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Feel free to ask about current work, as some of this might change frequently enough that this is outdated. Also feel free to suggest new sites not on this list, especially if you've worked there and have firsthand experience to share. Freelancers are not employees. Freelancers get shafted constantly. Be aware, be smart, don't let desperation drive you to do work for slave wages. Transcription for pennies per minute, writing for a fraction of a cent per word, people will try to get away with paying you far, far less than you're worth. Most of the sites below have some protection for freelancers (fixed pay rates, siding with freelancers rather than clients in disputes, etc) but that doesn't protect you from accepting work at a pay rate below what you're worth. The one saving grace of using these sites, generally, is that the client can't skip town and not pay you. A sad fact of freelancing is that there is always someone desperate enough to accept work for third-world wages. Don't be that person. It hurts all of us in the long run, because clients learn they can get barely-passable work for a thin slice of a bean, so they won't post work or pay rates that the rest of us consider worthwhile. If you want to hire some Goons to do some work for you, post a thread in the SA-Mart and link us if you want. All transactions should be handled in the appropriate forum. A few things to note. The majority of these sites only work with US residents, so if you’re outside the US it may be hit or miss. This thread mostly deals with online money making, hence the title. Some things, like online tutoring and call center style work, are listed as well. In contrast, this thread isn't really for standard remote work (which has grown a lot since Covid). It's also not really for things like dropshipping and such, since "just go make a business" is kind of outside the scope of basic freelancing. It's a great idea if you can pull it off, though! Writing Isn't AI taking your jobs? Not yet, and not entirely. AI writers like Jasper, ChatGPT, Google's Labs stuff, and so on are all... functional. They can produce acceptable content for low- and mid-tier blogging, and a lot of non-blog writing like product descriptions, meta data, and a lot of other grunt work that used to be the 20-cent garbage on sites like Textbroker. It can also put out fairly decent outlines and help with things like topic ideation. Basically, it's eating the lunch of anyone who was used to mindless drudgery and trash-tier writing. AI can also help create higher-quality blog posts and other kinds of high-end writing, but they can't fully replace it. Partially it's a matter of those higher-end companies paying more attention to style, tone, voice, and tiny details that the AI can't mimic, can't be consistent about, or ignores in prompts. Good writers can use it to speed up some of the more tedious parts of writing, but it's not going to do your whole job for you. That said, plenty of companies are trying right now, so a lot of low- and mid-end writing work is drying up. One of two things will happen soon: either a bunch of those companies see that it isn't really doing what they need it to do and they go back to paying humans, or the AIs will improve enough that it really does come for us all. That, or Google finds a good way to detect AI writing and penalize it, or copyright legislation makes the basis of language model AIs a huge violation and kills broad models like ChatGPT, or something else comes through out of left field. I recommend learning how to use the AIs, but not relying entirely on them, at least for now. After all, these companies still need people to know how to get the AIs to work, until such time as they can say "write me a blog post about X" and have it pump out something good. Anyway, on with the writing sites. There are a number of decent sites that come up all the time, so here’s the main ones. Textbroker – Textbroker is a hub for freelance writers where you can pick orders out of a public pool. When you apply, they rate you from 1-5 stars, only not really. 1 star = not hired, and 5 stars is reserved for established writers who have taken the proofreading test. 2 stars isn’t worth working for, and 3 stars is low pay, low volume and hard to rise in the ranks. 4 stars is where 99% of the public work is. You can be promoted to 5 by taking their strict proofreading test and being rated highly enough. Increasingly more work is becoming available at 5, so if you can hit it, it's well worth it. Note: It seems they're requiring a photocopy of a picture ID as part of their application now. They're still legit, though. Note that it might take as many as 2-3 weeks to hear back from them about your application, and then you have a probationary period where you need to write five articles and have them rated before you can write more. Textbroker has also shifted a lot towards "team orders", where you join a smaller pool of writers for a given client by applying to their teams. Some have nearly no requirements and accept anyone who hits the button, while others are really picky. Some have a ton of regular work, some have almost none or are sporadic, and some are defunct and it's hard to tell which is which at a glance. There's no cost other than the time to apply to them, though, and the price is often better than the public 4-star rates, so it can be worth just shooting out as many apps as you can. Textbroker is an archetypal Content Mill. How do they work? Basically clients post assignments for X number of words, you claim and write them, and see if they’re accepted or rejected. 4 star assignments pay 1.4 cents a word. As you write, you can build connections with clients and they may invite you to a team (which is the same deal only a different price and a smaller writer pool, price varies from team to team) or direct orders (which you set the price for). Supposedly they are changing their rating system to give better feedback and be more responsive to changes, so being demoted isn’t necessarily a death sentence. We’ll see how that works out. Writer Access – An excellent site to work for, and it works just about the same way as Textbroker. There are a few differences that make WA better than TB. First off, if you're tenacious, you can change your rating more easily than on TB, largely through active communication with clients. If you're accepted in at 3 stars, you can pull yourself up to 4 after a couple of articles. It works the same way as TB with the open pool you can claim assignments from, with one major difference: you can only claim one from a given client at first. Once they accept it, you can freely write for that client, but until they do, you're stuck waiting. Once you've gotten initial articles in for a