Never saw any video of that type, youtube algo is just odd, but I gotta say this was a very good vid even tho you have "only" 9.4k subs you defo deserve more!
I've done a lot of transcription work, and it is basically slave labor. Transcriptions with several people talking over each other are absolutely grueling, and the companies that contract transcriptionists have zero respect for how difficult the job is and expect you to be inhumanly accurate to their extremely complex guidelines... all for basically nothing. Never do this kind of work unless you are employed and guaranteed an hourly wage. Piece-rate tasks in general are never as profitable as they claim to be.
Not really. If you live in a 3rd world country and actually get good at it rather than doing it for only a single day it's not bad at all. Much easier than dying in a steel mill or working down a mine in 40c heat.
@@marcelzinho89 laptop and internet connection is cheap asl fam thats a very small expense compared to respiratory problems and general health problems
As a deaf person who relies on captions, I appreciate and am so grateful for the time and effort that people put into adding captions to videos that would otherwise be inaccessible to me. Thank you!!!
@@drm.himself nobody expects $60 per hour... you're just making random numbers up, people just expect to be payed more than $1 an hour, which is practically sweatshop prices
@@tobymacdonald5893 This person didn’t say they’re appreciative of the company but the people who do the work. They’re also deaf which means they genuinely rely on captions which is very important to them. Like dude they never said the people are paid well or anything just expressing how important having captions in general is and how much work goes into it.
@@drm.himself no its not, i can make 20usd/day + tips in a night shift (7pm to 3am) serving booze and food and i live in a shithole of a country worst part is this being a job where you have to consider other expenses, electricity, internet, computer, headphones, etc. Going out to work at a bar saves me money cuz in not using electricity at home so yeah, this is a fucking scam and close to slave labor.
I used to do Rev, I was only on it for a few days. After I was accepted I "leveled up" after a day or two to get higher paying gigs. I got a bad grade on one of my transcriptions and it leveled me down. Got another bad grade on another assignment and it kicked me off the platform all together. They grade pretty harsh for low pay. The most positive thing about the experience was being able to transcribe a not yet released episode of one of my favorite reality TV shows. Everything else was pretty boring.
They recently added a policy where, if your accuracy rating is graded to be less than 3/5 (meaning it needs to be re-edited by another transcriptionist), you just won't get paid for that project at all. So it makes it really risky to do longer projects, but those are the only ones where you really make any money at all. And the graders can be really finicky and unforgiving at times. I recently had a project where I got a 3/5 because I omitted one person's line when they said a complete sentence at the same time that someone else was also saying a complete sentence. The captioning software literally would not let me put all that text on screen.
@@Holstead The announcement was made in December and was implemented on the first of this year. Full text of the email: "Rev will no longer pay freelancers for unusable or poor quality TC and CP projects. This will impact projects that are sent to be redone during the Review or QC process AND receive a grade of 1 or 2 in accuracy, formatting, or alignment. The freelancer delivering the final project to the customer will ALWAYS be paid."
@@gsesquire3441 Sort of. The grader is not the one to redo the project. I'm not a grader, so I don't know entirely how it works, but I don't think they are even allowed to take that project, otherwise it creates a weird incentive system. Still messed up and wildly exploitative on Rev's part.
that is so goddam frustrating - the reason captions/transcriptions may be inaccurate is because deadlines are rushed and the pay is so bad that you have to rush through the job. companies will do literally ANYTHING to avoid paying people properly for their labour even if that would solve your problem pretty much immediately 🙄
As a person who can’t hear well, heavily rely on captions. I tried doing rev, but the thing that annoyed me was. I would write out the whole transcript. Someone would proof read it and say it’s not formatted correctly. So I won’t get paid and someone will take my spot with everything I typed up already and all they did was “format” correctly and they get paid.
If only other UA-camrs would be half as honest. All those great captions beneath your UA-cam video that raises people expectation and only give them a shitload of work for nothing is so annoying. Thank you for this video and for putting all the work in just so we know. You are amazing!
Bro his typing skills and someone elses is 2 diff things. I cakculated what he said and seems he cant type without loiking for shit maybe he doing only 20 to 30 words a minute while someone like me can do 120. Only other thing i can think of making him sooooooo slow is the syncing.
@@Fatpumpumlovah2 you still need to comprehend what the audio is saying, and put it in the correct format and correct grammar/spelling. Based on your comment, clearly you don't have the best grammar or spelling.
As someone who’s been doing this for about 2 years, the first couple of months are so shitty. You don’t get paid well at all and it honestly feels like it’s not worth anything at all. After a while, you’ll realize that it gets easier. It took me about a year to be able to make a decent amount of money. In Ecuador, where I’m from, a minimum wage job will make you $425/month. This is obviously not enough in more developed countries, but a job like the one that’s been reviewed should help live quite comfortably in a country like mine.
I was gonna say this is absolutely crap pay for the USA, but maybe not in less developed countries like Ecuador. That's great it can work for you though!
I'm assuming most people use AI generated captions and then just go through and fix them. When I used Rev in the past, it has me submit a script which the captioner can use so then all you have to do is set timings.
I was hyped about starting transcribing recently using AI and fixing it's mistakes but when I read the style guide and all the ridiculous rules I'm supposed to follow I completely lost my motivation. I thought I was just gonna type what I hear and that's it, but nooo, they had to make it into a science.
This is so validating. Ive struggled with work and tried doing transcripting IT WAS NOT WORTH THE PAY AT ALL and so much of the audio I was doing was so hard to understand. It wasn't for UA-cam videos, where people are more likely to be clearer or using better audio equipment, it was for ANYTHING. Once I transcribed an abusive phone call ;-; hearing those weird things was interesting but yeah an hour of work for 50 cents? I'm good thanks. Although I think a lot of people actually use the assistance of programs making auto captaions then you just edit and format it. I started doing that but still doesn't feel worth it idk.
I had a similar experience. Transcription is not worth it. I was doing a lot of hard to hear audio that either had poor quality or loud music over the voice or both. The system I used had an autotranscriber but it was useless unless the audio was clear. It's just not worth it relative to what you make.
