How I Got Home-based General Transcription Clients

I am thankful to my mom, she bought me this laptop in 2007 when I was out of a job and our Internet connection was still dial-up back then.  I had to find a way to get a client for general transcriptions because I knew that this was the “in” thing back then.  In the Philippines, it was just a small market at that time.  There were not much clients to work for.

So, what I did was search the Net on how I could acquire good clients.  I first put an online ad in 88db.com, sulit.com.  I even posted my resume on bestjobs.ph.  I opened an account in Jobstreet.com.ph, Jobsdb.com.ph and other job portals out there.

And true enough, I got an email from someone in London from one of those ads that I posted.  I mean, at least, when you tell the whole world what you can do, I’m sure someone will turn up and check you out.

That’s how I got my first client.  The next client came from bestjobs.ph from the States and I wish I could do that again.  The client said they saw my resume from that job portal and would like to give me a try.  When I got things right, they hired me to transcribe their podcast for a year.  Imagine that?

But after a year, I was going back to the corporate world and sort of quit that job because I might not be able to deliver good transcripts.  I regret doing that, actually.

Oh, well, I’m sure things happen for a reason.  Then, I discovered LinkedIn, the site for professionals, where you can showcase your talents.  Just write in your profile that you can do such and such and people will contact you for the services that you do.  You will find those tag words very useful.  I did that and I got some clients from there too.

I must admit though that for some people, going to oDesk and Guru and Elance is probably the way to go.  In my experience, yes, I have accounts in those portals but I never bid on anything because I believe my talent lies within and I don’t want to price myself so low and that I’m worth more than what they’re paying for.  There are clients who would bid as low as $10 per audio hour, which really sucks big time.  Your time and effort for that price is not worth it, I’m telling you.

You can find better-paying clients and they will even appreciate the quality of work that you give them.

That’s the word for it – make your work worth every cent that your client pays you for.  Show them you’ve got the ‘It’ factor and they’ll definitely keep coming back.  And in a previous blog, I’ve written you should know how long it will take you to finish a certain number of audio minutes.  That way, you can tell your client if you can finish the task at hand.  That’s another blog – communication.

Aside from the ones that I’ve mentioned, you can check other sites as well like craigslist, peopleperhour, and some other job portals that contain the magic words, home-based general transcription jobs.

But one last word about job-hunting for transcriptions.  I’m sure there are scammers out there who will take advantage of those sites.  So, be careful in choosing the right job for you.  I don’t know how I do it but I’m lucky that the people I get to work for, pay me for what I do.  I’m sure you can too.

Good luck in finding your pot of gold!