range of common clients (and applied to plenty of casting calls and gotten on some love lists) you'll have a stream of possible assignments to choose from. Note that the platform is increasingly pushing to have clients post casting calls and not dump orders to the open pool. This makes it hard to get work if you’re not an established writer. On the flip side, new writers are given an hour (ish, unconfirmed) where they see new casting calls before older writers, letting them get applications in first. It’s a mess. If you can get work, WA pay is fantastic for content mills. If you can’t, it’s an exercise in frustration. They also have an algorithmic "match me up" system where they recommend available work to you based on your interests and experience, though it's still just open orders. The application process is a little long (take your time writing blurbs and fill out as much as you can) and you should be in within a month. Definitely make sure you know the AP stylebook and take your time with the writer's test, since even though you can reach 4 stars with a little work, it takes a while to find that work. Writer Access was recently purchased by Rock Content. As far as I know, this hasn't tangibly changed how it works, just their branding and resources (and less reliance on one kind of weird dude running the place) so presumably that's a good thing. Constant Content – CC is a marketplace. You write whatever you like and post it, at a price you set. Then you wait and see if someone wants to buy it. It has a fairly reasonable average price per word, but it’s not good for guaranteed work. You might sell an article in an hour, or it might take six months. Definitely add it to your roster if you're a writer, because you can write multiple versions of one article (say for Textbroker) and post the second version here to sell. I've also had articles sell literal years after I posted them, so if you build up a large enough library it could be nearly passive income. Constant Content also added their own order system similar to TB/WA, so you can work in that fashion on their site now too. I don't have firsthand experience with it to say how good or not it is now, though. Zerys - Another site similar to TB and WA. Sign up, get rated, claim assignments, write them, submit them, make money. Your star rating is even easier to swing than TB or WA, and you need to have a high rating to see worthwhile assignments. The application process is a bit long and tedious, since you need to manually add industries you're willing to write about with their clunky series of drop down menus. A good site to diversify a little work, but not necessarily good for a primary income source. On the plus side, it only takes a few days to hear back from them about your application, the fastest of the writing sites by far. Suggested categories include Home & Garden, Business & Finance, and Cities & Locales for reasonably constant work. Words of Worth - Another content mill. They have better rates than TB, though not as good as WA. No idea yet on volume, but it only takes a week or two to hear a response from their application process, so give it a try. Note that this site is based in the UK, and thus they hire... in Canada, the US and Australia. Presumably they hire in the UK as well, but that option is currently unavailable. Writer’s Domain – Another content mill, and notorious for being basically SEO-spam articles. I would have thought it would be one of the first ones to disappear when AI got competent enough to write something readable, but surprisingly enough, thread regulars say it has plenty of work available and they've opened up hiring again. The application is short (though approval times can be long) so drop in an application and forget about it until they invite you in. Verblio – A spec writing site slash marketplace hybrid. You register for the platform and then you’re free to write. Companies post topics they want articles about, and you write something for that topic and submit it. There’s no claimed articles or guaranteed acceptance like a content mill, however. If a client doesn’t want the article, they don’t have to buy it. If they do buy it, it’s generally $8 for 500 words, which is slightly higher than 4-star Textbroker level. You also earn points as you sell articles, which earn you rewards as you rack them up – including shares of the company if you rack up enough. I believe that any post that isn't purchased can be put into a library for future clients to buy, but I have no idea how well those sell, if they sell at all. Note: The following section is about Amazon self-pub, which was a great opportunity when this thread first launched, got immensely saturated, and is now an AI-filled hellscape. Presumably there's still money to be found, but it's nowhere near the easy pickings it used to be. It's also full of links to threads that aren't active anymore, but you can still go read them if you want (and have Archives.) Cetaphobia posted:I thought I'd chime in that indie publishing on Amazon is a legitimate way to make money online as well. I am posting this here because a year ago, I'd have looked over self publishing with derision and focused on this thread. If you know of other writing sites, post them in the thread, with some basic info and compensation details. If they’re decent they can be added to the op. Penny Work KGB, ChaCha, Mahalo, Swagbucks, Xomba, Clickworker, MTurk, and so forth. These are all sites that you can get paid for doing simple tasks, like clicking links, doing quick surveys, and whatever else is posted. Very rarely something more lucrative will come up, but you’re not going to be making a living off these. Heck, most of them are dead and gone by now. Surveys Opinion Outpost, Ipsos ISay and Survey Savvy are the three I’ve personally used and cashed out money through. Someone in the thread also recommended Attapoll (referral code here if you want.)There’s tons of others out there. For the most part it’s $1-2 per survey, so you’re not going to make a living here either, but you can do one or two in your spare time and cash out $30 every month or so. If you’re a minority or in an odd demographic you’ll probably get through more surveys more often and pull in more cash. Search Engine Evaluation This was another major source of income for people in the thread. Formerly under NDA, enough people leaked what it does that Google came clean: basically, you become Google's search algorithm. Google pays these companies to pay freelancers to validate and verify search result pages, basically spot-checking for quality according to a 200+ page document of quality guidelines. You have to install a toolbar and track your time, and invoice them for your money, but it pays pretty decently. Two of the companies formerly doing this merged (Leapforce was bought by Appen), so you currently have Appen as the go-to. Appen Link. They also seem to do some other kinds of freelancing now. Similarly, the other option (Lionbridge) no longer seems to do the search rating, and instead looks to be focusing a lot more on AI translation. You can still check out Lionbridge to see what they have, but I have no idea what they offer these days. Transcription Transcription is the #1 most talked about method of making money in this thread, and most of the regulars here do it in some form. A couple of them even work for the houses involved and can hook up goon transcribers once you have six months of experience under your belt. Kazmeyer is our resident transcription expert, so I’ll let him speak in his own words. (Note that this is fairly old, but you can still get the basics out of it, and ask in the thread for newer recommendations.) kazmeyer posted:Here's just a quick and dirty version. It was actually much longer than this, as I included some anecdotes, but when I looked at the size of the post, jeez.  Daily Transcripts reviews applications when they think they need new freelancers. This means your application may take anywhere from a few days to several weeks to be reviewed, depending on the incoming volume of work.Another site, Way With Words, is here. Note: They hire Canadians! http://www.transcriptioncanada.com/ Avoid GMR Transcription, they require a shitton of work, money upfront and all kinds of red flag bullshit.You can also try Literably for some student test recording transcription. Once you've been doing transcription for 6+ months and haven't burned out, you can contact thread regular Jedi Knight Luigi (JKL), he helps get goons in his transcription house, a step up from DT. Most Goons seem to start with Daily Transcripts and tend to ask the same sort of questions. The big one is how long does it take to get back to you after the test. The answer: anywhere from a week to a couple months, depending on numerous factors. You can send them a message to ask about your test status if it takes too long. They will tell you if you fail, so no word is limbo, not rejection. Slightly Used Cake posted:Canadian transcribers, Transcription Divas has now rebranded to Transcipt Heroes. I've been on with them for about three weeks now, they've successfully paid me in a very timely manner, are awesome and seemingly have a nice chunk of work, most legal and research interviews, clean verbatim. I'd have a look if you're experienced. They're unfortunately not taking Americans. Pay is ranging so far from $1.16-1.46 CAD for clean verbatim. Their idea of tough audio so far seems to be an actual literal cake walk. Other Work Upwork – Upwork is writing, but it’s also translation, programming, and other various freelance contracts. Basically it’s a site where you build and post a profile, and clients browse for people to work for them. Buyer Beware! Some of the work people will solicit you for is shady affiliate marketing scams and penny work. On the other hand, there’s some good stuff in there, if you build a full profile and put the effort into it. Worth checking out. This is also your go-to hub for a ton of profile-building, brand-building, and eventual high-tier work, if you can put in the time. LiveOps - LiveOps is phone work, so it's not strictly online money making, but it IS legitimate work from home. There's a small fee upfront for a background check, something like $55 or so. Check Derek79's posts for extra information. Essentially, you take sales or support calls for various businesses, like being the person who is called when someone wants to buy Oxyclean or a Slapchop. Mechanical Turk - Work crowdsourcing for Amazon. A lot of stuff on there is penny work, but if you're tenacious you can find some good jobs. See PurpleButterfly's post for more detail. Fiverr – Fiverr started off as a site where you trade X service for $5. Usually the service is worth far more than $5, but since you’re competing with a bunch of outsourced Malaysians or whatever, it’s hard to get a foothold. However, with the addition of Gig Extras, you can end up with a base job worth far more than the basic $5. Here’s a good post about it by Rupert Buttermilk: Rupert Buttermilk posted:Hey guys, I just have to pop in to say that if any of you have any sort of skill or talent that you think people would pay money for, even transcribing, I'd highly recommend Fiverr. I know that it seems 'well, poo poo, it's only $5', and that's true... at first. But once you actually start getting gigs and at least build yourself up to level 1 (I think it required a 90% overall rating, and 10 orders completed), you can then get into using 'Gig packages'. Tutoring Tutor.com allows you to do some online tutoring on various subjects. Here's a great post about it: Udelar posted:OP asked for more information about Tutor.com, so here we go. Other Goons Occasionally a fellow Goon with some work available will post in the thread. Keep an eye out. Another place for this is in SA’s Freelance thread. Note: Any actual goon-to-goon work should be done in a thread in SA-mart. About Taxes For the majority of these sites, you’re a 1099 contractor. This means that none of your income is withheld for taxes. That means you’ll need to set aside a portion of your income to pay taxes. The amount varies depending on how much you make. Personally I set aside 20%, but that’s because it also partially serves as my emergency fund. You might also have to file taxes quarterly. It’s a big turn-off for freelance work but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. You only have to pay taxes after you’ve earned a certain amount. I’ve heard $400, $600, and other numbers tossed around. The general idea is that if you’re earning a decent income, you’re paying taxes. If you’re making $10 a month off of surveys, you don’t even register on the government’s radar. For more specific tax advice, either go to the Tax Questions thread right here in BFC, or visit a tax professional. For historical record: Legitimate Online Moneymaking Round 2 (The old thread) forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3284002 As always, if you have something worth adding, post it in the thread and I'll try to update it some time in the next 3-6 years. Nighthand fucked around with this message at 18:22 on May 17, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2012 05:10
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) For my specific case, I started out in December without knowing anything about the site or how I should be pricing things. I'm a sound designer and composer, and I was writing 30-seconds of music for $5, and it sucked. I then changed that to $5/15 seconds of music, but it was still kind of rough, because that is an extremely low price.
