New business transcribers are a dime a dozen internationally. Are you one of them? There are so many new business transcribers that start out and give up. Don’t give up. You can do it by using these skills.
New Business Transcribers
Are You Willing to Self-Learn?
You don’t have to know a ton of different things to be a good business transcriber (also known as a general transcriber), but it helps. When Borlok Transcription started out, there was no training that would teach us the finer elements of transcribing. We had to learn as we went along. It took lots of practice, and we were slow.
What does that mean? That means that you do research on the Internet, interact with colleagues in social media and practice, practice, practice. You can pick up skills as you go along.
Business Transcriber Skills
Develop good ears and speedy fingers.
Believe it or not, if you’ve done customer service at a call center, for example, you are already familiar with wearing headphones for long hours and learning to decipher different accents. Now I don’t mean that you really do have “good” ears. What I mean is that you need to be able to pick out the audio words and then be able to spell them correctly.
Remember when you first started out? You may have had issues with understanding what a customer said. The individual you were speaking with may have had an accent or been eating when the speaker was talking. The same thing can occur when you are listening to audio. You need to be able to correctly hear the word and then decipher whether or not the transcribed word should be “to” or “too” or “two.”
Oh, yes, I did mention speedy fingers. Why is this important? The faster you type, the less time you will take to type the transcription. Your speed will increase over time. As you get more experienced, you will get more customers which means you will get more transcription you’ll need to do. So the faster you get them done, the greater your profit.
Fine tune your patience and diligence.
If you like typing, there are plenty of opportunities to work with people from a virtual environment as business transcribers. But, just because there are plenty of opportunities out there for you, that does not mean that business transcription is easy.
So what’s that you said? So you got into this transcription stuff so you could get rich in general transcription? It is not likely, but you can make a steady income. You will need a strong dose of patience and diligence. Why? You do not want to send a completed transcription to your client with missing words. You may have to replay the audio several times to make sure you got everything that was said. You may become frustrated and get so fed up that you may want to quit. But hang in there; you can do it.
Here is where you need a dose of diligence. When things get tough (the audio is poor quality, the content is complex or boring or…), you may be tempted to “go out and play,” so to speak. You may feel that you just can’t take it anymore. It’s okay to take a break from transcribing, but then be diligent and get back to the task at hand.
Get a Good Education in Transcription
I’ve taken some of the guesswork out of where you can get a good quality education in general transcription. I have to say, places that are out there that are really good appear to be few and far between.
After spending many hours of searching on the Internet, I found what I believe to be a place where you can get that much-needed information on how to become successful in general transcription. (They also have courses in Legal Transcription.)
***Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make purchases using them. Please see our affiliate disclosure.***
Is there a demand for General Transcription? Let me give you an example of just one industry where the need for business transcription has increased ten-fold — internet marketing! Professionals are always looking for good transcriptionists for digital marketing, content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, and oh, so many more places.
Brush up on your spelling, grammar and punctuation.
If good spelling, grammar and puntuation (whoops, did you catch my spelling error?) are not your strong points, you may want to brush up on them. You are a professional when you are transcribing. Therefore, your quality should be above reproach in order to command a higher price for your work. This is true for all business transcribers, legal transcribers and medical transcribers.
If you’re a little rusty on this, you will want to be sure to use reputable resources when transcribing.
Updated 3/31/2024
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Pam Lokker is a master writer and a virtual assistant professional. While we are not currently taking on new clients, Borlok Virtual Assistants, LLC has been the place to get global expert VA services with quality and on-time delivery for many years. Borlok Transcription is just one of our subsidiaries that strives to provide this same quality and service.
