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Work at Home Doing General Transcription

PJ_Deneen by PJ_Deneen

General Transcription - A Legitimate Work-At-Home Opportunity

This flexible job 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.

Read on to learn about this work-at-home opportunity.

Included are some pros and cons of working at home and a list of 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 wav files. Companies send these files via the internet to be transcribed. The transcriptionists complete the files and send them back over the web.

Some Companies That Hire 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.
NTI
Offers transcription and other work-at-home opportunities specifically for disabled workers.
Amazon Mechanical Turk
Amazon Mechanical Turk is a system where employers post jobs that are taken on a first-come, first-serve basis. Use transcription as a search term. Not great pay but good to get experience.

Job Bidding 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.
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.
Elance
Another bidding site with transcription listings of many types.

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.

Tools of the Trade

A quality pair of headphones will be invaluable. Not the type you listen to your MP3's while working out but the type that filter out as much background noise as possible.

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.

Wav 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.
Express Scribe
This company offers free wav player software available for download.
Bytescribe
Bytescribe is well known in the field for their dictation accessories.

More Transcription Equipment

Find items you need for general transcription on Ebay such as foot pedals and quality headphones.
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Curious About Medical Transcription?

Medical Transcription Information

In this lens, I link to all of my lenses and other articles about medical transcription including my experience with education and job hunting.
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MT Education

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.
Review of Everett Community College Medical Transcription Program
Everett Community College in Washington state has a medical transcription certificate program that can be completed in 9 months with full-time attendance or up to 2 years with part-time attendance.This is a review of my distance education experience with this program which I graduated from in 2005.
Important!

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).

It's Transcriptionist, not Transcriber

A transcriber is a machine used to play back dictation.

A transcriptionist is the human that does the transcribing.

Maybe I'm nit picky, but I don't like to be mistaken for a machine.

Some Books to Get Started Working At Home

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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.

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Questions and comments welcome.

  • TravelingRae Jun 15, 2011 @ 2:05 pm | delete
    Good information, thanks.
  • shawnbowman Feb 26, 2011 @ 12:17 pm | delete
    this had a lot of great info!! thanks so much
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This UpMarket page written by

PJ_Deneen

P.J. (Trish) Deneen is a medical transcriptionist and freelance writer.
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