@@danninagy6895 Nobody knows where you live, so how can they make realistic suggestions? If you live where I do, I’d laugh at such a question because there are SO many higher paying jobs that it’s silly to even ask. But if you’re somewhere that doesn’t have many jobs or where the pay is that low, maybe this is the best job for you. Nobody here knows you.
I did audio for people in a gymnasium and music playing in the background. I don't think there was any actual parts for me to transcribe, so I gave that one back. Way too chaotic.
I worked for REV as a salesperson for a short time. Not long after I was hired, there was a drastic change in direction with their sales leadership. This change unfortunately led to myself and all of the other recently hired sales employees being laid off due to the fact that they chose to entirely eliminate the inside sales team that they had spent months filling out. Why they even hired us in the first place is a mystery to me, and this event acts as a constant reminder to me that employers see us first and foremost as units of productivity to be discarded when they think they no longer need us. It's really interesting to see this candid review from a transcriber's perspective. It seems like working for REV doesn't just suck for salespeople.
Why would they need a sales staff? Note, this isn't on you, but the company does seem poorly ran a disorganized. While I'm sure it was difficult at the time, it's probably a good thing you didn't actually work there.
Ayyy Rev was my first "job" out of high school and after dropping out of college. It was decent for pocket money given the fact that i wasn't doing anything else with my time. I didnt have a car or any way to get a ride to work either, so Rev actually worked out well for me for about half a year until i was able to get something more stable going. The trick is to level up your account to at least tier 2 (better pay rates, more options to choose from, etc) and to hunt for podcasts. They usually have decent audio, are long (pays more per audio minute and in general is just a better use of time than doing a bunch of short ones) and some were even interesting to listen to. I avoided court cases and bodycams cuz they are near impossible to hear due to poor audio quality. All in all Rev was ok, or at the very least held me over for a bit.
Glad I’m not the only one who found Rev work mind-numbingly bored and horrendously underpaid. After doing a couple of jobs I quickly worked out that the wetter paid jobs were the ones with longer sessions which I could not afford to start for fear of not meeting the deadlines and getting booted off the platform as Jon says. It’s dreadful work really.
I gave Rev a try back in 2016 when I was a jobless high school student, and needless to say I didn't last very long. Mfers would literally submit recordings of meetings that sounded like they placed the microphone at the far end of a football field, and then reject my captions submission that I'd already worked upwards of an hour on because I didn't know how to interpret "liunfl gsk jdali uhsdf", which was half the recording. Seriously, I'd even get started on recordings attempted by multiple other transcribers (because if you give up halfway through, they still keep everything you already typed and not pay you) and would quickly realize why they all gave up. These Rev customers legitimately expected us to have the listening comprehension of a literal god.
This video is eye-opening and sheds light on the often overlooked and undervalued work of subtitling. It's astounding to see how much effort and attention to detail is required to create accurate subtitles, and yet the pay for such work is often meager. It's important to recognize the importance of subtitling in making content accessible to a wider audience, and to ensure that those who do this vital work are compensated fairly for their time and expertise. Thank you for sharing your experience and bringing attention to this issue.
Yeah I did a ten minute video about someone reviewing a local sushi restaurant of theirs and quite enjoyed it, it's a subject I'm very familiar with(worked as a sushi chef's assistant as my first job) and I actually was happy to sit through the video. She was well spoken and, while she didn't know much about the topic, I was able to understand everything she said. I spent about 45 minutes captioning and syncing everything, and made about 5 dollars. I thought, okay this definitely isn't viable as a full time job, at least not yet, but maybe if I enjoy the subject matter it isn't so bad. I spent a week looking for a video that A, wasn't taken, B, had a single presenter or person speaking at a time, C, had minimal accent/bizarre inflections, and D, was a subject I was vaguely interested in/knowledgeable about. They don't exist! And even if they did, the pay is absolutely not worth it. I found out quickly that there are a LOT of English words, even I as a native English speaker, don't understand because they come from a field of work I have zero experience in. Imagine trying to caption a video where someone is describing a complex chemical process and using words you've never heard in your day to day. Rev tells you to Google them to make sure you have them spelled correctly, but that can often take 5+ minutes per word. That's time you aren't paid for, and it really adds up. I'd really only recommend it to someone who doesn't really need income, and just really enjoys watching videos about random topics.
You'd honestly just have to be a super selfless humanitarian, who wants to make videos more accessible to deaf people that's the only reason I can think of
@@cinnamonnoob4166 I've been doing this full time for five years. To be absolutely frank, If you're good enough, you can make it work. That necessarily means it isn't for everyone. A lot of people significantly underestimate the skill curve and then complain when they realize it's not mindless work.
I worked as a transcriptionist for a short time. The audio files were all horrible, but I tried my best. There were some projects that paid $30. Those took over 4 HOURS to transcribe because I really had to focus and decipher what the hell they said. For a while, I was doing good at it, but then I moved to a different state and tried to update my address... My account was immediately terminated. Immediate, no hesitation. They really don't want people to work on Rev in certain states. I can only imagine why.
If you moved to Colorado, that'd be a reason. Since they're required by law to state their true wages, a lot of online wfh places will say basically that if you're from Colorado, don't apply.
Writing captions for videos you care about is super fun. Helped write captions for a handful of Markiplier videos before Community Captions was removed because I loved the content and wanted to contribute. Being made to do captions for whatever the heck others desire, however.. not so much. I do enjoy that Rev gave you a style guide, as I have no idea what closed captions standards look like and would've appreciated it back in the day
Yeah, I did too. Funny how sometimes paid transcription are very accurate, but so wrong in specifics. Like, every time "Whyatt Cheng" is mentioned the transcription says "Watching" or stuff like that. I've edited a few of those, plus tried transcribed some short videos, but longer ones are a complete hell. I've tried one 10min educational video, it took three hour-long sessions and I still didn't manage to finish it before Community Captions were removed.
