Many people online claim you can make $100’s per day doing simple online tasks. Let’s see if it’s true.
Rev.com, a transcription service, pays you up to $1.10 per 1 minute of transcribed audio/video.
A quick online search shows that many people claim Rev’s top transcriptionists make $1,495+ per month.
Yesterday, I spent the whole working day sitting with my laptop, to see if I could make $100 a day just from writing video captions.
I wanted to treat it like a 9 to 5 job, so I worked hard within those hours and took a 1-hour break in between.
Signing Up To Rev.com
When you go through the sign-up process, you have to pass a transcription test in order to be approved to take on transcription work.
It took me around 30 minutes to complete the test, but it took a few weeks to get approved on the platform. Once you’re in, you then go through the onboarding process and read through a how-to guide about the correct way to transcribe.
It took me about 40 minutes to go through the guide, which is 18 pages long, and understand how they wanted me to create the captions.
My 1st Paid Transcription Job
Once I’d completed the onboarding, I was given a training gig and started my first project. There are plenty of jobs on there, but they vary in difficulty. Most of them are quite complex but you can choose which ones to take on once you’ve completed the training process.
For my first job, I had to transcribe an audio file (not a video), so the concept was fairly simple and there was just 1 person speaking in the audio.
The quality of the audio isn’t the best, but I worked through it.
It was tedious and boring, to say the least, but I carried on for the $100.
It took me 20 minutes to complete the task and I earned $0.74. So that’s just over $2.10 per hour.
As a beginner, I didn’t expect much, but the audio itself was just over 1 minute, and it took me 20 minutes to transcribe in the format they wanted.
2nd Transcription Job
On to the next project, which was actually a video this time. I had to transcribe the audio and sync the captions up with the voice.
Again, this was just 1 person speaking directly to the camera, so nothing too crazy.
This next job would pay $0.54 so I was hoping I could complete it in around 10 minutes.
I completed the transcription in just over 12 minutes and it took me another 7 minutes to sync the captions up with the timeline. So a total of 19 minutes for $0.54.
So far I was on $1.28 for 40 minutes of work, not including the time it took me to wrap my head around the how-to style guide during onboarding.
Now training was completed, I was free to choose my own transcription jobs.
Training Completed
I went straight to the jobs board and sorted the tasks in order of video length. My strategy was to tackle as many short jobs as possible, gradually getting quicker at them over time.
The shortest one on the list was just under 2 minutes, and I had around 1 hour to complete it. If you don’t complete it within the timeframe, Rev gives you a warning. Accumulate enough warnings and they kick you off the platform.
Like the others, this one was just the 1 person speaking.
I completed the job in 14 minutes and made $0.59.
After my work day had finished, just over 5pm due to the task, and many mundane transcription jobs later;
I earned a grand total of $9.20 after 8 hours.
Final Thoughts
This was my first time transcribing audio and video, so I’m obviously going to be rubbish at it. It was hands-down one of the most boring work days I have ever had in my life, and it felt really long. To make just $9.20 actually hurt my soul.
To make my target of $100 per day, I would have to 10x my efficiency. I could probably get there with practice, and after a month of solid transcription work, I believe I could get close to $100, but at what cost to my mind, I wonder.
Could it make me rich? Not really. It’s not actually a scalable form of income. If the profit margins were bigger, then you could outsource the work to others, but I’m not sure that’s even allowed on the platform. Plus, if they mess up the jobs, it’s on your head and you might get banned from Rev.
There’s location freedom, yes, but no time freedom whatsoever. You do work for yourself in a sense, but your performance is constantly reviewed, so it’s like having a boss.
If Rev increases earnings to freelancers, I might consider giving it another go, but as it is now, I won’t look back and I’m not missing anything.
Check out my list of 21 Secret Websites To Make Money Online In 2023 Into 2024
Or click here if you want to learn how to Start an Online Business With No Money