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I don't know if it was mentioned in the previous thread, but there's also oDesk. I haven't used the website in a while, but the gist of it is that you make an account, set up your profile and apply for jobs posted. They have some pretty handy documentation/guides to help you make a good profile. There's even tests you can take and be rated by - when I first created an account there, I took one for English<->Portuguese translation and was rated #1 out of 300 or so people who took it. They track and publicly show things like ongoing jobs, jobs completed, amount paid per job/total and so on, so figuring out what to apply for is easy. When you first create an account, the amount of applications you can place will be greatly limited until you make your account "oDesk ready", which doesn't take long. The pay varies greatly. You set your hourly rate, but some jobs posted will have their own rate or fixed price. Some people get paid $10 per hour, some $100. Once all is said and done, oDesk takes a 10% cut off your pay. Main problem is that you're competing with other people for jobs. A good profile will go a long way, but once you start getting jobs, feedback is what will keep the ball rolling. To get an idea of what you might be getting into, here are some recently posted jobs:
Keep in mind you will also find some really underpaid jobs (write articles at $0.01/word, some hourly rates going as low as $4, etc.) and depending on your area of expertise, lots of long term stuff. Just keep applying with rates that feel right for what you can offer and it won't take long before you find some work. Also, the oDesk software lets clients take screenshots of your desktop to ensure you're actually working when clocking time. Liberatore fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Apr 4, 2012 |
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Apr 4, 2012 08:11
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Many of the content writing sites fell apart after Panda, so it does seem like a new thread is a good idea. I still see some of the content writers I know on Gather and Yahoo Voices, I think Gather is rev share only and Yahoo Voices might pay a small amount upfront if you're a featured writer. There seem to be a few new sites around and it looks like a lot of them are using the Textbroker model, so pay varies widely. It seems like a lot of traditional media sites are willing to pay content sites for outsourced articles in bulk, because they cost much less than traditional journalism. I wonder if we could set a group up where several of us could write articles for one of the bigger media companies directly. It seems like there are several writers around here with strong portfolios and credentials. I think Scripted used a similar model where they marketed their forum posters to their clients.
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Apr 4, 2012 12:36
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Thanks for the updated OP.
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Apr 4, 2012 14:13
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Great OP
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Apr 4, 2012 17:39
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It was definitely time for a refresh. Thanks for taking the time to do this. It came out great.
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Apr 4, 2012 17:47
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This is a great new OP, thanks. A few things: - For Lionbridge, Toggl and Lionbridge Task Control are two useful resources for keeping track of your work time. - In my experience, if you write solid pieces for Constant Content, they sell consistently, for a good amount, and within a reasonable amount of time.
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Apr 4, 2012 18:21
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Cool OP. This was a much needed refresh after the changes that recently occured in the industry. Jesus, I'm having a rough time getting fast enough with this transcription. I just spent 7 hours total on a 54-minute file that had pretty horrible audio. A tape recorder set on a desk in a busy and noisy office. The rate was slightly higher, but to me, Daily Transcipts doesn't seem to scale the rates very accurately. I've had super easy files that paid much more than this. I have a foot pedal and a good set of headphones, but I don't think I'll ever get to be as fast as I should be. An hour a day seems to be all I can handle. Can anyone chime in as to how long I should be spending on it, based on the difficulty of the file? Last week, I calculated that I'm making only slightly more than minimum wage.
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Apr 4, 2012 21:33
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Unfortunately, that's the one thing I don't like about Daily Transcripts. In my career I've shifted away from general and business transcription simply because the time it takes to do a video shoot with two people versus a business lunch with eight people recorded on a shitbox Radio Shack memo taker in a busy restaurant is substantial, and their "hard audio" rate doesn't sufficiently take that into account. Once you've gotten some experience and multiple clients, you can do what I do; I turn down any file which involves an unmoderated discussion involving more than three speakers, especially verbatim, especially if it's audio only, unless they're willing to pay by the page. Per minute rates never seem to adequately account for the complexity involved, whereas a per-page rate is a lot more fair (and what the rest of my clients use most of the time). Unfortunately, until you get enough experience and clients to be picky, you're going to have to take the occasional crappy tape along with the rest. Generally, there are enough video shoots to even things out, but if you get a run of really bad work you can always mention it to them and see if they can help you out. Most of the time, the standard is 15 minutes of tape in an hour of work. Starting out, that's probably what you'll do on good audio, with bad audio taking more depending on the quality. You will speed up, though, and you'll get access to better jobs as you get more experience. As-broadcast work can be much, much faster once you get the hang of it, and pay rates tend to start in the $30-45 range for a 22-30 minute episode. Even there, however, your mileage may vary; a dialogue list-style ABS for NBC/Universal is a hell of a lot quicker to put together than a script-style ABS for HBO, and technical transcripts and shot-list ABS can be a freaking nightmare -- but worth it if the pay rate is commensurate and the show is well put together. (I just did a technical transcript for Inside the Actor's Studio and I want to buy that director a beer. If Spock directed a show, it would be Inside the Actor's Studio. Beautiful coverage.)