I wish they’d bring community captions back. It was a lot of work but I really enjoyed helping out for content I cared about! Plus youtube’s auto captions are just so bad sometimes
I agree! I used to do captions for random videos about topics I enjoyed, and I'm sad to see community captions gone. I feel like its removal contributed to the decline of quality captions on UA-cam as a whole
Seein the quality you provide, the 100% Honesty, and the fact that you're not one of those youtubers that makes fake how to earn money videos just to make money on youtube, I don't understand why you don't get millions of views. One day you will! But for the mean time, I want to thank you for making such great videos! Your Editing skills, ideas are great!
I've been a transcriptionist for over a decade. Rev and other ones that sell it as an easy gig are the worst, you regularly make sub-minimum wage. Rev's prices are ridiculously low for the quality of audio they give you. I see others in the comments saying transcription across the board is slave labor, which isn't true. It can be a wonderful and rewarding job if you know where to look for work, but it's getting more and more difficult to break into the industry. If you want to pursue transcription, the CHEAPEST you should accept is $1.00/audio minute, which if you're able to complete an hour of sound in four hours which is average, you make $15/hour. Please if you ever need transcription for something, seek out a small business and pay them a fair amount rather than pay Rev or AI transcription to do it. It's a difficult job to be accurate and quick, and those of us who have been at it and are really good at it are constantly being undercut by the gig and AI companies who do far worse. It's difficult to find a place that pays fairly and has enough consistent work, but it can be really rewarding when you find a niche. I used to transcribe podcasts, Congress, oral history interviews, etc... and many of those client have taken their work to cheaper, worse companies to save a penny. If anybody has been interested about transcription before and has questions, please don't hesitate to ask!
I’m curious as well, is it worth it at all to start with a company like Rev just to gain the experience and then apply to better jobs, or is there a better way to start transcribing?
I transcribe audio for a podcast part time, and you’re spot on with your gripes in this video. I feel lucky I get paid by the hour, because this per minute bs looks scammy.
@@marouazaidi1379 You can try looking for work as a customer support agent. Try job searching boards, and apply to as many as you can. The more certifications you have, the better. You can search up courses free or paid and upon completion you'll receive a certificate that will make your application more appealing to hiring managers.
I've created videos in the past as a job and part of that was making captions for them. Honestly it's such a mind numbing process, even using tools to get the timings correct I couldn't do more than a couple of videos a day without losing the will to live, so I mixed it up with other jobs to just stretch it out and take breaks from it. Kudos for doing that for 9-5 straight (and for peanuts!) because I wouldn't have the mental fortitude to manage it.
that's pretty wild, I always thought Rev was auto generated and then humans simply come in to correct any issues. I used them for every new video when it was $1/minute (and my channel was more profitable) and the captions were almost always perfect and quickly delivered. I have to assume it's non-English speakers, because there were often words that sound similar to what I was saying, but didn't make any sense in the context. Like, if I said "We're taking a walk in the park" and the captions read "We're taking a walk in the cart".
It seems like the only people who actually do the job, are people from non-English countries, where the US dollar is worth a lot to them so it's a good job for them. So you're right.
Yeah I worked there for a bit, spent 8 hours on one video and made like $27, never again. Not to mention it's a major pain trying to get everything right, there's so many rules and when you think you're following them the people that double check your work say you're not
@@Holstead I got into trouble on rev with an editor for not following their style guide. Problem was, the customer specified they wanted it in a different style as I entered it originally. I challenged it but only got one changed in my favor over 5 errors. Spent about an hour and realized I was getting like .98 cents while the editor was getting like $3 per hour. I signed up for work at the nearest restaurant that week. Made about $17 per hour as a busser.
Wow finally an honest youtube channel about side hustles, thanks mate it's really refreshing to see someone genuine among all these gurus claiming that you can be a millionaire in a year with some bullshit courses haha, subscribed !
Interesting video! One of my side hustles is teaching English online for a little above minimum wage. It's fairly easy, but you'd go stir crazy doing it full-time.
Thank you for uploading this video. I'm a full time translator and sometimes I feel tempted to join these types of sites to make money during down times, but it's never been worth it. I did a transcription job recently and charged $2 per audio minute and I charge on the low side. It shouldn't be legal for anyone to pay less than a dollar for 30 audio minutes.
That's so stupid that this is so little money. Thanks for sharing this with us Jon, I always love watching your videos because they are so money informative. Keep it up!!
I personally havent tried this yet but every video i saw did this alot quicker and was making 15 dollars an hour so if they transcript 10 mins of video it should take around 20 mins for a good job and you get paid about 50 pence per minute so 5 dollars in 20 minutes is okay
It’s actually a great wage for certain people. I don’t really think it’s targeted at westerners. Poverty line living at 5$ a day and it’s a good job. There are plenty of people with these skills who can live off that.
It all depends on where you live. One of the best things one can do in life is travel but not just for vacation. You'll see that ppl work a lot harder for much less $. Its just that we have a higher standard if we're in more financially attractive countries/cities.
Hey, just wanted to say - check data privacy and compliance rules at your company before using any third party speech to text services! The audio/video uploaded is shared confidentially with Rev, so if you send it to another company for machine transcription, that might actually be illegal
Wow, this is so surreal! I worked full-time at Rev for over two years, and remember crying after my first day because of how little I made ($4.30). I got WAY faster with time though and even ended up doing quality control for other captioners (knew that damn Style Guide front to back). But even with how fast I got, and with being one of the top captioners on the site, I could never pull more than $250 from 32-hour work weeks... which is REALLY FREAKING GOOD by Rev standards and also well below minimum wage in my state. Rev is an okay-ish option for people in VERY specific situations (like me, I was a student and living at home, so I didn't need much income-wise), but otherwise it's straight up exploitative. Their turnover is extremely high and their captions end up being pretty hit-or-miss because of it. It's a shame because good captions are such an important service and Rev could really stand to make a difference if they cared more about compensating/retaining agents.
If you are spending 40 hours per week on rev for less than $300, why not just get a 40 hour job instead and make minimum double to triple that? That makes literally no sense
@@vicc6790 For me, I didn't have a car at the time and lived in a remote rural area with no buses, so I wasn't able to transport myself to a job. I needed online work that I could start right away, and Rev was the best I could find. For as crap as the pay was, I was saving it to purchase a car :)
Other companies who offer similar work (know the long pdf, do boring tasks whenever you like) pay more for less demanding jobs. So from the sound of it this one would never be worth it.
