Speech Ink

Speechink is an alright requester, they use to take a long time to pay. But lately they have been paying on the next day. You have to be careful to keep your qualifications correct. I was in the high 90's and got an 80 on one particular transcription. This brought my qual way down to where I don't qualify for many transcriptions. You have to keep taking tests to keep your qual up. I give them a score of 8/10.

 

At one time SpeechInk was great. I could actually email them saying "I'm almost done but will be a few minutes late." And I'd get a reply from Priscilla or another woman, Robin I think, saying OF COURSE! So, I would submit the incomplete HIT before it times out, and then email the whole completed transcript to the SpeechInk contact ASAP. And all was well, with my very well-done long transcripts.

These days, they do not respond to requests such as this. Nor do they respond to other messages, such as when an MTurk server glitch prevents submission of a completed HIT. This is my experience, anyway.

 

I did four short transcription HITS for them. I'm embarrassed to say how long it took me for each one. It was my first try at transcription, so I thought of it as a learning curve. The audio was difficult. There were a lot of simultaneous speaking and background noise.

They accepted the work quickly and paid quickly, but no bonus. I got graded 87, so I'm not eligible to work on anything anymore. I felt that the grader was picky and didn't agree with several of the corrections. I did make some legitimate mistakes (primarily I wrote "alright" instead of "all right"), but for the most part my transcript was error free and formatted correctly.

I feel Speechink really isn't a good use of time. If you're an experienced transcriptionist, which is what I think they are looking for, you can make much more per audio minute elsewhere. I'm sticking with CrowdSurf and Claritrans for now, which seem more realistic with grading. The snippets are much shorter and manageable for a newbie, too.

 

I don't see how anybody can make real money with SpeechInk. The experienced transcribers really turn up their noses at SpeechInk because the pay is so low it's abusive. The Crowdsurf ones pay much better and is a good way to build up your speed. The quality of the audio tends to better as well, and if it's not all that good, they tend tack on bonuses for those hits.

Crowdsurf is also fairly steady work. I focus on those hits when they have a really good bonus incentive that week or if the board is slow.

 

I agree. If you don't have professional transcribers' software and a pedal, I don't think you can make money at Speechink. They are so picky as well. I'm sure it's really easy for the grader to quickly go through the audio with your transcription already written down and slash away with the correction pen. After listening careful over and over again to get every um and stutter down, only to be graded just slightly below 90 and not be able to pick up any more work from them is frustrating.

If they weren't so picky and you were really, really fast, it would be fine. But am I wrong that 0.99 for 3.5 minutes of difficult audio is a joke? Could even the fastest transcribers complete a copy ready transcript from an interview without listening to the audio three times? Even then it's only 11 cents per minute. Even with bonus, it's just 14 cents a minute. Maybe my math is wrong. It just seems like Speechink has unreasonable expectations combined with poor pay.

 

Yeah, it really is a joke. I think SpeechInk is really for transcribers in countries where a dollar is worth a whole lot more than it is here. Rule of thumb is that a good transcriptionist takes about about 3 to 5 minutes to transcribe one minute of audio including spell checks. If the speaker is really slow and clear, maaaaybe two minutes for a minute of audio including a spell check. So the absolutely lowest most professionals will take is about $40 per audio minute, which gives you a wage of a little more than $12 an hour. Speechink pays well less than $10 per audio hour for super bad audio which would take longer than the 3-5 minute rule to complete. That would be less than $2 per hour even for the average transcriptionist and just not worth it no matter how desperate a person is.

Crowdsurf works out to about $6-$9 an hour plus bonuses, so it's decent work considering you can do it from home at your own pace. They are not terribly picky either, judging from their scoring examples. I've never had a reject from them.

 

Crowdsurf Grades?

I agree. But if it's for people in another country, how could they possibly understand the accent and crosstalk and also type a pristine transcription? Doesn't seem possible.

I haven't gotten a grade from crowdsurf yet. I get notified that my qualification keeps going up, but haven't seen anything about grades. Do they let you know if they aren't happy with what you're doing? I'm assuming all my stuff has been fine, but I guess you never know.

 

The answer is they don't give a pristine transcription. I found a forum for experienced transcriptionists and they were discussing Speechink and the outsourcing of transcription work. Apparently, these folks get a lot of business from companies who first went to companies like Speechink for transcriptions, but ended up getting a product that was totally unusable for what they needed it for.

 

As far as I can see it, Speechink is paying 18$ a/h and also $24 a/h in some of their tasks, and those videos are super clear. Especially media files with political speeches. I don't know why you say, 2$ per hour. lol.

 

I highly doubt that what these people on that other forum are saying. I just don't see a company paying Speechink for less than pristine transcripts, and I have to tell you, I have no issues getting paid by them.

As VarunBatra said if you are good, dedicated transcriber there is plenty of money to be made on their hits.

Varun, lol those political hits? I keep doing my current Governor's sound bites lol and laugh, although he does " SOUND" good.

 

Well, recently I have had two of SpeechPad's transcriptions graded 0, and mostly on too many commas or their formatting requirements. I lost $6.90 and hours of my time over one of them--and the accent was Irish with blended words, so it was really difficult to get the actual words. YES, things have changed there, and I'm sick of trying now. On to something better, I hope.

 

Well, I have worked transcriptions for SpeechInk for quite a long time and have gotten at times a commenting email from the reviewer saying, "Great job," and Thanks for a great job." Now they must be using English majors as reviewers who are heavy handed with the corrections to the point that I struggled with a heavy Irish accent in an audio and had my work rated 0 by her so that it was rejected. I saw her corrections and many were not justified at all!

Now I feel wounded to the point that I don't want to even try an audio I can't hear well, or take one that is lengthy. I'm looking elsewhere for my work. And I can see that changing is difficult because their style guides are all so different.

 

Is it possible for SpeechInk to sort their audios and only offer me the ones that are poor or accented?

I used to be able to find some clear ones to do, but lately they all seem to be flawed, thus very hard to transcribe, and I'm tired to getting slammed by the ratings of the reviewers.

 

Okay first of all they do not rate transcriptions unless it is under the strict verbatim, or the craft transcriptions. If you transcribed a interview, they do not " rate " them.

In regards to your punctuation, yes Speechink is pretty strict when it comes to proper use of punctuation, and spelling. They also like you to follow their guidelines which truly are not that difficult.

Here is a question for you, if you could not understand the man's accent, what prevented you from returning the hit? I have returned a few that start off really great, and then another speaker comes along that as hard as I try, I cannot understand. When that happens, I return the hit, explaining that I would rather let someone else do rather than submit a transcript full of errors. They have never taken off any points, or offered any indication that returning a hit, because you could not turn in an accurate transcript.

 

I haven't found this issue for me at least to be true. I have no problem finding work to do, actually I find myself working almost more than I planned on some days.

 

Re: Style Guide for SpeechInk

Since being slammed by one particular reviewer at SpeechInk on punctuation and grammar on two different Hits now, I have sought a CURRENT style guide for a 'media' transcription.

I have looked on their website, as I am a member and can signin. They only offer the insurance style guide there.

I have looked for one on the individual hits and now find nothing listed as before when we could click on 'style guide' to take us to the link.

 

They do rate the interviews. Every interview that I transcribed was rated.