Bloggeron

How do you find transcriptionists for your audio content? Answer: I find transcriptionists on Elance.. Elance has freelancers that will bid on your project. Make sure that you find a freelancer who has an Elance rating of 4.8 and higher. Look at their feedback from previous projects. How many projects have they completed? How much money have they earned on Elance? Take all of these factors into account when you are choosing your freelancer. You don’t want to focus solely on their bid price. You want a freelancer that can get the job done and done well.

So you’ve decided to find a freelancer on Elance, but what do you say in the project description? Here is what I say in the project description on Elance, “Need audio transcribed fast. I have a 1 hour and 32 minute audio that I need transcribed word for word. It needs to be single spaced paragraphs with double spaces between the paragraphs. The audio is on my server. I will give you the link to my audio once I choose the bid. This is real easy. The audio is on my website. You download it, transcribe it, and then send it to me in an MS Word document. It needs to be finished and in my hands no later than Monday (date) at 11:59pm EST. This is a simple and easy task for anyone that knows what they are doing. English must be your first language. American English please. You get a free lesson while you listen to this.”

I upload the audio to my server through Filezilla. I give the freelancer the link to the audio so they can download that audio and transcribe it.

Then people bid on my project. Typically, on Elance I get bids of $20 per audio hour.

When I post a project I put “Not sure” for the amount of money budgeted for the project. I do this because I don’t want to help somebody decide how much money it is worth to me. I want them to decide how much money it is worth to them. For example, if I said I was willing to pay $100-$200 then I would miss out on freelancers that would bid a lower amount.

I can’t stress it enough – check out how much money the freelancer has made on Elance so you can see if they are experienced or not. Their bid, feedback rating, and amount of money made on Elance should all be taken into account when you select a freelancer. The higher quality freelancer you find, the smoother your project will go.