would help me land some kind of normal job. I've been working away on this search engine evaluation stuff for three years now and it feels like I'm getting nowhere, either in "real world skills" or within the company.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2013 04:14
|
|
|
No. 9 posted:Okay, I was under the impression that there were a few decent ones that sucked but had promise after you slaved away at it for a few months. Thanks for the clarification. I mean, if you're willing to slog it out on WA or Textbroker until you get enough casting calls to build up regular, decent-paying work, that's a sort of advancement, but there's really no path that starts at content mills and ends with magazine columnist. The only real-world jobs transcription skills would really help with would be medical transcription or court reporter stuff and both of those you have to go to school/train for anyway. You can "move up" in terms of commanding a better rate, getting access to specialty, higher-paying jobs, or moving over to the editing/management side in rare cases (or opening up your own transcription house) but it's not really something where you just do it long enough and you get promoted. Freelancing's not like a normal job in that sense. You have to find something that pays better than what you're doing, develop the skillset and reputation needed to earn those gigs, and get there yourself. For example, in terms of transcription, I started out doing $1/minute business and academic work and $.75/minute media work. After I got 6mos/1yr of experience, I found a client who'd take me on at $1.50 per page (works out to around $1.25/minute with their formatting) and one that started offering me as-broadcast work, so I dropped the first client. Then, after I had around two years of experience, I found a transcription client that paid by the hour, so I dropped another earlier client to take them on. Similarly, I've gone from writing gigs that paid $5 for a 300 word article to ones that pay $25 for a 400 word article. So there is advancement in a sense, but it's usually in terms of leaving a company that pays X for one that pays Y. kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Sep 8, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2013 04:31
|
|
|
It only took me a very little while to start making a lot of money on Writer Access, so I have to say it's one of my favorites. Textbroker and Zerys are both okay, but Zerys took me a while to get into. Now that I have gotten into Zerys I'm only taking articles above 2.8 cents a word, and I'm getting a lot 3 cent plus. If you're looking to build a portfolio that will eventually land you a job in the industry, I would suggest throwing work up on Yahoo! Voices and Constant Content because they both allow you to create a portfolio for yourself under your own name. However, neither of these will make you significant amounts of money, they will just build a reputation. Kaz, if you're having trouble getting into Writer Access, I'd suggest you pop by the Writer Access Forum. The people there are abnormally friendly and helpful, and you'll find that many of them have been doing pretty well for a while on the site.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2013 05:17
|
|
|
Kilo India posted:Kaz, if you're having trouble getting into Writer Access, I'd suggest you pop by the Writer Access Forum. The people there are abnormally friendly and helpful, and you'll find that many of them have been doing pretty well for a while on the site. I'm checking casting calls and open orders several times a day and just not seeing anything posted that's even remotely worth the time. I imagine once I get started things will be easier, but the one casting call I applied to hasn't gotten back to me yet. EDIT: Just to be clear I'm not doubting you, but right now starting from scratch seems to be particularly slow going.
kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Sep 8, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2013 06:31
|
|
|
Sundays are also the worst days, I've noted. No offense taken, I'm just eager to help You want to add a lot of industries and assets into your profile too... I made the mistake of neglecting that, not realizing that clients that search for you won't be able to find you without them in there.
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2013 23:55
|
|
|
Kilo India posted:Sundays are also the worst days, I've noted. No offense taken, I'm just eager to help How do you go about getting experience in other industries? Just start applying to casting calls and content orders and fill them in as you actually write stuff?
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2013 05:00
|
|
|
What are casting calls?
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2013 06:27
|
|
|
Casting calls are how some Writer Access clients find people to do their work... they initiate a casting call, and you make a case as to why you should be on their team. Once you're on their team, you'll be able to see all the work they assign to the group. Basically like Textbroker groups except much better. Industry experience can be added through your profile... You just need to write a description about how you've written about a certain industry before; you don't need actual experience in the industry. For instance, I added "real estate" and said that I've worked with real estate companies and written for real estate websites, which is true, but I also added "green living" and said that I've written about green home improvements. This is true, but it's not like a job or anything, it's just something I've done that they can't really verify.
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2013 09:12
|
|
|
Good lord, I can see where you're coming from with the volume of similar articles on Writer Access. 50 pages (at 25 per page) of $13 assignments (350 words) dropped in the 4 star open pool today. All the same client, all the same guidelines, just different companies to profile. You get that format down and you can roll in work.
|
|
#
?
