Setting Up A General Transcription eBusiness
“What kind of online ebusiness can I run from home?” Obviously, I get asked that question a lot, and my answer is usually something like, “That depends. What are your interests and what are you good at doing? When people come to you for advice, what topics are they usually asking about?” I’ll then go on to ask a series of similar questions to help them narrow down some possibilities that will work well for them.
I was having a similar conversation with my stepdaughter recently. She’s an out-of-work, young mom who hasn’t figured out what she wants to do to earn money. She hasn’t yet found my love of ebusiness, despite my best debating skills, but we may have found something that will work for her.
Recently, I hired her to do some podcast transcribing for me. I paid her $3/podcast-minute, which might be a little higher than the average, but hey, she’s my kid, right?. If I remember correctly, I think it rounded out to about $12/hour of her actual working time at the kitchen table, which was a lot better than flinging burgers for minimum wage somewhere.
Because that went well (she did a great job), she may be interested in trying to make a business out of it. I’m ready to help her get that going, so the first thing I did was order a little guide for her to read and think about. I bought her the Transcription Starter Pack * by Nicole Dean for less than twenty bucks. It gives a really good overview of the General Transcription business, what skills are needed, what tools are needed, and what needs to be done to turn those skills into an actual business.
(Note: We’re talking about general transcription here, not medical transcription. This is just literally listening to audio and video, and creating text documents from them).
Of course, if she decides to pursue this (and who knows, she could change her mind at any time), she’ll have me around to coach her as much as she wants. Like most of my professional coaching gigs, I may not know everything there is to know about a client’s actual business niche, but I know a lot about ebusiness in general. Between my broad knowledge and her indepth experience (which she’ll get immersed in rather quickly), we should be able to steer her into a successful direction, as long as she enjoys the work and is willing to pursue it full-on.
I decided to write this post for two reasons:
- To throw out an idea for others who might be interested in the same type of business
- To start documenting the steps to creating and building this business. If this business actually gets off the ground, it will be a wonderful chance for me to do a case study from the very beginning of a new ebusiness.
If she decides to pursue this, I’ll document the various steps involved in setting up the ebusiness, marketing it, and managing it. And of course, I’ll come back here to share it with all of you.
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Disclosure: Affiliate links may be used within this post for products I recommend. They in no way affect my judgement of said products, nor do they affect the price of the product.
** Image adapted and modified from this pic, which coincidentally, is a photo of an online friend of mine. I stumbled across it while I was searching for an appropriate image for this post, and thought, “Oh, that pic is perfect. Hey! I know him!” 
Tags: e - business, online ebusiness, transcribe, transcription
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An ebusiness coach, web developer, Internet Marketer, SEO, and all around web geek who makes her living from home doing all of the above.
I have had a little bit of success with SubPly which will automatically transcribe my video and put in the timecode in order to upload it to YouTube for captioning and for SEO reasons.
But it is not perfect in any means, I would hire someone to use PubPly and then make the corrections. Much faster.
Here is an example. Just make sure CC is turned on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apb0wRG1uoM
Interesting. Will definitely check that out.
Hello Donna,
I am a professional transcriber from India. I am looking forward for some work I can get from US. But as for now I am clueless as to how I would go about it. I would certainly appreciate any help I can get from you. Thank you.
You would probably do well by looking for freelance transcription jobs at sites such as elance.com. Good luck!