Transcribe Audio and Videos for Easy Work at Home Pay

One type of work at home side hustle that almost anyone can start doing quickly is transcribing audio and video. Simply listen to an audio recording or watch a video, and then type what they’re saying.

There are a number of websites that you can use as a freelancer to quickly find paying projects. In fact, this type of work is often much faster and easier to get than typical freelancing since you can often claim projects instead of bidding to win.

I’ll be talking about transcription gigs, some recommendations for doing this type of side hustle, and specific sites you can use to find clients in this post.

Pros & Cons of Transcription

Typing out what you’re hearing in real-time can be a fairly easy task for anyone that can type fast, but it could be a frustrating and time consuming work if you have trouble keeping up with the pace of the live audio. For this reason, how many words per minute you can type accurately while listening to what you need to type will drastically determine how much you can make per hour as a transcriber.

In general, this is not a very lucrative type of work. However, it does have it’s benefits. Being able to work online from the comfort of your own home is a huge plus that saves on gas costs and vehicle wear and tear. You also get to set your own schedule to work as much or as little as you want, so this can be a really flexible side hustle to make extra spending cash each month while also working a 9-to-5 job.

Most other types of freelance work that lets you set your own schedule and work at home will require bidding on projects. This takes time to get selected so you can start working to get paid. It’s common to make enough money from your normal employment but still run into a lack of funds because of an emergency expense that wasn’t in your budget. You can transcribe almost anytime you want, so you can quickly pick up work to make a few hundred extra dollars or even a grand or two with fairly short notice.

Rev

Rev is a website that connects freelancers with companies that need audio transcription, video captioning and subtitle translation projects completed. Overall, you may find it difficult to earn a full-time living with this side hustle, but it can be a perfect fit to use in combination with other work. This side hustle can reliably provide an extra couple hundred dollars a month and could potentially make you a grand or two monthly if you’re putting in a lot of time.

A big advantage to this side hustle is that you don’t have to chase projects by bidding on work. Jobs are posted and freelancers can simply claim work when they have the time to complete it. This allows your earnings to scale with the amount of time you have available. If you’re doing other freelancing work where you have downtime waiting to get accepted for bids, you could supplement income from this site to keep working while you wait.

The type of work you do on this site controls your overall rate of pay. Audio and video transcription pays 30 cents to $1.10 per minute. Captioning videos pays 54 cents to $1.10 per minute. Translation work pays the most at $1.50 – $3.00 per minute, so if you speak and write English and another language proficiently, you’ll make the most doing that type of work. Pay rate by the minute is based on the length of the audio or video that is translated, and isn’t based on the actual time it takes you to complete it.

TranscribeMe

One of the leaders in transcription work that is worth a separate mention is TranscribeMe. They seem to have some of the best earnings for transcription and translation related work, although it still may not be enough for most people to live on as full-time work. Average users on this site make about $250 per month working part-time, while top users make around $2,200 per month.

One of the reasons why transcribers are potentially able to make more money on this site is because of their Special Teams. Regular users that do high-quality work or have specific skills can get invited to join one of the Special Teams that does Specialty transcribing services such as Medical certified work.

These Special Teams workers get paid more for their work than others, so this could be a goal of yours if you want to put a lot of time into this side hustle. In general, the more you work on the site, the more you can get paid for your time since they utilize a pay scale based on how much work you do each month.