Scribie Audio/Video Transcription Service
- 1 Sign up as transcriber
- 2 Setup PayPal Account
- 3 Take Transcription Test
Overview
- Home-based job, work at your convenience
- $5 to $25/audio hour pay rate, USD
- Short files, 10 minutes or less
- 2 hours TAT for each file
- Free automated transcript, to save around 60% of typing effort
- Get rewarded for good performance; become a Reviewer -> Proofreader -> QC
- Monthly Bonus of $5 for every 3 hours completed
- No obligations, no monthly commitments or withdrawal limits
- We don't assign files, you get to preview and choose the files to work on
Introduction
Scribie.com offers a great opportunity to augment your income by transcribing audio files for us. The work involves listening to the audio files and typing it as accurately as possible. You just need to go through a test process and get certified as a transcriber. Once certified you will be paid for the files you transcribe on an audio hour basis. For each submission, your Scribie.com account will be credited with the appropriate dollar amount. Your earnings will accumulate and you can transfer it to your PayPal account anytime. From PayPal, the funds can be transferred to your bank account. There are no monthly commitments or minimum withdrawal limits. Payments are made once a day.
If you are an experienced transcriber and have spare time, then Scribie.com can help you to fill that up. If you are starting your career as a transcriptionist then you can gain valuable experience and hone your skills on Scribie.com.
We have transcribed more than 9,813,020.16 minutes of audio since 2008 and have paid around $4,543,972.02 to our certified transcribers. Around 43,796 home-based freelancers from all around the world have successfully cleared our transcription test to date.
Requirements
- Good comprehension of English
- Ability to interpret conversations
- Ability to apply context and identify mistakes
- A Verified PayPal account (linked to a bank account or credit card)
- Laptop/desktop computer and internet connection
- Headphone/headset
- Latest version of Firefox, Chrome or Safari web browser
Additionally, the core skill we look for is ability to correct manual/automated transcripts. Scribie will not be a good fit if you are looking for typing-only jobs.
Please note that we cannot process PayPal accounts from residents of California, US as we are not AB5 compliant as of now.
Verified PayPal Account
We send payments via PayPal and we require a Verified PayPal account in order to be eligible for this program. It is a necessary requirement and cannot be relaxed. In order to verify your PayPal account, it has to be linked to a bank account and/or credit card depending upon your country. Please check the PayPal FAQ for the exact process. If you do not have a PayPal account already then please sign up for one and get it verified before taking the test. It is free to sign up for PayPal.
This requirement is specifically to ensure that you are able to receive the money when we transfer your earnings to your PayPal account. A Verified PayPal account indicates that you are able to successfully transfer your earnings to a bank account eventually. It also helps us save on support costs for payments related issues.
You can specify any PayPal account as long as it's Verified and not in use already. It can also be changed later on. The PayPal account is not used for any purpose other than funds transfer. We do not support any other payment methods currently.
Transcription Process
Our transcription process consists of following steps.
| File Splitting |
|
Raw Transcription |
|
Review |
|
Proofreading |
|
Quality Check |
1. File Splitting: In the first step, the audio file is split at 6 minute intervals.
2. Raw Transcription: In this step, the audio for each part file is played back and transcribed as accurately and cleanly as possible. The incomprehensible parts are marked with blanks. We provide a free automated transcript which you can correct and submit as per our guidelines.
3. Review: During Review, the Raw Transcript is checked for correctness and quality. The audio file is played back again and each transcribed word is checked against the audio. The blanks are filled, if possible. Timestamps and speaker tracking are also added at this stage.
4. Proofreading: In this step all part files are collated together and the combined transcript is checked against the audio once more.
5. Quality Check: In the last step, the transcript is quality checked and either delivered to the customer or re-proofread.
The Freelance Transcription Program is applicable at steps 2, 3, 4 and 5, namely Raw Transcription, Review, Proofreading and QC. As a certified transcriber you can login to your account anytime, select a file for transcription, review or proofreading and submit them. The earnings will be credited to your account when your file completes the next step. You can also preview any file to check the quality and accents and before you select.
A detailed description of our process is available here.
Payments
We pay $5 to $25 per audio hour.
We pay by audio hour and not the actual time spent working on it. The payment for 6 minute file therefore can vary from $0.5 to $2.50.
The earnings are credited to your Scribie.com account once your submission is reviewed and it accumulates there. It can be withdrawn to your PayPal account anytime. You have to submit a withdrawal request for that. There is no minimum withdrawal limit. The funds will be sent to your PayPal account in 1 business day.
There are no application fees or any other charges.
Referral & Affiliate
You can increase your earnings further by referring other transcribers and/or customers to us. We will pay a 5% affiliate commission to you for each transcript order placed by a referred customer. For referred transcribers, we will pay a 2.5% referral commission on their direct earnings. There is no limit on the amount you can earn from referral or affiliate commissions.
