Medical Transcription Jobs

A normal job is 20 hours a week part time, 40 hours a week full time. That’s 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, not including a half hour to hour mid-day for a break.

A normal job offers benefits for retirement and savings (and we should all be well aware of how important that is given the current financial situation.)

A normal job offers insurance benefits, paid vacation benefits, and more importantly, a normal job offers reliable income. As long as you show up to work, you can expect a paycheck every week.

Freelancing is not a normal job.

There’s no way to file unemployment when you haven’t earned any income. There are few options for insurance benefits. Fortunately, the Freelancers Union is working hard to offer these “normal job” benefits to freelancers.

However, it goes without saying that being a freelancer means you work much longer, much harder, and for less pay than somebody who has a “normal job”.

So why is freelancing so popular?

The first portion of the word “freelancer” says it all… freedom. Freelancing means you can sleep in, you don’t have to deal with annoying bosses or coworkers, and you make your own rules. You make your own hours, and you are your own boss.

This kind of freedom is exhilarating, and even if it means you have to work twice as hard for half the income of a “normal job” worker, you will never hear a freelance worker complain about their job in the same way that a “normal job” worker will.

Earn thousands a week, stuffing envelopes from home!

Be your own boss, make your own hours and make millions, without ever leaving home!

If any of the above made your heart skip a beat, you are an average person. If you read any of the preceding “promises” and envisioned yourself cruising on a brand new motorcycle across America, rolling in a pile of cash for doing absolutely nothing, then you are a perfectly normal human being.
But if you actually buy any of that garbage, or would even consider buying whatever those ads are trying to sell you… then you should stick with a “normal job” because working at home is not what you expect.
There is no such thing as “free money”, and there is no such thing as “easy money.” It is possible to earn money working from home… but the key word is work. No matter how much money you invest, you will never find a return by “investing” in somebody’s brilliant scheme to sell a dream.
The dream to work at home can be a reality, as long as you approach it with realistic expectations. If you are ready to invest lots of time, and you actually have a skill to offer that can be used from home, such as medical transcription or freelance writing, then it is very possible to make a living working from home.

Being a successful work at home woman (or man) is something to be very, very proud of! In most cases you have been lucky to take a hobby you love and turn it into a career that pays the bills. You may be no Bill Gates, but being an “average” entrepreneur is just as rewarding when you feel that feeling of success.
Being an entrepreneur becomes a large part of who you are. But has is become everything about you?

Housework
If you have been neglecting housework for your career, you are working too many hours. There are 24 hours in a day, and ideally the average person is awake for 16 of those hours. While you are successful and a spouse should be helping with the housework, there is no reason to stick a spouse with the cooking and the cleaning while you work. If you had any other “normal” job, you would come home and help out. It shouldn’t be any different if you are working at home.

Family Time
Whether you have children or not you should devote a minimum of 2 hours every day to family time. This guideline can include intimate bedroom time with your spouse, but should not be limited to that. Even if you are just sitting on the couch with a spouse, watching TV together while eating dinner is better than doing nothing together.

Social Life
Do you still have one? If not, then you are working too much! It’s that simple…

Other Interests
Have you been neglecting other hobbies (you know the ones that don’t pay the bills?) It is important to participate in activities you enjoy, because the benefits of hobbies aren’t just about money.

Be honest…
Look at your financial statements. You may be making a lot of money, but how many hours are you really putting in? If you break it all down, what are you being paid per hour?

How are you feeling?
Are you feeling mentally or emotionally drained or exhausted? It is possible to develop depression very easily, and staring at a computer screen for over 10 hours a day, not matter what the financial gain is, just isn’t worth your health!

Job Hunters frequently come across promising advertisements that turn out to be blatant lies that were geared towards bringing traffic to the advertisers website. Craigslists are full of these scams. I now make a point of taking a moment to look for violations of Google Adsense TOS and reporting websites when it seems appropriate. You should try it. It feels good. If every job hunter did this, there might eventually be fewer scams. That would only be true if Google has the extra resources to put into investigating. The sheer volume of scammy sites full of Google Ads makes me wonder if they have decided that they can’t eliminate it and they only do enough fraud investigation to keep up appearances.

It’s not medical transcription, but there is a growing demand for transcription from podcasters.

Bloggers who like to speak to their ‘readers’ using audio or video generally publish a transcript so their content can be effectively picked up by search engines. Consider approaching podcasters directly about providing transcription services. In many cases, turnaround time and quality are more important than price with these particular customers.

It has been about three years since a small service industry sprang up to meet the demand for podcast transcription. Find job opportunities in this field at www-transcription.net.

You see the perfect medical transcription job posted on the internet and you are about to seize the day when…

You see that you have already missed the deadline.

or

You click a link and the website tells you that the job is gone.

or

You email your resume and never hear anything back.

These situations are undeniably bummers, but I think job hunters miss opportunities by not at least making a record of the company name and contact information. There is a lot of turnover in the MT business. Some companies may also be in a growth phase and it might be a good idea to contact them politely and leave your resume with them in anticipation of future work.

DiskRiter has a current job posting on www-transcription.net. I have seen periodic postings from this company for a couple of years

This is educational, not entertaining…

I was looking through the transcription job postings on www-transcription.net and I saw one from an employer that I thought was worth a closer look. AccuTran Global offers a wide variety of transcription and editing services to its clients and it looks like they are busy enough that they continuously test job applicants. Many firms with an online presence have streamlined their HR system to the point where it practically runs by itself, so taking all comers doesn’t bog them down.

One particular service (non medical) that I found interesting was substantive/stylistic editing. If you have a knack for format and language, this kind of work could be just your cup of tea. I have to assume that the dollars to keystrokes ratio is easier on the hands, too.

I was searching for information to help a person with the ever popular question about how to get a job with no experience and I stumbled upon a very personal opinion piece on the job of medical transcription. I don’t agree 100% with everything Joy Denise says, but I appreciate her candor and I think she paints a vivid picture of her own experience in the field. Here is a short quote to pique your interest…

I’ve lost accounts to India and gotten a few of them back when the work came back looking like “Swiss cheese” with all the holes in the dictation….Smaller clients have proved more loyal, so that is my focus rather than hospitals…

Telecommuting means never being late because you get stuck in traffic. It also means that you are at the mercy of your internet service provider.

I think almost everyone in the Western World has several ISP’s competing for their business. If you are doing digital transcription, you have to place reliability above discounted prices. Don’t be afraid to abandon one ISP in favor of another. Some companies waive setup fees if you are switching from the competition. If you decide that dependability is extremely valuable to you, you could consider using more than one ISP and using a Double WAN router. In most cases this is going too far. People with 24/7 customer service contracts often use this setup, but for transcribing you should probably just ask around to find out who is most dependable and has the best customer service.