I have a huge respect for transcribers. I'm not a transcriber, but it took me ~22 hours to transcribe a ~2 hour recording by hand. Writing word for word of a long recording takes several hours to finish.At least from my experience. I had to pull an all nighter to get the transcript done. The second I was done, I immediately fell asleep from ~9am to ~5pm, for ~8hrs. Again, I have a huge respect for transcribers, it's a mostly underappreciated job. I know what it's like to transcribe a long recording. Most people don't get that. Especially, when more than one person is talking at the same time, as someone else. It makes transcribing even harder, speak one at a time please.
I do some transcription work for Rev on the side for some extra money, if you choose jobs carefully and know some tips and tricks you can just about work for minimum wage. I can earn anywhere from £10-20 per hour depending on how lucky I get with the jobs. Only downside is that as most of the jobs come from the US you only really get good jobs from 11pm-4am UK time so really if you want to earn any sort of worthwhile money you have got to do it during the night.
Thank you for saving my time. Trust me, I was literally doing the pre-tasks to appoint myself. Thats the reason why its hard for the freelancers. Thank you.
I once did voluntary closed captioning for a creator I like -- it's surprisingly difficult. Not just getting the words accurately, but timing and spacing the words as well. For example, if someone says a really long sentence, you can't have that whole sentence on screen at once. Then you need to decide where to break that sentence up so it does not become confusing to read. But also, the words have to stay up long enough for the average person to read comfortably. Harder still, trying to get all that right, but still preserving a semblance of comedic timing. Your punchlines can't appear too early, or you spoil the joke, or too late that it loses effect. (Honestly, I once watched a DVD of a musical - Little Shop of Horrors to be specific - where they not only did not transcribe the song lyrics, but lazily typed "Sings a song about X" where X was a sudden punchline a whole minute down the line. Worst closed captioning ever.) If people are speaking off-screen, like multiple people on a phonecall, you have to be mindful of identifying who is speaking during the back and forth. And then describing tone, which is important for the hearing-impaired. Describing sounds etc. A lot goes into it.
@@Holstead I think it's a worthwhile endeavour. Without closed captions, people with hearing or cognitive impairments are effectively excluded from a lot of content. Not to mention the people who think they should censor closed captions. (No, don't treat people with hearing impairment like they need protection from swear words!)
As a secretary I have done both medical (psychiatric and radiologic) and legal (workers comp) transcription. I could potentially do this as a side hustle but refuse to do so. They want to make you jump thru ridiculous hoops for peanuts. I would literally work/make more money in fast food where at least you might get a free meal.
Great video as ever. Had wondered about caption side hustle. Def won’t bother trying that! Make more videos like this please! I think there are translation versions of Rev as well. Most UA-camrs will have you believe Rev can be done almost full time. Clearly not.
Haha. I did this for a while. I actually enjoyed some of the transcriptions, like a little fly on the wall of some things. The money was abysmal. You start to learn what's hard fairly quickly. Most of the scripts are American but it's easier to do your own accent so less options. But as someone else noted, getting your script marked is the worst part. Numerous times they'd mark something as wrong and I'm sure they must have been people with a different accent because they were clearly right, yet if you complain they really disapprove.
Captioning quickly and accurately is a highly specific skill, to hold that attention for so long and have it all done just right. It deserves more than a measly few cents when 1 full minute is on average going to take someone 8 - 15 minutes depending on the content, how many speakers, music or audio interference, technical/legal/medical terms that need to be researched to double check if they mumbled the right word or not, etc. I tried doing it and I have a natural knack for it, but these ‘agency’ type sites are highly competitive with long wait times and not enough jobs to go around. Accessibility features such as CC aren’t valued enough for the time and work it takes to really make it anything more than a desperate experiment between jobs, or a hobby to make pocket change off of. 😢
Wow, just found this channel and watched a few videos. The effort and transparent insight into side-hustling methods is super valuable information to have. I'm very thankful for this and subscribed, excited for more content!
oh man, thank you for this video! i thought about doing this job briefly since i notice so many wrong subtitles on tv (and feel bad for those who can’t hear properly), and i also just wanna find a stay-at-home job. this seems tedious and frustrating tho😭 so, thanks for the warning haha
I have an idea - What if instead of YOU listening and typing, you use the voice recorder tool on Google docs and connect the rev video to the doc via a microphone? Maybe then you could leave it running in the background for the whole day on a secondary device and come back every once in a while to just copy paste the captions that Google docs wrote into rev and place the captions with the video timestamps? If you try do this for some big videos maybe you can scrape the $20-$30 mark per day?Correct me if I am wrong.
As a South African who has done Rev, the exchange rate makes it a lot more worthwhile. It's not super lucrative but it's a good side hustle. For reference, our minimum wage is the equivalent of $1.17 currently
@@nomamajola8494 both. The list of available jobs is constantly updated, and you choose which one appeals to you. It took them 10 weeks to get back to me, so hang in there
I work a lot with speech to text (computer generated, in many many languages) for my day job. Especially lately (whisper) it's become super good, and can transcribe very accurately in real time, including punctuation, speaker identification, music, etc. Haveing this background, I could NEVER do this job, let alone for dollars a day. Interesting video, thanks.
I transcribed 20 hours of interviews as part of my master's degree. I used a speech to text program and basically just repeated *very clearly* what was said in the interviews, while playing the recording at ~60% speed. That went a lot faster than typing. However, once there are several people speaking and/or with heavy accents or dialects (words I don't know and which are difficult to find online) it became a nightmare. I think it took me around 40 hours to transcribe it all. Even though I was quite fast, the only reason I worked so quickly was because it was breaking my spirit... The start was extremely disheartening since I really had the idea the work would be rather relaxing and quick. However, it would take me around two to three times as long as the interview to transcribe it (for example: 1 hour of interviews took me nearly 3 hours at first). So I had to learn quickly how to speed it up and got to around ~1.5hours of transcribing for every hour of interviews (speech to text really helped me, even though I had to correct the output frequently). Nowadays I would try and find an AI that transcribes it for me and I would only fix errors in its output. It's too intensive and precise work otherwise.