Sep 10, 2013 19:05
|
|
|
Nighthand posted:Good lord, I can see where you're coming from with the volume of similar articles on Writer Access. 50 pages (at 25 per page) of $13 assignments (350 words) dropped in the 4 star open pool today. All the same client, all the same guidelines, just different companies to profile. You get that format down and you can roll in work. Eat your Wheaties before the test, kids. I got in at three stars and I've seen a grand total of seven open orders, two of which were above what I'd consider slave wages and those were about Paris Hilton and the Kardashians. I also have seen a grand total of one casting call that didn't require me to have specialized knowledge about cosmetic surgery, construction, or pumping and dumping stocks. (And that one casting call hasn't gotten back to me in about a week.) How fast can your star rating move? I'm pretty sure I can get good feedback from clients (providing I can actually get any work on this site) but if I'm going to be stuck churning out $5 articles for six months I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Sep 10, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 10, 2013 19:15
|
|
|
Edit: I see Nighthand beat me to it, but leaving this here since I added in some info about how to do the work. Anyone with Writer Access -- SIGN IN RIGHT NOW. New 4 star client just posted 1,200 articles at $12.00 a piece. They look intimidating at first, but all the info they want is directly from Wikipedia. All of us are just waiting for our first articles to be approved. SEE I TOLD YOU GUYS, I TOLD YOU. Kaz -- star rating moves quick, but one thing is that some unexpected things factor in. Send a lot of messages to clients and respond to a lot of casting calls and idea orders, because those effect your star rating. Writer Access is trying to encourage writers to interact with the clients directly. Kilo India fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Sep 10, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 10, 2013 19:33
|
|
|
Kilo India posted:Kaz -- star rating moves quick, but one thing is that some unexpected things factor in. Send a lot of messages to clients and respond to a lot of casting calls and idea orders, because those effect your star rating. Writer Access is trying to encourage writers to interact with the clients directly. The problem is that at three stars, you hardly see any casting calls and I've yet to see a single idea order. I do get these helpful emails each day telling me how many orders I can't see, though, which is really fun. Tonight I'll get, "There were 1200 new orders posted in the last 24 hours. One of them was available to you." I'm just waiting for something to do to start working on that rating, because it seems like it's night and day once you hit four stars. (I'd probably be less annoyed if there wasn't so much subjective crap/non-writing content on the writing test.) I do see other people complaining about it being slow on the forums, so maybe it'll pick up. EDIT: Someone's ears were burning. 100 level three product info pages just got dumped. Got my first article.
kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Sep 10, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 10, 2013 19:40
|
|
|
The art shop ones, right? Those aren't so bad: the client just auto accepts everything. The big thing I always do is check the URL really fast so I don't end up having to write 100 words about a single cellophane wrapper.
|
|
#
?
Sep 10, 2013 20:32
|
|
|
Still waiting for my approval on WA... back to HVAC on Zerys and whatever goofy stuff comes up on TB.
|
|
#
?
Sep 10, 2013 20:56
|
|
|
Kilo India posted:The art shop ones, right? Those aren't so bad: the client just auto accepts everything. The big thing I always do is check the URL really fast so I don't end up having to write 100 words about a single cellophane wrapper. Yeah. I was about to just grab one and found it was about a piece of chipboard; I picked a drafting chair instead.
|
|
#
?
Sep 10, 2013 21:02
|
|
|
On textbroker do you get a more detailed instruction after you accept a job? There were a few from one guy that looked interesting yesterday but the little instruction blurb was so vague that even though it's something I'm fairly familiar with I wasn't sure if I could break 200 words, much less the requested 450. At 3 stars a good chunk of what I'm seeing is 'write something using this keyword' with no other instruction on what they want an article about. I can't tell if they want a review or advertisement and what it's supposed to be about either way.
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2013 02:02
|
|
|
It's just internet filler SEO crap. You can write about anything, just shoe-horn the keywords in in a kind of comprehensible fashion. And no, you won't get more instructions unless you ask—and don't expect to get a reply from many clients.
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2013 02:46
|
|
|
Yeah, what you see is all you have to go on unless you message a client, and a lot of clients treat the site like a fire and forget: they can submit an assignment and the money sits in escrow, you submit an assignment, it goes to autoaccept, they get a notice the article is done and the money is yours. If they do respond, it might be 10 hours later, and it leaves you with no time to really write. You don't get an extended deadline or anything because you're waiting on client communication.
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2013 03:37
|
|
|
thylacine posted:It's just internet filler SEO crap. You can write about anything, just shoe-horn the keywords in in a kind of comprehensible fashion. This is kind of bizarre but I guess it explains why you get $4 for it. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2013 04:16
|
|
|
Is that merely a difference between 3 and 4 star articles on Textbroker? The 3-stars did seem pretty ... indifferent to whatever the results would be, but the 4-stars for the most part sound way more exacting about their expectations. I don't yet fully grasp this industry in all its weirdness, needless to say. There's a very strange disparity between the borderline sleazy instructions from the clients ("use this linked article for 'inspiration'") and the jarring absolutism of the editors. It feels like working in a deli that's been taken over by the mafia but being more afraid of the health inspector. As long as I'm here: Does anyone do the articles that require HTML coding? I know basic HTML, enough to make lists and stuff like that, but it's odd to read an article's instructions that don't mention HTML til the very end where it will say something like, "for any other subject headings use H2 tags." Is it common to use only one sort of HTML tag in an article?
