Work at Home Doing General Transcription
General Transcription - A Legitimate Work-At-Home Opportunity
General transcription is a flexible job that can be done at home at your own computer. In some cases you can even set your own schedule. Busy stay-at-home moms will appreciate this.
Learn more here about this work-at-home opportunity and what equipment you need to begin working.
Included are the pros and cons of working at home as it's not all roses and sunshine. I've also listed some companies that hire at-home transcriptionists.
Why is it called "general" transcription?
What's so general about it?
What's the difference?
It's called general transcription to differentiate it from other types such as medical or legal for which specialized education or experience may be required.
Transcription is the process of typing a document from recorded material. Some examples of general transcription would be letters, teleconferences, and educational seminars.
This field has entered the digital age. While some transcription is still done from audio tapes, a great deal of it is now done from digital files. Companies send these files via the internet to be transcribed. The transcriptionists complete the files and send them back to the company over the internet.
Companies That Hire or Contract General Transcriptionists
- Tigerfish
Tigerfish offers transcription services in many fields including medical, legal, media, and business. - Ubiqus
Ubiqus offers verbatim and medical transcription as well as translation and interpreter services. - Verbal Ink
Formerly eScriptionist. Offers many types of transcription, especially business. - Work-at-Home Jobs for Disabled Individuals | NTI
You can find a legitimate work-at-home online job if you are disabled and must work from home as a virtual call center agent through NTI. - Adept Word Management, Inc. | Intelligent Transcripts™, Voice-to-Text Services
Many different types of transcription services as well as video captioning.
Job Bidding and Freelance Sites
Job bidding sites like Guru and Elance are another way to find freelance transcription jobs. There can be a lot of competition however, and some people dislike the bidding aspect and/or membership fees of trying to find work.
- The world's largest online workplace, oDesk is where savvy businesses and professional freelancers g
oDesk is the world's largest online workplace, where savvy businesses hire, manage, and pay a talented workforce of on-demand professionals. - Amazon Mechanical Turk - Welcome
The online market place for work. We give businesses and developers access to an on-demand scalable workforce. Workers can work at home and make money by choosing from thousands of tasks and jobs. Use transcription as a search term. Not usually great - Hire freelancers and find freelance jobs instantly | Elance
Access over 2 million skilled freelancers from around the world. Find rated web developers, mobile programmers, designers, writers, translators, marketing pros, virtual assistants and more. - Guru
There are usually a lot of transcription listings, some medical but also general. Most jobs require that you have a basic membership to bid.
Tools of the Trade
The Basics
A quality pair of headphones will be invaluable. Some people prefer the type that filter out as much background noise as possible. It really depends on the job.
A foot pedal allows you to control the dictation playback including speed, rewind and fast forward. You can do this with the function keys, but the foot pedal makes it so much easier.
Audio file player software is required by many companies that hire transcriptionists. While some provide their own, others may ask that you have your own already. Express Scribe is freeware provided by NCH Software that can be downloaded for use on a PC or Mac.
Where To Find Transcription Gear - A list of websites to buy transcription accessories.
- Transcription Gear
Both digital and analog transcription and dictation equipment. - Dictation Store
A great selection on more transcription accessories. - Bytescribe
Bytescribe is well known in the field for their dictation accessories.
The Entrepreneurial Spirit
There's always the possibility of going into business for yourself, especially if you have some business contacts.
Take stock of who you know. With the initial investment of dictation and transcription equipment, you might just be headed for being your own boss.
Do you think this trend will last?
The Work-At-Home Trend
Working at home is nothing new. But more and more people are considering this option whether due to the economy or to simply spend more time with family.
Curious About Medical Transcription?
- Career Step Training Programs
Career Step is a well-known quality online MT education program. This school also has programs in medical coding and billing as well as for pharmacy technicians. Learn more here.
Some Pros and Cons of At-Home Transcription
You don't have to buy a new wardrobe.
You save on fuel costs.
You can spend quality time with family.
It can be tedious and repetitive.
Not much social interaction (although some might see this as a plus).
© 2008 PatriciaJoy