In my country if you convert $ to my currency, if I got $1 an hour and worked from 9-5 for 7 days a week, if you didn't have a job, then with the amount of money you got just for that it would be a substantially decent amount for the type of work. My country has a very bad currency rate so here that is A LOT of money. And yeah, it's kind of a norm to be fairly very fluent in English as our second language. Sometimes even third language. So for someone living in a country like that it's decent work because our minimum hourly wage, converted into $ is about $0,70
I live in South Africa and with our exchange rate, working on Rev was somewhat viable. If you're fast, you can make some good money. However, the work availability became abysmal and the pay rates kept decreasing to the point where it was insulting. I worked there for three years and became really good at it, but once I found a real job that paid me well, I left Rev in the dust very quickly. Transcribing body cam footage and mind-numbing meetings really eats away at your sanity. I'm grateful that they provided me with an income, but I couldn't help but feel like I worked in a word sweat shop that I could be thrown out of if I mispelled someone's name once in a 10,000 word transcript
Did it for pocket money when at uni. I quite enjoyed it. Money wasn't great, at all, but I'm quite nosey and like listening to things. I did an interview with a speedway legend, several lectures about heart surgery, a bunch of adverts and some police things too.
I tried this in 2019. It's a scam!! So glad someone did a video on this. People keep condescendingly telling me to try it and I have to tell them "no listen, I have done it, IT IS A SCAM!" and they don't believe me!
Make more videos like this, you will blow up to 1 million subs for sure. Just keep posting good ideas, good titles, good thumbnails, make multiple thumbnails, test out, build a community. Come on.
I tried to join Rev years ago, I never got accepted though. The application process was super complicated for me. I had to write captions for very strange videos, and they never said I did good enough. There's a lot of random things that confused me and made me not want to work with them.
Thank you! Genuinely! I've seen far too many of this "quick money" scheme videos mentioning this and other website, glad you took your time to debunk this, I hope you debunk other quick money scheme like using Chatgpt for affiliate marketing etc, etc.
My thanks for showing me the difficulty with this job. And for those who do caption videos and do it well. I greatly thank you, and hope that you are well rewarded for your passion
I’m so happy this blew up! I’ve been watching your videos for a little bit now and you’ve put SO much effort into your videos and dedication. All of your videos are amazing! I can’t wait to see your channel grow more!☺️
I use rev on and off for hobby money. Based on how long it takes me to hardcore transcribe audio, my hourly rate would be half of the minimum wage here, but that’s not counting the ungodly time spent even looking for a decent project, of which are so few. The only pro is that sometimes you get cool projects like unreleased celebrity interviews.
I didn’t do captions online, but i did work as a transcriptionist for a few months about five years ago. You got paid based on your hourly output, no pay for breaks or the time it takes to log in or set up macros and other tools to help make things faster. It was all financial advisors talking, too, so you had to learn a BUNCH of lingo. I got pretty fast so i was making decent pay, but the minimum was 15 hours a week and even that was KILLING my hands. It was also super demoralizing and mind-numbing to listen to these people talk about their millionaire clients and how much money their money was making while I was barely hitting minimum wage. Never again.
I did Rev transcription about ten years ago (they were just introducing video transcription when I stopped) and I would average $10.00 an hour. I tried to do it full time but there were never enough jobs I deemed acceptable so I would average $300/week. It was very hard on my body. I did find some of the content really interesting and that helped pass the time.
i had this same experience. i used rev for extra income during college and it was nice to be able to work whenever i had time available. the work was grueling and the job availability was inconsistent however
Im from Liberia and good wage here is 5$ a day for like 10-14 hours. If i could work on that site i would be sooo happy, but instead i have to sort electronic trash for 10h every day...
Great video! I worked for them before they started doing subtitling. It was mainly translations then, as in one language to another language. I worked as a translator for about 5 years for them. With something like a birth certificate, you could easily do 5 of those an hour and make $22 or so for each one, making over a hundred/hour. Then they got rid of all transparency, and told all of us translators to get lost or take a $100/hour to $2/hour pay cut (lol) and start doing subtitling. I tried subtitling for a week or so but it was grueling and paid nothing at all, like you say here.
I am glad this video showed up. I have been thinking about doing this for quite sometime as a side hustle only. But if you’ve gotta out in 8 hours per day for about £10.00 it’s nonsense. This platform is mainly for third world nations who actually have a good company of English.
I did some transcribing for Rev for a couple years, and it was excruciating. Even when I really need the money, I just do not have it in me to go back to that. As others have said, the audio quality on most of the videos was essentially static, the deadlines were ridiculously tight, and the grading was totally arbitrary. I would get docked for things that the style guide told me to do!
Yes!!! I got feedback on my first 3 videos that was totally contradicting what they teach. And to get marked down for following the rules is infuriating!!
I was a linguist and transcriptionist for the military and intelligence services and when I got out I was really looking for some sort of work. Naturally, transcription work and subtitles sounds very appropriate, right? So I tried working for Rev for a month or so back in 2017? 2018. I really needed money and transitioning to civilian life was not doing so good. It just seemed like a natural fit; even if the pay was bad, I was literally a professional REAL-TIME transcriptionist and translator. So it should be really easy and I can be efficient enough to at least make a little more, right? Wrong. Rev sucks. I make more money now doing surveys and research studies in my spare time than I would have ever made on Rev. The transcription market is dying especially for English because it's just too easy to do a robot transcription. We had people come in and use us for training to try and do the same for other languages (mostly target languages. ours was pashto.). It was pretty hard to do because the quality of clips was so bad. It was actually impossible for that language, they just would give up every year after trying again. And that's government stuff; not just a firm. Even bad quality clips in English are now getting easier to use robots for; we're obviously not 100% there yet and editing is needed. The strength of a live transcriptionist is that we understand context and can figure out words that may otherwise be unintelligible. AI can do that too, but it has trouble with proper nouns. I hate that this video popped up on my algorithm, such bad memories. I was damn good at it though. Court transcription is just too different to shift into easily. We even had a class action against Rev that I participated in. I think I got like $21. This was a year or two back, I think.