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2013 04:57
|
|
|
HTML is fine. Very few clients care about <br> and <p> tags. Some want you to put subheadings in <h2>, which is fine. I love bullet lists, and the HTML for those is easy (and done automatically by the site when you use their tool). Same with links. Beyond that I don't think I've seen HTML come up, though I recall one person on the forums mentioning trying to make an HTML table HTML still counts toward your word count, so it can even be beneficial for squeaking out those last 50 words or whatever! Also, not that you all need telling, the Textbroker forums are utter garbage. I swear some people there spend more time posting than they do actually writing. Not to mention being a horribly inefficient system that takes minutes to load the thread listings. RE: the 3/4 star thing, I do see a lot of clients on 4 star who don't really care, but there are plenty who are at least passionate about what they're doing. Guidelines tend to lay out fairly well what they want, at least in the sorts of articles I pick. I tend to shoot for larger projects and avoid the $5 crap though, so ymmv.
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2013 05:55
|
|
|
Nighthand, you have written a few things for me on Textbroker. I thought your user name looked familiar.Von Sloneker posted:
I almost always include links for research purposes when I buy content, I DEFINITELY am not wanting the writer to rip off the content or rewrite it - I just don't want the writer burdened with a ton of research. Sometimes it's unavoidable but if I can help I feel like it's a win win. I've even ordered lists where the list is made, I just want the blanks filled in. I figure if I can be as detailed as possible in the order and provide enough resources then I'll get back higher quality writing. If anyone has any suggestions on how to make your jobs easier I'd love to hear it. I spend about $500-$1000 a month at TextBroker.
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2013 05:42
|
|
|
Hopefully it was satisfactory! I'd check to see but I'd need the client display number they assign you. Do you even see those, or is it obfuscated to further limit client-writer interactions outside of the site? I get the impression that a lot of writers on TB and other sites have issues with research. I saw an interaction between someone on WA and Kilo India talking about how the company profile articles (350 words in individual fields of 75 words each, mostly) take him an hour+ to research. The client suggests Bloomberg Businessweek, which has most of the information easily available. The one I did took me over an hour, but I was writing a different article at the same time. The actual research-writing-submission time was probably more like ten minutes. That said, it makes sense that most writers appreciate you providing research links for them. I rarely have a problem with it (I know how to use Google) but others would. Most of the time when I'm provided a link, I'll still do a search on the topic and see what additional information I can pull in. I'll crib the format/layout from a successful research article (general progression of information, etc) but I'll rarely rewrite paragraph by paragraph. When I do, it's because the client specifically asked for a rewrite.
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2013 13:23
|
|
|
I get the impression that a lot of content writers online are, somehow, not all that familiar with the internet or the way computers work. I suggested to people on the forum that they use two computer screens and it led to that one dude that's one of the most active writers on the site assuming I'm running TWO COMPUTERS at once. These content articles are easily taking me less than 10 minutes each because ALL the info is on Wikipedia and Bloomberg. And yet many other writers aren't taking it because they think it takes 45 minutes to an hour. The articles are just sitting there, thousands of dollars unclaimed. It's crazy.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2013 03:49
|
|
|
The Writer Access rates look very very good, but I don't think they accept non-US writers. I'm from the UK, and don't think I'd be able to fill in the US-style tax form. Does anybody know of any alternatives? There's Textbroker, but it's not a very a good alternative considering the lower rates and scarcer orders.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2013 19:06
|
|
|
Hey KI, how awesome are the WA editors? I realized upon like my 4th submission of those assignments that when I copy a clean URL from my browser, half the time when I paste it appends the http, which the client doesn't want. So I wonder if I can poke an editor to fix 'em before the client gets them, or if I should just let the client know.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2013 19:46
|
|
|
I took a break for about a month and looks like DT have changed some things around, nothing too drastic though. Any newbies get hired onto DT lately? My aunt is trying to sign up but hasn't heard back from them. It's a totally new interface from when I got hired so I don't know.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2013 22:38
|
|
|
Nighthand posted:Hey KI, how awesome are the WA editors? I realized upon like my 4th submission of those assignments that when I copy a clean URL from my browser, half the time when I paste it appends the http, which the client doesn't want. So I wonder if I can poke an editor to fix 'em before the client gets them, or if I should just let the client know. You can email kristin@writeraccess.com and let her know. I did the same thing accidentally and they accepted mine though. The WA staff are actually incredibly amazing and respond very quickly.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2013 03:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 19:45 |
|
|
Sometimes transcription's not so bad. The client I was bitching about with the clip reels came back with a better payment rate and offered me another tape yesterday. Worked out to a truly astonishing fee, beat my per-minute record as well as my daily and two-day records (since I decided to thrash it out this weekend so I could go ahead and invoice for it this month). Closed it out 20 minutes ago. Right now listening to "Gonna Fly Now" and icing my wrists.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2013 01:58
|
|