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Apr 5, 2012 00:15
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One thing that I have rarely seen posted are at home phone jobs. In addition to Leapforce and various writing gigs, I have been with a company called LiveOps since May of 2007. I take calls for a variety of programs, most notably direct response infomercials, which is what most people start in. Taking these calls, you are paid .25 per minute that you are on the phone plus commission when certain things are sold. If there is an infomercial on television, odds are we probably take calls for it. Once you start, you are able to add additional lines if you do a good job on your original line. Since May of 2007, I have been added to lines that take calls for Pizza Hut, Abbott Laboratories, Allstate First Notice of Loss, AAA Roadside Assistance and Lifelock Identity Protection. They also have specialty lines for those who have experience in the outbound industry as well as licensed insurance agents. If anyone has questions, I would be glad to answer them. You can apply at https://www.liveops.com. There is a fee for the background check but that is the only cost associated with working there. I believe it is $50 or $55. It was actually $20 when I started so that may be outdated. They pay twice a month on the 1st and 16th. When I work it full time, I can bring in $3,000 to $4,000 a month (on about a 50 to 55 hour work week). It helps if you are available evenings, overnights and weekends, which are the prime times for direct response.
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Apr 5, 2012 04:30
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kazmeyer posted:Helpful stuff. Wow, that's kind of a relief. I was really bummed out by that job yesterday. What's crazy about the rates are that they're not the worst I've seen. There are companies out there that pay 40 cents per minute for conference calls. I just don't see why anyone would go that low... Selling quilts on Etsy ought to be more productive than that. So after that mess yesterday, I've got a finished show where I have to list the shots on the left side and transcribe on the right. I'm probably going to play through it once for the shots, then again for the audio. We'll see how this goes.
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Apr 5, 2012 14:13
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Derek79 posted:One thing that I have rarely seen posted are at home phone jobs. In addition to Leapforce and various writing gigs, I have been with a company called LiveOps since May of 2007. Thanks for the info! Do you personally use a ground line traditional phone, or a google voice / skype set up? Does LiveOps care either way?
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Apr 5, 2012 14:19
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Zapf Dingbat posted:Wow, that's kind of a relief. I was really bummed out by that job yesterday. What's crazy about the rates are that they're not the worst I've seen. There are companies out there that pay 40 cents per minute for conference calls. I just don't see why anyone would go that low... Selling quilts on Etsy ought to be more productive than that. Yeah, until you get the hang of technical transcripts, that's probably your best bet. I've got the additional issue of transcribing into Inqscribe, which exports in plain text, which means for the multi-column format I have to type a tab-delimited transcript, import that into Excel to get the cells set up, then paste the result into the Word template for final formatting. Between that and the arcane shorthand I use to note shots during the transcription process (so I don't have to go back through a second time), my raw technical transcripts look like bloody Sanskrit.  Did you at least get a script or closed-captioning file? I hate doing as-broadcasts without those. I love HBO because they usually provide the script, and you can see the differences in the final episode. Like with Game of Thrones, most of it's almost verbatim, just recut into a different order, while a show like Eastbound and Down is borderline improv. Danny McBride in particular tends to run pretty far afield from what's down on the page.
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Apr 5, 2012 15:24
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Arnold of Soissons posted:Thanks for the info! Technically, their rules state to use an analog landline phone. I started out using that before moving to cable telephone and now am using Vonage. Skype would not work due to lag and the fact that they can tell you are using a Skype number. MagicJack also does not work as it disconnects callers randomly. When people that I know apply, I tell them to see if they can bundle their phone and internet to save money. I would be using cable telephone now if they offered it where I live. Once I move to the Kansas City area, that is likely what I will be using again.
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Apr 5, 2012 15:42
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Derek79 posted:One thing that I have rarely seen posted are at home phone jobs. In addition to Leapforce and various writing gigs, I have been with a company called LiveOps since May of 2007. This is interesting, I've seen adds for things around that sound like this on Craigslist and Kijiji, only you have to pay for training and a monthly fee as well to keep in the system or some crap. Do you know if they hire outside of the United States, or is it something else that us Canadian/UK goons have to pass on?