I've enjoyed working for Rev and earned useful money to supplement my regular income. However, I wouldn't recommend it for most people due to the sheer amount of time it takes to earn $200 a week. I don't have a family and don't go out much, so I can afford to spend those hours working. It has led to some late nights, however. Rev has always paid me on time and I've worked on several TV programmes and films, some of which are properties recognised worldwide. I generally like the work a lot and have learnt a lot as a result of captioning some documentaries, but it's not for everyone unless you're happy to invest a lot of time. It's also seasonal, so as I type this in late December (holiday season), work's a little thin on the ground.
@@YehNahYehAyy Tv ads cost hundreds of thousands if not millions. Even if the captioning is just a fraction of a fraction they make probably a thousand to ten thousand? So yeah. I can guarantee if it is American media networks the transcribers are probably getting .1% or .01% of the contract cost. Whoever owns Rev probably gets 98-99% of the contact money. It makes "fast food worker" look like a neurosurgeon pay.
as someone who needs subtitles at all times, it's downright infuriating that so many captioning jobs are freelance. this is an extremely important accessibility option, and captioning through these companies should be a job that offers benefits, above standard wages, and opportunities for growth and movement (references and recommendations for captioning cable networks, streaming services, specific sports/news outlets, at events with live captioning devices for attendees, et cetera). if we actually acknowledged the sheer amount of education, competency, computer and language literacy, and time this service requires and treated it like a real career, subtitles would be more widely available in general. this especially applies to translators! i've used captioning devices at live (pro wrestling and hockey) events, but, in new york and toronto, there've only been english options - even if performers/athletes weren't speaking english! there isn't even a freelance market for live caption translating comparable to same language captioning, from what i can tell; as i understand, the only translating that's prioritised is when someone such as yourself captions a video, then the company repackages the video and subtitles for freelancers to translate. you'd be surprised how hard it is to even get french or quebecois subtitles in french canada on certain programs...! anyway, as someone who can barely hear: thank you for having CC on your video and shining a light on this industry. i'm sending you one million dollars telepathically
@@flyingchimp12 you are so incredibly stupid i won't cater to your need for an intelligent explanation unless you pay for it. get off the internet before it melts whatever grey matter you have left, dude. love you. peace
@@flyingchimp12 i mean captions are also important for not just HoH people but children (helps with literacy), people learning a new language or watching something in their second language, etc. They’re helpful for a good portion of people (and even if they somehow were only helpful to people with hearing issues it would still be worth it to cater to them)
I've written translated captions without rules, for a fan-channel and the ("wriggle-room")-freedom that came with typing was great! I would transfer English stories into Dutch and would have a blast finding similar sayings, proverbs or certain typical posh/urban words that I felt so-and-so would say. I knew the people that were speaking in the video, I knew the roles that they were playing and the jokes that they'd make or not-make and I found it a great adventure to translate untranslatable jokes into similar (or better) ones in Dutch. I don't know, it was a lot of fun. I hate that UA-cam took the function away. Accents as well, were so much fun to translate. I made Northern into Amsterdam and posh into Gooisch or oldfashioned Dutch (like spoken in the 50's.) Not fully ofcourse, but once a sentence like 'that would be correct' was used with a posh accent, I would make sure that the translation had a similar feeling to it. Welsh became Twents (or, if you get to the core-element of Twent's dialect, you get farmer) and so on. Plenty of Dutch folk know enough English to watch the whole thing in the original language, but the captions in Dutch are nice anyway, for when you want to learn Dutch, show your grandma or younger sister, and for if you're just tired that day and don't want to put effort into understanding English. It did take some time, but I was having enjoying it so much, it didn't feel like work and the satisfaction was enough to keep me going for I-don't-know-how-many video's. I wish that I could have continued.
@@Holstead It really was :D But it was voluntarily (hobby) without any deadlines or things I 'had' to translate, it was optional. I cannot imagine having a good time if I am not able to pause the 'work' or having to translate video's I did not care for.
You definitely can make more than a minimum wage job with it. I've been with them for about 5 years now and honestly, the reason you struggled is because you're running it 9-5 UK time. You have to remember that the company is based in California/Texas (they have HQ's in both) so the most active times are always gonna be American time. I've always worked better on night shifts than during the day anyway so it suits me fine. I do between 8-10 hours a day and I've only had a few weeks where I've made less than £450. It's not for everyone though. I love it as it means I can still work and keep my mind active while not being able to go out and work in "the real world" due to my disabilities. Time wise, you're on the very slow side of cracking them out. Ideally you wanna be aiming for no more than three minutes to type each minute of audio out and then an additional two minutes to sync it at the end. So a ten minute video shouldn't take you longer than around 45-50 minutes to fully complete and submit. Without being around that kinda timing, you're never gonna make any money from it. Apples and oranges, though. It isn't for everyone and some people prefer the stability of a full-time job elsewhere whereas that just isn't possible for me. So long as I can earn enough to keep a roof over my head and food on the table, I'm happy.
I did this for about a year as a way to make a bit of extra money on the side but ultimately realised it wasn't worth it. Getting paid pence to transcribe horrible quality audio and then having to worry about being down rated into oblivion just isn't worth the stress. I'd really recommend UserTesting for people looking to make an extra bit of cash. It's basically website testing for companies but you make $10 per 10/20 minute test which isn't bad at all.
I like to watch your this kind of videos because it's your genuine opinion about the work you are doing as you know their are many UA-cam channels out their who claims that you make that much huge money by doing this or that but no one practically do it I really like your work, take care
I’d rather work at McDonalds. I don’t want to work at Mcdonalds but this is just BS. I bet homeless people holding a sign panhandling are making more $.
I help transcribe for a podcast I like listening to and I used to do community captions on YT before they cut it. I'd say, transcribe for things you like and you might get a few bucks, but as a job or even a side hussle, it's not worth it. When people start talking about shows you don't know, or random things, that cuts into your check because you have to google the right spelling and that can take 2-5 minutes and then you're even farther behind in pay.
