Daily TranscriptionReviews of dailytranscription.com

Trying to get you to take their transcription course, even if you have worked 25+ years as a transcriptionist and never took a test or interviewed with them.

Daily Transcription still disregards African countries as "native" English speakers. I am a native English speaker who was born and grew up in South Africa. Please get with the times.

They claimed to be recruiting, so I thought I might as well give it a go. I was a bit suspicious of them hard selling courses at $75 minimum for an entry level position. Still, I went through the very brief form as a ‘seasoned pro’ because I have 2+ of experience with AI and my application was for AI Editor. I outlined this experience on the form only to be send an email from ‘HR’ immediately afterwards thanking me for taking the time, but telling me that they only hire people with experience (yep, I have that)…then trying to sell me a course on the very thing I have experience in so that I can “kick start my career” - a career I already have had for 2+ years for a much more widely known platform. Essentially, it’s a scam to sell their nonsense courses. The lingo is very specific even on site - almost promising to hire “course graduates.” It’s low paid entry level work, and apparently you have to pay them at least $75 dollars for consideration. Save yourself the bother.

Daily Transcription's claim of income potential on their Careers page states that their top earners make $350-$1,250 per week. There is, quite simply, ZERO chance that that's possible as a transcriber. Maybe some of their back-end QC workers earn that, though I still highly doubt it, but if that's the case, this income claim is (purposely) misleading to rope new people in. They also say that, once you're "up to speed," you will be able to turn around a 60-minute audio clip in 4 hours (1:4 ratio) or less. There is, quite simply, ZERO chance that that's possible either. How and why do I know this? Because they have the most archaic systems (which is to say they don't have one), and nonsensical, beyond-tedious guidlines, including double spaces after every single sentence, adding your own speaker names after everything said (also with two spaces following speaker names), as well as having to intermittently manually type in timecodes every 30 seconds. And as if that's not time-consuming (or aggravating) enough, their files are either low quality interviews and/or dialogue where people are CONSTANTLY talking over each other, and you are required to transcribe ALL OF IT -- and in true verbatim. If you don't know what that means or looks like, here's an example of a properly formatted transcript according to DT's guidlines: JIM: I -- I -- can't see -- can't see, uh, um, uh, why, um, the -- the, um, you know, company misleads people by saying that -- SUE: Wow. JIM: -- you can earn, like, um, you know, uh, uh, um, like, you know, any kind of passable in -- income with rules like these. JOHN: Wait, what? That's terrible. I thought that they -- FILE NAME [00:00:30] JIM: Yep. It's awful. JOHN: -- were pretty reputable, but I guess -- JIM: Mm-hmm. JOHN: -- not enough, um, uh, people left -- people wrote reviews to -- to -- to warn, um, you know, like, other -- other, um, trans -- transcribers. JEN: Yes. I, uh, learned that, um, the -- the hard way. -- TL;DR: It doesn't matter what your WPMs are; that doesn't factor in one iota, nor does your experience. You will -- at minimum -- spend 8-10 hours going through their training, taking their tests and then their onboarding materials, if you're one of the few who actually pass said tests... ...and it won't even be remotely worth all the time and effort. Once you're onboarded and start receiving work, by the time you get done transcribing every um, uh, stutter, stammer (disfluencies), re-listen to the same segment 5-10 times because everyone's talking over each other and you are required to transcribe all of it, manually add time codes, speaker names, and make sure you leave double spaces after all of the above (like we're still using typewriters or something), you will have no doubt spent well over 5-7 hours on 30-minute clips, especially when first starting out. If you miss time codes, accidentally single or triple space (instead of double) or omit any "ums or uhs," rather than the QC person just fixing it, they'll send it back to you for you to dig through a long transcript to find the proverbial needle in a haystick. All told, since they pay, on average, $1/audio minute, what you will earn equates to about 1/3 or 1/4 of state minimum wage, depending upon where you live. Again, to make $1,250 per week, that means you have to transcribe just over 20 audio HOURS per week, which -- even if their 1:4 ratio were true (and it's not) would mean you'd work 80 hours per week. Trust me when I say that you will lose your sanity before ever making it past 40 hours of these types of files, and really, for someone to earn $1,250, it'd likely take them 100-150 hours per week -- NOT 80, which is already insanely high. Add it up, and with DT, it's a never-ending barrage of ridiculously tedious, time-consuming, life-sucking, and wholly unnecessary (I mean, who wants a sloppy transcript like what you saw above?) guidelines and OCD-like formatting mandates. DT also makes you schedule your availability a day in advance and then wait around all day to see if you actually receive work (there's no guarantee). If you reject the file you receive because you know it's going to take forever and won't be worth your time, you will be penalized in the form of not receiving additional work for an unspecified amount of time. So, do yourself a favor and transcribe literally anywhere else. I thought this was a grass is greener situation, but nope -- the ones I'd been working with for years are far, FAR better, more intuitive, streamlined -- automated! -- and are way higher paying than Daily Transcription, also offering the ability to work when you want, reject files as you see fit, and not make a flat-out insulting per-hour income. Best of luck.