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Apr 6, 2012 02:52
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kazmeyer posted:Yeah, until you get the hang of technical transcripts, that's probably your best bet. I've got the additional issue of transcribing into Inqscribe, which exports in plain text, which means for the multi-column format I have to type a tab-delimited transcript, import that into Excel to get the cells set up, then paste the result into the Word template for final formatting. Between that and the arcane shorthand I use to note shots during the transcription process (so I don't have to go back through a second time), my raw technical transcripts look like bloody Sanskrit. Nope, I didn't get any sort of text or script. Just a sample of a previous episode. Man that really kicked my rear end today. Had loads of trouble with the formatting. I guess I don't know Word as much as I thought I did. Guess I'll try your method next time, because what I did just didn't work.
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Apr 6, 2012 03:32
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Kubricize posted:This is interesting, I've seen adds for things around that sound like this on Craigslist and Kijiji, only you have to pay for training and a monthly fee as well to keep in the system or some crap. Do you know if they hire outside of the United States, or is it something else that us Canadian/UK goons have to pass on? Unfortunately, LiveOps only hires from the United States. I know ContractXchange hires Canadians but, as you said, they require you to pay for training. They are a legit company but I am not big on putting up a good chunk of money for training without knowing whether or not I will like the work. I know there are some Canadian phone jobs out there. I will gather a list and post them here tomorrow. I don't think I know of any for the UK, but I will check on that as well.
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Apr 6, 2012 04:25
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Derek79 posted:There is a fee for the background check but that is the only cost associated with working there. I believe it is $50 or $55. It was actually $20 when I started so that may be outdated. Any idea what they would not hire you for?
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Apr 6, 2012 19:47
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Tastic posted:Any idea what they would not hire you for? From what I understand, they will not hire you if you have a felony on your record, a pending warrant for your arrest or any misdemeanors having to do with theft, fraud or other financial crimes. They also would turn you down if you have more than $10,000 currently in collections, have filed bankruptcy within the last 12 months or more than one bankruptcy. These are all case by case as well as I have seen some people hired that make me want to scratch my head. ETA: Here is the list of official reasons you may not be hired: Q: What will cause me to fail the background check? A: Applicants must pass both parts of the background and credit checks. Applicants with the following elements on their check will not be accepted: Past Due: More than $10,000 in total currently past due and/or in collections over three or more accounts Judgments and Bankruptcy: 2 or more open or active civil judgments/ tax liens (open/ active liens), a bankruptcy within a year of this application or more than 1 bankruptcy Felony Records: Any records with dispositions of guilty, convicted, no contest / nolo contendere, adjudication withheld / deferred adjudication / probation before judgment (if currently under probation), pending, or outstanding warrant, or that have been negotiated down to a misdemeanor Misdemeanor Records: If you have 3 or more vehicular records with DUI, Reckless Driving or Hit/Run or 5 or more total misdemeanors, you will not pass. If you have any records involving theft, fraud, dishonesty, breach of trust, arson or violent crimes with dispositions of guilty, convicted, no contest / nolo contendere, adjudication withheld / deferred adjudication / probation before judgment (if currently under probation), pending, or outstanding warrant, you will not pass. Derek79 fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Apr 7, 2012 |
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Apr 7, 2012 05:42
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Zapf Dingbat posted:Nope, I didn't get any sort of text or script. Just a sample of a previous episode. Was it the format with three columns, no lines around the individual cells? If so, there's something royally hosed up about that template. I've actually told them to leave me out of any work in that style, just because I can't figure out how to get it to format properly outside of copying and pasting directly into each individual cell (which would take hours). Normally I just paste into the template, adjust font and size, and maybe tweak text alignment within the cells, but I spent hours trying to get that to work and it just wasn't happening.
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Apr 7, 2012 09:10
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kazmeyer posted:Was it the format with three columns, no lines around the individual cells? If so, there's something royally hosed up about that template. I've actually told them to leave me out of any work in that style, just because I can't figure out how to get it to format properly outside of copying and pasting directly into each individual cell (which would take hours). Normally I just paste into the template, adjust font and size, and maybe tweak text alignment within the cells, but I spent hours trying to get that to work and it just wasn't happening. Wow, I got one of those once as well, I thought it was just me. I haven't seen any projects with that template since then.
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Apr 7, 2012 23:01
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I was looking to hire a writer, I have a bunch of instructional material on subjects like finance or computer science and was wondering if I could get them summarised. Most of the content isn't that challenging there is just a lot of jargon. Is it feasible for a writer to make summaries or would they really need domain expertise? Even if they did the bulk of the writing up I could always go through and proof/fix it up myself. Assuming it is possible, where would be the best place to find a writer, and about how much would I be looking at for a summary of a 50 page chapter?
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Apr 8, 2012 00:33
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Nighthand posted:
I didn't know there were jobs for this. It seems like something I could do. I use to transcribe phone sex preambles as downtime work for my last job. It was definitely tedious but I might be able to manage.