I made okay money doing Rev when I did it, but that was a long time ago and more 'in the beginning'. The ability to make money was all built on picking the right jobs. I preferred old westerns or certain TV series which had very little dialogue and often a caption file or script I could use to assist if needed. I was able to caption while watching the videos at 2x speed as well, which helped. Made for an okay job while I was traveling around in parts of the world that are cheaper than the US, but not so much at home
I worked for gengo doing translation work with a similar structure like this. Just like this 90% of the jobs weren't worth it, due to heavy competition and unreasonable time expectations. It was also difficult getting customers to reply to you in time to get context.
Although I’m 6 months late but at least in Oregon in America they’ve pretty much raised minimum wage to $15 an hour. But I’m also not saying doing this gig isn’t worth it.
Let's be honest. In a country like mine and for someone like me who doesn't pay for anything. This might be a decent source of money. But the problem is you can be a translator instead for a big company and get paid better
A classmate of mine works at google for translation making good money, and her only qualification for getting a job there was because she speaks fluent Italian. Nothing else. She said she doesn't care for the job, but is easy money.
@@redtruth121 She has been working there for a year or so, and the only prerequisite was her fluent Italian. She didn't really like the job and was eager to finish her degree and go somewhere else. lol!
I'm assuming the way you're supposed to do this is by using something like the auto transcribe tool from premiere and just change it up where the AI made a mistake. This is what I often did to transcribe my videos and it brought the process from something that would take hours to something that would pretty much take as long as the video length.
People really don't get that it takes about 3 or 4 times the time to type something as it does to speak it. And captioning is even more complicated because you have to make it match the audio. Rev is a legit company in which you can make money, and they do pay consistently, but the metrics they have you trying to meet and the style guide are ridiculous. You look better working on the transcription side editing the AI transcripts.
Hey Jon! I gotta say, I'm really enjoying your content. After watching some videos I noticed a lot of these side-jobs don't really payoff or are really not worth the time. I was wondering. In your opinion, what would you say would be the best choice for an online side-job available?
I like UA-cam, i.e. Video content creation - with the ad revenue, affiliate links, sponsorship deals, etc, and you get to make content about whatever you find interesting!
Typing captions for 10 hours in order to receive 8 bucks in exchange? I know I live in America and we’re spoiled but that just sounds like glorified slavery with extra steps if you ask me.
Thanks for actually highlighting the reality of these online gigs, so many UA-camrs are still posting unrealistic income claims about them seemingly without actually trying them themselves, makes it difficult to see if any are worthwhile - hope you will cover some more of the common online niches - copywriting, data entry, data annotation, proofreading, search engine evaluation
Wouldn't it be better to have some program write you the automatic-subtitles and then checking them? This should be a bit easier as most of the work (timing included) would be done semi-automatically (if the audio is clear you should be able to write the subs for 1 minute in less than 2 minutes...)
The only thing I miss about working for Rev is that I used to learn about so many things! It was very interesting, but I also found it very stressing due to the metrics, and now you’ll find barely any work if you’re not a revver+
I have worked at Rev for a few years now and you get better at it with time. You have to be really selective about what files you choose and to drop them if they're too difficult, otherwise you're wasting time. Starting out sucks because you can't get all the good files, you gotta hang in there and level up and then you can get MUCH better jobs. I typically do $150-200 a week to supplement my income elsewhere but I have done many $500+ weeks too. Works out great for me, especially because I am not American but get paid in USD.
Yes, was just going to comment basically this. Once you get the hang of figuring out if a file is going to be worth your time and get into the habit of the formatting style, it can actually be a pretty decent bump (ditto on the USD situation for me) to your week. I am using Rev to travel and it is a good option for the flexibility and control.
Hi Jon, I tried turning on captions on this video but they were a bit shit. Would you mind typing them in manually when you get a chance? Thanks in advance..
After a 5 month break, I'm back on it! New money-making videos coming in Jan 2023! 😍
only 9k subs making bangers like this? millionaire by jan 2024 for sure
youtube algorhytm is weird fr
On the way to 10k subs!
didnt ask
Never saw any video of that type, youtube algo is just odd, but I gotta say this was a very good vid even tho you have "only" 9.4k subs you defo deserve more!
I've done a lot of transcription work, and it is basically slave labor. Transcriptions with several people talking over each other are absolutely grueling, and the companies that contract transcriptionists have zero respect for how difficult the job is and expect you to be inhumanly accurate to their extremely complex guidelines... all for basically nothing. Never do this kind of work unless you are employed and guaranteed an hourly wage. Piece-rate tasks in general are never as profitable as they claim to be.
Not really. If you live in a 3rd world country and actually get good at it rather than doing it for only a single day it's not bad at all. Much easier than dying in a steel mill or working down a mine in 40c heat.
@@LawrenceTimme Absolutely. I just mean that it's not a viable choice at all for a main revenue stream in countries like the U.S., Canada, U.K., etc.
@@peperonypeperony7955 I would agree with that.
@@LawrenceTimme mine workers dont need a laptop, internet connection, internet etc..pretty big investment like buying a car
@@marcelzinho89 laptop and internet connection is cheap asl fam thats a very small expense compared to respiratory problems and general health problems
As a deaf person who relies on captions, I appreciate and am so grateful for the time and effort that people put into adding captions to videos that would otherwise be inaccessible to me. Thank you!!!
They should pay people more to do it then instead of ripping them off
@@tobymacdonald5893 Can't expect 60$ an hour from writing audio.. Besides, it's great for 3rd world countries.
@@drm.himself nobody expects $60 per hour... you're just making random numbers up, people just expect to be payed more than $1 an hour, which is practically sweatshop prices
@@tobymacdonald5893 This person didn’t say they’re appreciative of the company but the people who do the work. They’re also deaf which means they genuinely rely on captions which is very important to them. Like dude they never said the people are paid well or anything just expressing how important having captions in general is and how much work goes into it.
