Speaker 1: Okay, let's try something different.

Speaker 2: Hi and welcome to Dolls and Cents Online where you can learn about ways to save money and ways to earn money. So today we'll be talking about SpeechPad and at SpeechPad.com you can sign up to be a transcriptionist. This is very similar, well I won't say it's very similar, but it's the same type of work, transcriptions and captions. Just like it is for the video that I went over previously for Rev.com. So before I started with Rev.com, I actually started with SpeechPad. And as you can see here, this is the front page. You can tell that these little pop-ups. So it's saying here that prices start at $1 per minute, $1.50 per minute. $4 per minute, depending on if it's a transcription, standard caption, or a premium caption. This is not how much you will get paid as the person that will be transcribing or captioning the material. This is for the person who is submitting the material. It says at the bottom here, we are currently hiring new transcribers. Curious, learn more, and get started today. Let's click on that. So, it looks like... It says to get more information, but it's not giving you any more information. So I'll just go ahead and show you what the register page looks like. Just in case you decide you want to go ahead and give SpeechPad.com a try. You can create a free worker account. And it says if you have any concerns about signing up as a transcriber, do not hesitate to get in touch. And they have a phone number, which I have never utilized. And an email, which I have utilized during transcribing if there's an issue, technical issue, or something is going on. I have contacted them there before I've responded to them when they've contacted me from that email address. So I already have an account, so I'm going to go ahead and sign in. Okay, so now we can see a little bit more about what it's like, the information, you know, to be a transcriber or a captioner. It says work when you want. You work when you want for as long as you want. There are no minimum required hours. No upfront investment. If you have a computer and internet connection, you already have everything you need to start transcribing. You get paid on time as a transcriber. You will... You will be paid once a year. Once a week, regardless of how much you earn. You can pick your own jobs. You're free to work on whatever jobs you find interesting, find your niche, or change it up. What you might earn is 25 cents to 250 per minute, transcriber minute, or 2 to 5 dollars if you're translating. Pay is based on minute of audio or video. Many factors impact the pay per minute, including priority, audio quality, language, and etc. And what they mean by that is if it's a heavy accent, there's a lot of background noise, that you're trying to hear over to hear, you know, the main content of what you have to transcribe or caption. Then, you know, the difficulty level of it will increase how much you will get paid for doing that project. Why SpeechPad versus the other guys? We realize we're not the only company out there looking for the next great transcriber. So here are some things to consider. Superior worker support. We have support staff strategically located around the globe. As a result, worker support is available. Worker support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Okay, so when I have, like I told you before, I have contacted them before. When I have contacted them, sometimes it's really quick. Most times I say it's probably really quick that they get back to me. And they seem to be willing to help, like if it's a technical issue, or some kind of issue where it may take their understanding for me to get it resolved. They seem pretty good about that. And when you're starting out and you may not understand your score, and if you contact them and ask them for more details, they'll help you with that, break it down for you. So I will say that worker support is pretty good. Now, going from this to Rev.com, it was a big letdown because Rev.com's support system at the time of me signing up was terrible. It was pretty much kind of non-existent and they didn't really care. They weren't willing to, if there was a technical issue, like if it's SpeechPad and there's a technical issue, they'll work with you and get it resolved. Rev.com, they wouldn't work with you and things like that. Now, Rev.com has a better system. So that's why I think I can say that superior worker support, they're probably, I think they're telling the truth on that. Now, superior worker tools, we continue to spend a lot of time and energy making sure the tools available to you as a transcriber are the very best. Better tools make you more productive, earning you more money. I don't know if their tools are superior. So since I've talked about Rev.com in a previous video, I will be kind of comparing it to that because it's the same type of deal. So with this service, it's kind of like it's a box that you just type into, just like if you were typing into a Word document or something like that. It's just an empty box. You type in your transcription or your captions, and you are able to, of course, pause the video, rewind, fast forward, make it go slower or faster, just like you should be able to with a transcription or caption website. Both Rev.com and SpeechPad.com have the capability to do those things. But the difference between this and Rev.com, Rev.com, because like you're syncing it to a video, you have to kind of separate. You have to break up your caption or your transcription, like into different lines. With this, you can just type it out. Only thing you have to do is like in between speakers, I believe you put a line. I haven't used SpeechPad in a while, in several months. But if I recall correctly, you have to like between speakers, you have to indicate it by having a blank line in between. You don't have to press return or enter as many