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Apr 8, 2012 01:38
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unixbeard posted:I was looking to hire a writer, I have a bunch of instructional material on subjects like finance or computer science and was wondering if I could get them summarised. Most of the content isn't that challenging there is just a lot of jargon. Is it feasible for a writer to make summaries or would they really need domain expertise? Even if they did the bulk of the writing up I could always go through and proof/fix it up myself. I do summaries and re-writes of articles on topics I'm unfamiliar with all the time for Textbroker. They pay by the word of the produced article, not of the source material, so that's probably what you would look for payment-wise. Figure out how long you'd like the summaries to be, or how much you'd be willing to pay total, and go from there. For reference, a 4-star article on Textbroker earns a writer 1.4 cents a word. They charge an added fee of like 30% or something like that, so the client pays 1.7 cents or so a word. Without the middleman you're more free to negotiate with the writer or writers you choose. I'm sure several of the writers in this thread would be willing to give it a shot, myself included. I don't have PMs, but if you want to send me a message at my username at gmail, you can.
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Apr 8, 2012 02:13
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I found a list of canadian work at home jobs. You can take calls for U-Haul, do phone surveys for alvanis, do gaming customer service (amongst other things) at alpine access. I sent applications all over that list last night, I'm still waiting on an e-mail. Pretty helpful if you want to work from home: http://workathomemoms.about.com/od/callcenterdataentry/tp/Work-At-Home-Jobs-Canada.htm There's also a more extensive page on work from home sites from the US and from what I've seen it looks pretty legit so check it out.
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Apr 9, 2012 20:52
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pastorrich posted:I found a list of canadian work at home jobs. You can take calls for U-Haul, do phone surveys for alvanis, do gaming customer service (amongst other things) at alpine access. I sent applications all over that list last night, I'm still waiting on an e-mail. Pretty helpful if you want to work from home: This is a pretty good list, in the middle of applying for anything I fit the requirements for. Thanks for the list and post updates of your luck finding anything!
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Apr 10, 2012 03:07
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kazmeyer posted:Was it the format with three columns, no lines around the individual cells? If so, there's something royally hosed up about that template. I've actually told them to leave me out of any work in that style, just because I can't figure out how to get it to format properly outside of copying and pasting directly into each individual cell (which would take hours). Normally I just paste into the template, adjust font and size, and maybe tweak text alignment within the cells, but I spent hours trying to get that to work and it just wasn't happening. God yes, it was that format. That was awful. It turns out I had only 3 cells across the whole document when I was done, so they sent it back and I had to spend hours copying and pasting the whole thing into another document. Worst crap I've had to do so far.
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Apr 10, 2012 03:24
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Kubricize posted:This is a pretty good list, in the middle of applying for anything I fit the requirements for. Thanks for the list and post updates of your luck finding anything! I also applied on Kijiji ads for work at home positions and two businesses told me I was selected. First one is JMN Virtual Services and the second one is Arise.com. Arise's website looks a lot more legit so if I were to pick one I'd go with them. You basically take calls for Rogers communications as a customer service agent or tech support (it isn't clear which one it is, perhaps it's both). The downside is that you have 5 weeks and a half of unpaid training to do so that's a pretty big number. When I say unpaid I mean you get 100 dollars for completing the 5 weeks training and then you're good to go to start taking calls. I'm still undecided as to what I'm going to do. I might start the training to give time for U-Haul to contact me and then drop it or keep at it if I don't hear from any of my preferred employers. I'll update if I find something with paid training and good working conditions. Edit: I just read Arise's FAQ and you need to be incorporated which costs 200$ or work for a contractor for arise, pay 100$ for the training (which they say is now free for a limited time) and get various other things to build a home office. So if you're prepared to do that it looks like you will get work. JMN looks like it has less requirements but the website is a bit shady. pastorrich fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Apr 10, 2012 |
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Apr 10, 2012 20:36
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I have some videos on YouTube that are getting some views, and now different people like Fullscreen and Machinima want me to go on their "networks". I've googled around for "diaries" of people who did this and can't find too much... does anyone know about these people?
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Apr 10, 2012 21:11
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Has anybody done copy editing work for Demand Studios? What sort of credentials do they require for the position? I know it says "at least 2 years" in the field, but is the site over-saturated with professionals or can entry-level people get in too?
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Apr 17, 2012 20:48
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On a side note, I can see why transcription has such a high wash out/quit rate. I got halfway through the daily transcription test before little.... confusions started to build, IE: telling me to format headers and footers with .5" then their sample document has 0.04" footers  requiring a vague font that needs office 2007 installed amongst other things. And then finally having to transcribe the least professional video clip I've ever seen of two people being interviewed whilst they mumble and the wind blows across the unshielded mic and or dollar store tape recorder  But I have no real idea, maybe I'm just really bad at this, either way I wanted to warn you if you had your heart set on a daily transcripts transcription job that the test will be one of your least fun experiences you'll ever have and you will -have- to focus and have a good ear for things. Economy Clown Car fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Apr 18, 2012 |
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Apr 18, 2012 04:06
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Actually, that's a professional shoot; the audio quality is more due to the fact that it's a RealMedia file and heavily compressed. They do it for a reason, though; only someone who's never transcribed would consider that file all that bad. I could tell you horror stories. Radio Shack microcassette recorders plunked down in the middle of a 14-person table at Spago during lunch. Clients trying to save money by cranking the sensitivity down so far on their voice-activated recorder it only picks up the middle syllable of words. It gets so much worse than that file. Pray you never have to spend much time doing academic or business transcription. Luckily, however, media work is usually much, much better. If you can get through the Daily Transcription test, that's probably the worst file you'll see for some time. They dropped RealMedia a long time ago, and encode everything in Quicktime now; the files are a dream compared to that sample. (The format on the document file may be a casualty of changing standards; in any case, if you just paste into the file provided you should be fine. They're not going to ding you over margin confusion, they want to see you can follow rules like the spacing/time coding format/et cetera.)