We encourage you to promote your Scribie.com profile on your blog, Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. The profile page has referral/affiliate codes embedded in it. Anyone who applies as a transcriber or orders a transcript after visiting your profile page will be automatically marked as your referral.
Automated Transcript
We also provide an automated transcript with each file. The automated transcript is machine generated and the accuracy varies from 60% to 90% depending upon the audio quality, accents, and other things. Therefore it has to be corrected before submitting. However, this can still save around 50% of the typing effort. The following has to be corrected:
- Mistakes
- Missing words
- Missing or incorrect paragraph breaks
- Utterances for strict verbatim files
- Incorrect capitalization of words
- Missing punctuations, especially
"
The Auto Transcribe button in the editor will insert the automated transcript at the current cursor position. This feature is provided free of charge so as to improve your efficiency and productivity.
Certification Process
The certification process consists of several steps. A summary is provided below.
| Sign Up |
|
Confirm Email |
|
Setup PayPal |
|
Submit Test File |
|
Certified! |
1. Sign Up as Transcriber: The first step is to sign up as a transcriber from the Sign Up page.
2. Email Confirmation: To confirm your email address, we will send an email to the signup email with a link. Please visit the link in your browser to complete the account creation. You can delete your account and signup with an alternate email as well.
3. Setup PayPal Account: Before you take the test you have to specify a Verfied PayPal account which is a necessary requirement.
4. Test File Submission: To take the test, choose one of the files listed, transcribe it and submit the transcript. Please note that your submission will be rejected if any guideline violations are found.
5. Certification: Your submission will be graded when the file is delivered to the customer. Depending upon the grade, you will either be certified as a transcriber (and paid for the test file) or rejected. If rejected, you may compare the differences between your submission and the reviewed file, enable re-test and submit another test file. The maximum number of attempts is 10.
Post Certification
After you have been certified, you can login to your Scribie.com account with your email address and password and select any available file. Files are available on a first-come, first-serve basis and assigned to the first person who selects them. You can select as many files as you want but you can have only one assignment at a time. The assignments have to be submitted within 2 hours with one allowed extension for an hour. You may also cancel your assignment. There are no penalties for cancellation or timeouts.
Your account will be credited with the respective dollar amount for the file once the submission is reviewed. Each file has review-by date and the review will be completed on or before that date. The earnings keep accumulating on your account till you submit a withdrawal request to transfer the earnings to your PayPal account. All withdrawal requests are processed in 1 business day. There are no minimum limits on withdrawals. However a fee of 2% is charged if the amount is less than $30.
We also provide a certified profile page and an embeddable widget which you can display on your blog or website. The certificate accredits you as an audio transcriber on Scribie.com and lists your work experience and performance history. You can use this certificate as a reference for the transcription work done on Scribie.com, if required.
Performance Tracking
We employ a grading system to track performance. The grades range from A+ (5/Excellent) to D (1/Poor) and are based on major mistakes found in the submissions. The average of the grades of the last 100 submissions, called the Overall Grade, is the metric used to track performance. Reviews will be enabled after 1 audio hour of raw transcript submissions have been credited and your Overall Grade is above 3. Similarly, Proofreading will be enabled after 5 audio hour of Review submissions have been credited and your Overall Grade is above 3.5. QC will be enabled after 10 audio hour of Proofreading submissions have been credited and your Overall Grade is above 4.
A minimum Overall Grade of 2.5 has to be maintained for you to keep working on Scribie. You will not be able to work on any files if the OG falls below that mark. However, your account will remain active and it can still accrue Referral and Affiliate commissions, if any. You can also opt to delete your account and re-take the transcription test after 6 months from the date of account deletion.
We also provide a dispute resolution mechanism for incorrectly graded and/or reviewed files. The disputes are completely anonymous and are arbitrated by our administrators. Our final decision is binding.
Potential Earnings
The amount you can earn from Scribie.com solely depends on your skill and ability. For an average case, if you spend 8 hours each day 6 days a week on Scribie.com, the following will be your earnings.
| Assignment Type | Potential Monthly Earning |
| Only Transcription | $200 - $300 |
| Transcription and Reviews | $300 - $500 |
| Transcription, Reviews and Proofreading | $500 - $700 |
| Transcription, Reviews, Proofreading and QC | $700 - $1000 |
If you spend lesser time, then your earnings would be proportionally lower. Conversely, if you have the skills and are able to pick up the work, your earnings can be double the amount listed. These are very conservative estimates only applicable for the average case.
Please note that the above is provided solely for the purpose of illustration and estimation.
Get Started
Please sign up as transcriber to start. Please note that you have to satisfy all the requirements before taking test. For any questions, please check the FAQ or contact us via email.