times as you would with Rev.com. And so it's easier to use in that way. But as far as there are tools, worker tools, superior, I'm not sure, but superior opportunities, there are plenty of opportunities to advance into roles that afford higher pay and greater responsibility. Now, they have little, what would you call it? Let me actually go here. Qualification. They have different qualifications that you can obtain when you're working here. So I think they've gotten a few more since I was on here. But basic, they have the basic qualification, which is required before you can transcribe any job. You must take the test to get started. They have the confidentiality qualification, which is required for certain jobs that have strict rules regarding the confidentiality of the content. They have a grammar qualification now. I believe this one is new. It's required before you can transcribe any job. You must take this test now and get started. Hmm. I'm not sure. Maybe I lost that because I haven't been on here in a long while. Home inspection audio. They're not currently hiring for this qualification. Please check back in six months. It's been over six months when I first started with this website. They weren't hiring then. I don't know when they hired. You won't get any kind of notification, I don't believe. You just have to keep looking at this qualifications tab to see when they're hiring for, I mean, when you can get these different qualifications. They have insurance transcription. I don't believe I saw that one before. They're currently not hiring for that, but this ability to transcribe and interview caption every spoken word and sound, including ums and ahs and stutters. Okay. And that brings me to this point. With Speechpad.com, you have verbatim projects and you have non-verbatim projects. They have different rules for different projects. So with Rev.com, you never put in the ums and the ahs and stutters and all of that stuff. False starts and all of that. You never put those in. With Speechpad.com, it's more difficult in that aspect where sometimes the files are verbatim. So you're going to have to type every little thing that they say. If they stutter, whatever. Like any, you know, words that you hear, you will have to type them with verbatim files. And also, now with Rev.com, you're breaking the text up into different lines so that you can sync it to the audio afterwards. So the program that you're using with Rev.com is automatically going to put in the times. Like when you sync the text as it's being said, it's going to automatically know what time that word comes in because you synced it. Now with this, Speechpad.com, they started implementing a lot more. I think every project, which is the reason why I kind of steered clear of Speechpad.com, because in the beginning they weren't doing this for every project or almost every project, but it has become more routine that the person who is submitting the information, they want you to put in timestamps like every 5 seconds, every 15 seconds, or something like that, different timestamps. And when you have a long project that you're doing, you're having to type out, and then you have to go in and make sure that you get in the timestamps. You've got to catch it when it says something, you know, put in the timestamp. It takes even more time when you're running low on time anyway. It just added more stress for me for them to have most of their files requiring that type of thing. Every 5 seconds, that's just too much for me. So that's why I began to do projects on here less and less until I did no projects on here. But that's another tidbit about this. NDA, highly confidential, invite only. So if it says invite only, just all of a sudden, you'll get this qualification. Because I don't think I was notified when I got the qualifications that I do have. I just happened to look at this page and saw that I was qualified all of a sudden. So they do it on the back end. They just make you qualified. That's what it means by invite only. The reviewer qualification is available only to workers who have transcribed 1000 minutes of audio while maintaining a rating of 96 or higher. This qualification tests your ability to listen to an audio or video file and review a transcription created by another transcriber. I reached this level pretty quickly, but they told me that I couldn't get the qualification because I hadn't been with the company long enough. So they don't say that on here, but you have to be with them for like 6 months before you can get this qualification. Worst job qualification is available only to workers who have transcribed 500 minutes of audio while maintaining a rating of 96 or higher. Spot check invite only to be eligible for a job that requires the fastest turnaround times, a verbatim qualification, and a web video captioning qualification that tests your ability to transcribe and create captions for video files. So they do have video files on here as well, but you're not syncing them like you would on Rev.com where you would transcribe them or put the captions in them, I should say. You don't have to do the syncing part of it. Somebody else does that, I assume. Or maybe they don't do that type of thing on here, but I'm pretty sure they do. Which is the reason, probably, why they want you to put in those timestamps so much. On this page is where you'll see the jobs and when you go to the My Work tab you can see it'll show you whatever file that you're doing currently. I don't have one right now, so it's not showing that. But it has all of the files that you have worked on and submitted. They have a time limit on these files as well as to when you have to get them submitted. So if you don't get them submitted in time, what it'll say for the status is that it expired. But the difference between SpeechPack and Rev.com when it expires on Rev.com it's just gone. Any work that you've done is applied