Freelance Assistance for Coaches and other Pros

I have been giving this link out as I market myself, but I’ve left some very important information out of my blog. I’m going to attempt to give that out now as best I can. I hope this will help people in deciding whether or not to use my services, figure out what I’m all about and get to know me and my business a little better.

I do transcription of audio recordings with what I like to term “general” subject matter. I’m not a technology expert. I haven’t had any medical transcription training. There are certain fields that may require a specific expertise in order to be able to deliver the best transcript possible. I have worked in banking and legal industries, which familiarizes me with a lot of terms that everyone may not be familiar with, but I consider myself no expert on either.

Within this general area, there are lots of things that I am able to transcribe very well. I know how to do verbatim transcription and understand why it is very important to catch every single word when an interview has been conducted for research purposes. I understand that most marketing and other professionals that may be developing an info product do not need verbatim transcription and would like to have the wording cleaned up a bit in the transcript.

My rates are what I would consider very reasonable and start at $40.00 per audio hour. I have a post from December 19th, 2007 that describes the difference between a per hour rate and a per audio hour rate. Just remember that an audio hour is one hour of recording time, not one hour of my time. An hour of recorded audio translates into about four hours of work for a transcriptionist. $40.00 doesn’t sound so bad if you put it that way, does it? I have also posted earlier that poor audio quality can up the rate. I try to avoid that at all costs, but when it’s taking me two working days to transcribe an hour and twenty minutes of audio purely because of the quality, I can’t be expected to be paid less than $60.00 for two solid days of work. I’ve found that sometimes I will turn away the audio or refer the person needing the transcription to someone else. I don’t like to up my rates if at all possible and I don’t want to deliver a sub-par transcript to a client. It’s easier for everyone if the audio is clear and easy to understand.

Transcriptionists can have a hard time with rustling up work samples that they are actually able to provide to prospective clients. A lot of our clients want to make sure that the information contained in these audios is kept confidential at all times. A lot of times these transcripts are for info products and it would be a really bad thing to have your idea stolen because your transcriptionist gave out a work sample that just happened to be for your great product you’ve worked on for six months. What I usually do to avoid having to give out work samples is that I will do a five minute free sample of an audio for someone that would be interested in hiring me, but may have a little hesitation because I can’t provide a sample. I did this with one client and ended up transcribing ten hours of classes for her. I feel like giving away twenty minutes of my time was worth the business relationship in the end. She turned out to be a wonderful client that I feel confident will return to me in the future.

If there are any other questions about my services, please feel free to contact me any time at hcbtranscribe@aol.com. I know that I refer a lot of people to this blog and I think they should get some answers if they’re going to bother to look at it.

Thanks once again for reading!