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Apr 18, 2012 04:19
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Has anyone done the content creation sites and done something like just setup a SSH tunnel into a buddies house so the IP comes from a US IP?
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Apr 18, 2012 05:22
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Tastic posted:Has anyone done the content creation sites and done something like just setup a SSH tunnel into a buddies house so the IP comes from a US IP? They probably require a Form W-9 filled in your name before they pay you. And if they don't pay you with Paypal or something, you'd run into more trouble in that regard. Unless you are an US citizen living outside the US, then yeah that could work. If you don't mind Textbroker's pay, there's http://www.textbroker.co.uk/ - the pay is a bit higher (€1.2 cents/word at 4 stars) and you just need a Paypal account to receive payment.
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Apr 18, 2012 11:34
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Okay, I've got a technical problem this time. I have a Quicktime audio file that has a drop-frame timecode embedded in the file. My transcription software (Express Scribe) doesn't seem to be able to display this embedded TC, and I can't control quicktime player with a foot pedal. kazmeyer, do I just need to suck it up and buy another piece of software? Or is there a workaround? edit: Plus, these files play extremely slowly in express scribe, and I have no idea why. I can't adjust the speed at all. This is maddening.
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Apr 19, 2012 15:12
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Zapf Dingbat posted:Okay, I've got a technical problem this time. I have a Quicktime audio file that has a drop-frame timecode embedded in the file. My transcription software (Express Scribe) doesn't seem to be able to display this embedded TC, and I can't control quicktime player with a foot pedal. kazmeyer, do I just need to suck it up and buy another piece of software? Or is there a workaround? Does Express Scribe allow you to offset timecodes? What you might be able to do is start the TCs at whatever the first time code is and go from there. I use InqScribe, and one of the main reasons I switched was it seemed to handle time codes much better than ES for me. I think they have a free trial, you might try downloading that to see if it works better for you.
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Apr 19, 2012 19:32
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Holy loving God. I'm always interested in hearing about new gigs, and a friend of mine is applying to do SpeechInk transcription through Amazon's Mechanical Turk. She asked me for advice about the instructions, and sent me the guidelines. They want <sp></sp> around every speaker name, <st></st> around any onscreen text, <p></p> around every entry, and time codes every five seconds (even in the middle of a sentence.) I think if a client asked me to transcribe like that I would actually hit them. kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Apr 19, 2012 |
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Apr 19, 2012 23:16
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Zapf Dingbat posted:Okay, I've got a technical problem this time. I have a Quicktime audio file that has a drop-frame timecode embedded in the file. My transcription software (Express Scribe) doesn't seem to be able to display this embedded TC, and I can't control quicktime player with a foot pedal. kazmeyer, do I just need to suck it up and buy another piece of software? Or is there a workaround? You can change the start time with Express Scribe, just right click on your file in the Express Scribe window and click on Dictation Information. Enter the start time in the time offset box, but watch your time codes. If they stop tape or skip ahead five minutes you're going to have to change the time offset again. vvv yeah, you're right. I missed that bit. Reading comprehension 
ohnobugs fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Apr 19, 2012 |
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Apr 19, 2012 23:28
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AuntBuck posted:You can change the start time with Express Scribe, just right click on your file in the Express Scribe window and click on Dictation Information. Enter the start time in the time offset box, but watch your time codes. If they stop tape or skip ahead five minutes you're going to have to change the time offset again. In my experience, the clients that use burned-in time codes usually don't dick around with cuts -- at least I've never seen a burned-in TC file where the time code jumped around. (I have seen just about every other goddamn stupid thing a client can do with a time code, though, including periodically pausing it during the interview to indicate "off camera" time and then forgetting to turn the loving thing back on. "Hey, all these time codes are the same." "Yes, that three pages of conversation all took place in the same second. Apparently your sound guy is Doctor Who.") Also: You might want to look into audio/video conversion software. Jodix makes a bunch of purpose-built converters, or there's always something like Handbrake. DT has this unbelievably irritating habit of sending me 500+meg Quicktime files that can be a bear to work with, and crunching them down to smaller mp4s can make a world of difference in the headache department. If one file format isn't playing right, conversion might fix the problem. kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Apr 19, 2012 |
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Apr 19, 2012 23:32
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Okay, so yesterday, my contact at DT gave me some software that helped me out. I mean, it worked, but the software itself is podunk. It took me over an hour to get it to work correctly. And when I say podunk, I mean that it would go apeshit whenever I pressed the Shift key. I might try Inqscribe later.
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Apr 20, 2012 13:50
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