to the next person. So if you were done, you were just going back and doing some touch-ups or something like that, spill check or something and the time expired and you're on Rev.com the other person gets all of your work. They can just perform the spill check and submit it and they'll get paid for it. So that's one major thing that I really didn't like about Rev.com. But on this website, if your time expires, you can contact them. They'll give you one more chance to go ahead, well actually you don't have to contact them. The system will automatically give you one more chance to submit it. Then if you have any kind of technical issues or something like that where you couldn't get back into the file, you can contact them. They will assign it back to you. They work with you essentially is what I'm trying to say. As you can see, this file says that it expired on me. I didn't submit it in time, maybe. So, since it was my first time I just went ahead and claimed it again. I went ahead and finished it and I got a rating of 99 on it and I was paid for it. You will get paid for your work. It can take them a while though to pay you. You can have a file waiting where it says paid for the status. It says pending I believe at first when you first submit it. And it can say pending for a week. They pay you weekly, but they won't make sure that all of your files that you have completed in that week are showing that you will get paid. They may still be pending and you won't get paid for it until the next payment. There has been one where it says almost two weeks and I contacted them. I'm like, what is going on? I don't understand what's going on. Oh, it can take a week for them to grade it. And I'm like well, it's been over a week and then they said that they will look into it. But yeah, that's the one thing that I definitely don't like about this website is that it takes them too long to go ahead and grade your files and pay you out. You're already not getting paid very much and then you're looking at how much you're supposed to be getting paid for that week, but you're not really going to get paid that possibly if the status hasn't changed to that you're going to get paid. Then if you go to the rating tab, you can see your current rating. My current rating is a 97. You can see how the rating is determined, what affects your rating, how you can improve your rating, and what do your minutes affect. Then support center says this page has not yet been implemented. All support related content will be located here. The support center has never been implemented in the entire time that I have been on SpeechPad.com. I don't believe that they're working on it because I have been on this website. I did my first file June 2016 and they haven't implemented the support center yet. That tells you something about the development of the website. How much you get paid per audio minute is another reason why I stopped working on this website as well because I felt that it was way too low for the amount of work that I was doing especially when I was having to put in time steps every five seconds. I mean it was just getting to be more and more work and especially when you're having to do verbatim files and things like that. It's just, it gets to be too much. I don't really feel like that even though SpeechPad.com is a legitimate website, I don't feel like it's a website that is worth your time. This file says it's 20 cents a minute. 20 cents a minute, that is nothing. On Rev.com, it doesn't get that low. But you have to do more. You have to sync the audio I mean the text to the audio or the video. So it's just kind of like looking at pretty much like a notepad and just typing and you're like oh my god when is this going to be over type of deal. Even though you'll be done when you get done typing it up. It just seems like it lasts longer and it's more draining. I guess the Rev.com, that aspect of it the syncing part makes it more interesting than just this but when you really think about it with Rev.com, they're only paying you a tiny bit to sync the audio because the payment is not like extremely more than this. Transcription in general and captioning in general you don't get paid very much to do it. So it can be a difficult job depending on how good you are at typing and if you have a pedal, there's a pedal that you can use to start and stop the audio and rewind and all of that instead of having to use a keyboard shortcut or actually click on a screen to do it that can speed up the process for you of transcribing and captioning but it is a time consuming job and the amount that you get paid for it almost doesn't seem like it's fair. I guess you can say. So I mean you make the judgment call on whether you think that it's enough for the files. You can start and you can do one file and you can see if you really think that this is worth it but it was just too much the files were hard to understand I'll say this, it's almost like they get the clients that have been rejected from the websites that are more cautious about what they supply to the people that they want to transcribe and caption the file. You know I imagine that some websites don't allow files that are just too bad you know but on Speechpad I believe that their screening process as far as that goes is pretty much non-existent probably. So when you're trying to decipher through all of that for the amount of money it can seem like it's not worth it. Plus you're gonna have to put in the timestamps which is even more for that amount of money and it's just it just doesn't seem worth it to me. Anyway so I'm just here to tell you the pros and the cons, what I've experienced let you know that the website is legit and you can make the decision that if you want to work with them or not. So yeah this is definitely a legit website and I hope that the information that I provided you has been useful and I'll see you in the next video.