Transcription Guidelines
The transcription guideline is a set of rules that should be always followed. Therefore please adhere to these as strictly as possible.
Do not violate these rules
- The raw transcript should not contain text other than the spoken audio. No headers/footers, speaker tracking, time-codes, comments etcetera.
- No part of the audio should be omitted, unless specified otherwise by an instruction or another guideline.
- Inaudible parts should be omitted and marked with a blank
____. - Laughter should be omitted and marked with
[laughter]or[chuckle]. - Ellipsis
...should be used to indicate unfinished sentences or mid-sentence pauses. - Contractions,
wanna,gonna,kinda,gotta, should not be expanded. - Numbers one to nine should be transcribed in letters and numerals otherwise, except for measurements.
- A new paragraph should be started at each change of speaker and paragraphs should be separated by an empty line.
- Fillers (
right,you know,I think,like,I mean,so,actually,basically), false starts, stutters and partial words should be omitted, except for strict verbatim files. - Utterances should be omitted for non-strict verbatim files, unless necessary. For strict verbatim files, only the following utterances should be transcribed:
Mm-hmmif in agreement,Uh-huhif in disagreement,UmmandUh.
Additional Notes:
- Strict verbatim files are indicated with an instruction. Files without the instruction should be considered as non-strict verbatim.
- Blanks that are filled during the Review, Proofreading and QC steps are considered as major mistakes (except for names and acronyms).
- For Guideline VII, measurements are considered as anything which has a unit (kg, ml, currency units, etcetera).
- For Guideline IX, the filler words specified have to be frequently repeated by a speaker during the conversation to be considered a filler. In-frequent usage of those words should be transcribed.
- False starts are when the speaker starts a statement but immediately corrects it to something else.
- For Guideline IX, all files are non-strict verbatim by default. Strict verbatim files are indicated by an instruction on the file. Therefore if the instruction is not present, all utterances, fillers, false starts, stutters should be omitted. If the instruction is present, nothing should be omitted and the raw transcript should match the audio word for word.
- The only case when an utterance is required in a non-strict verbatim file is when it is a response to a direct question. The unless necessary part of Guideline X specifies that.
Style Suggestions:
The following are some styles that we recommend. Please note that this list is not exhaustive. If you require additional guidance, please contact support.
- Punctuations are free style. Please use your discretion on placement of commas, periods, semicolons, exclamations etc.
- Spelling styles are different for each file and the styles suggested by the spell check should be followed.
- All proper nouns should be first letter capitalized, e.g., names of places, person, organizations, job titles, etcetera.
- Spelled out names should be all capitalized and separated by hyphens. E.g.
A-D-A-M. - Use
etceterainstead of etc. - Use
i.e.,instead of ie. - Use
e.g.,instead of Eg. -
AlrightandAll rightare both acceptable. - A statement can begin with an
And. - Generic drug names should be all lowercase and branded drug names should be first letter capitalized. Google once to check if they are generic or branded.
- Special marking schemes for phonetics and spelling should not be used. Blanks should be used instead.
- Periods should not be used in acronyms. E.g.
PhDinstead of Ph.D. - The following examples further illustrates Transcription Guideline VII.
- Time:
10:00 AM - Date:
March 2, 2012 - Temperature:
5 degrees - Money:
$5,$500,000,$5 Billion - Percentage:
5% - Speed:
5 miles per hour - Dimension:
6 x 10,5 feet 2 inches - Address:
213, 2nd Street - Era: in your
20s, in the90s - Rank:
ninth,10th
Sample Transcript
The following is a sample transcript which illustrates the formatting required for raw transcripts. Please note the following:
Highlights
- There is no speaker tracking, eg. interviewer/interviewee, person 1/person 2 etc. There are also no time codes. Both of these are not required for raw transcript.
- The transcript is broken into paragraphs on each change of speaker. Each speakers continuous diction is on one single paragraph and paragraphs are separated by empty lines.
- Inaudible parts are marked with a blank,
____to make it stand out from the rest of the transcript. These blanks may or may not get filled during review, but are always checked.
Frequently Asked Questions
Please click on the question link to view the corresponding answer or click here to show all answers.
1. General
2. PayPal
3. Transcription Test
4. Miscellaneous
Practice Files
Instructions
- Click on the blue play button to preview the audio quality, accents etcetera and select the easiest one.
- Press F10 and listen for 5 seconds. Press F10 again to pause and type what you hear.
- Repeat the process for the rest of the file. Press F7 to go back and F12 to insert a blank for inaudible parts.
- Spell check will be started automatically on submit and has to be completed in order to finish.
- On submission, your transcript will be compared with our version and the differences will be shown. Look at the major changes and evaluate the accuracy yourself.
- Please use a supported browser; latest version of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
- Please note that these files are provided for practice and are not representative of the actual test files. Actual test files are much harder.
