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For those interested in transcription, but not sure about going through the training required for the medical field, here’s an idea: A few years ago I found a niche in sermon transcription. The idea came to me as a friend suddenly and completely lost his hearing from neurofibromatosis. It was so hard for him to miss the sermons at church, and he didn’t know how to lip read or use sign language to be able to get an interpreter. I went and started my own sermon transcription business! I sent out emails to all the pastors in just my small denomination and found a real demand for my services. Pastors wanted to be able to turn sermon series into books, or have them on hand to give them to the hard of hearing, or
That said, I couldn’t keep up with it. I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to do the work with a newborn, I’m not the fastest typer, and sitting at the computer that long started to drive me crazy. I ended up earning money by babysitting instead, and it worked out better for me.
But during the year that I pursued this venture, I had the Word driven into my head all week long, which wasn’t a bad thing! Anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there as an idea for you all.
(Oops, please excuse the dead sentence about the pastors’ needs…suffice it to say there were lots of reasons for wanting sermons transcribed!)
Hey Sarah,
That sounds really interesting! I took a medical transcription course, but didn’t do much with it because it was SOOO boring to me! I never thought about transcribing sermons! I’m curious, how did you charge?
Thanks!
Jessi
P.S. I’m checking out your blog now…
I’m pretty sure I set the rate at something like $1/minute of recording. When I got work that was not transcription but more editing/compiling, I charged $10/hour. Here’s a hint, too: I used a program called Audacity to slow down the recording, and then I used Dragon Naturally Speaking. I would listen to the recording and repeat it as I heard it. Naturally Speaking is a voice recognition program that you train to your own voice, so it would automatically enter in as text the words that I spoke. It still took a lot of time to make corrections, correct grammar, and format with proper punctuation and paragraphs and such, but it was a huge time saver overall.
Sarah, thank you so much for sharing your idea. That sounds delightful to me, I can’t seem to get enough of The Word into my head and am constantly listening to sermons on CD from our church. Did you charge an hourly rate or just a flat rate per sermon. If the sermon was an hour long would you just charge say $25.00 or would you charge $10.00 an hour and it might take 2.5 hours to transcribe?
thank you so much for your feedback.
Melissa, I can’t copy and paste what I just wrote, I guess, so read what I just replied to Jessie above : ). Hope that helps!
I can’t get the link to work.
thank you for this freebie im very interested in transcription. thank you also sarah for your idea!
You’re welcome!!
I recently finished grad. school in which I needed a transcriptionist to transcribe interviews. I found a great one, but they were few and far between. You might check with your local university to see if there is a need for this type of work.
The link isn’t working for me either.
Thank you for the link. I currently work as a paralegal and do transcribing as part of my job. Honestly it’s one of the things I like least about my job, but I think it could be a way to earn money from home if I become a stay-at-home-mom. Thanks!
Hey, how best can I keep in contact with you? I live in rural Michigan where there are churches all around me. I’d like to learn how to start this as I am a stay-at-home mom. I need the income very badly. Do you have a good link to your blog? If so, can you email it to me or post it here? Thanks!