@@drm.himself no its not, i can make 20usd/day + tips in a night shift (7pm to 3am) serving booze and food and i live in a shithole of a country
worst part is this being a job where you have to consider other expenses, electricity, internet, computer, headphones, etc.
Going out to work at a bar saves me money cuz in not using electricity at home so yeah, this is a fucking scam and close to slave labor.
I used to do Rev, I was only on it for a few days. After I was accepted I "leveled up" after a day or two to get higher paying gigs. I got a bad grade on one of my transcriptions and it leveled me down. Got another bad grade on another assignment and it kicked me off the platform all together. They grade pretty harsh for low pay.
The most positive thing about the experience was being able to transcribe a not yet released episode of one of my favorite reality TV shows. Everything else was pretty boring.
Thanks for sharing victoria. Hope those exclusive early episodes were good!
I really can't imagine anyone doing this as their full time thing, awesome vid!!
Thanks man!
Ayy what's up Valiskibum I saw one of your videos an hour ago lol
LMAO I do this for a living man ☹️ it’s tough but you get better with time.
@@liazavala24 thank you
I type at 160wpm... I totally could do this full-time lmao.
They recently added a policy where, if your accuracy rating is graded to be less than 3/5 (meaning it needs to be re-edited by another transcriptionist), you just won't get paid for that project at all. So it makes it really risky to do longer projects, but those are the only ones where you really make any money at all. And the graders can be really finicky and unforgiving at times. I recently had a project where I got a 3/5 because I omitted one person's line when they said a complete sentence at the same time that someone else was also saying a complete sentence. The captioning software literally would not let me put all that text on screen.
Really! How recently did they implement that policy?
@@Holstead The announcement was made in December and was implemented on the first of this year. Full text of the email:
"Rev will no longer pay freelancers for unusable or poor quality TC and CP projects. This will impact projects that are sent to be redone during the Review or QC process AND receive a grade of 1 or 2 in accuracy, formatting, or alignment. The freelancer delivering the final project to the customer will ALWAYS be paid."
@@gsesquire3441 Sort of. The grader is not the one to redo the project. I'm not a grader, so I don't know entirely how it works, but I don't think they are even allowed to take that project, otherwise it creates a weird incentive system. Still messed up and wildly exploitative on Rev's part.
Feels like the money is in becoming a grader instead. Find one mistake. Ruin someone’s day. Get paid lol
that is so goddam frustrating - the reason captions/transcriptions may be inaccurate is because deadlines are rushed and the pay is so bad that you have to rush through the job. companies will do literally ANYTHING to avoid paying people properly for their labour even if that would solve your problem pretty much immediately 🙄
As a person who can’t hear well, heavily rely on captions. I tried doing rev, but the thing that annoyed me was. I would write out the whole transcript. Someone would proof read it and say it’s not formatted correctly. So I won’t get paid and someone will take my spot with everything I typed up already and all they did was “format” correctly and they get paid.
Ouch 😔 That's annoying, thanks for sharing
If only other UA-camrs would be half as honest. All those great captions beneath your UA-cam video that raises people expectation and only give them a shitload of work for nothing is so annoying. Thank you for this video and for putting all the work in just so we know. You are amazing!
🙏
Bro his typing skills and someone elses is 2 diff things. I cakculated what he said and seems he cant type without loiking for shit maybe he doing only 20 to 30 words a minute while someone like me can do 120.
Only other thing i can think of making him sooooooo slow is the syncing.
@@Fatpumpumlovah2 you still need to comprehend what the audio is saying, and put it in the correct format and correct grammar/spelling. Based on your comment, clearly you don't have the best grammar or spelling.
as Tom Scott once said:
" "Oh, look at me! I've Bought a Lamborghini!" Buy some damn subtitles. "
I’ve done a bunch of side hustles on my channel, breaking down how much you make and with full transparency 👌👌👌
As someone who’s been doing this for about 2 years, the first couple of months are so shitty. You don’t get paid well at all and it honestly feels like it’s not worth anything at all. After a while, you’ll realize that it gets easier. It took me about a year to be able to make a decent amount of money. In Ecuador, where I’m from, a minimum wage job will make you $425/month. This is obviously not enough in more developed countries, but a job like the one that’s been reviewed should help live quite comfortably in a country like mine.
A good insight to have! Thanks
Did you get paid in US dollar?
I was gonna say this is absolutely crap pay for the USA, but maybe not in less developed countries like Ecuador. That's great it can work for you though!
@@GirtonOramsay in brazil minimum wage is like 300$/month
Ps.: Rounding up
I'm assuming most people use AI generated captions and then just go through and fix them. When I used Rev in the past, it has me submit a script which the captioner can use so then all you have to do is set timings.
Thanks for sharing your experience 😊 And yes, a lot of comments have suggested AI autogenerating captions with proof reading
Sup CZs
I was hyped about starting transcribing recently using AI and fixing it's mistakes but when I read the style guide and all the ridiculous rules I'm supposed to follow I completely lost my motivation. I thought I was just gonna type what I hear and that's it, but nooo, they had to make it into a science.
@@GatsuKS can probably have an AI follow the rules
@@luxeayt6694 Which AI does that, you know some?
This is so validating. Ive struggled with work and tried doing transcripting IT WAS NOT WORTH THE PAY AT ALL and so much of the audio I was doing was so hard to understand. It wasn't for UA-cam videos, where people are more likely to be clearer or using better audio equipment, it was for ANYTHING. Once I transcribed an abusive phone call ;-; hearing those weird things was interesting but yeah an hour of work for 50 cents? I'm good thanks. Although I think a lot of people actually use the assistance of programs making auto captaions then you just edit and format it. I started doing that but still doesn't feel worth it idk.
I had a similar experience. Transcription is not worth it. I was doing a lot of hard to hear audio that either had poor quality or loud music over the voice or both. The system I used had an autotranscriber but it was useless unless the audio was clear. It's just not worth it relative to what you make.
Then any better suggestions?
@@danninagy6895 Nobody knows where you live, so how can they make realistic suggestions? If you live where I do, I’d laugh at such a question because there are SO many higher paying jobs that it’s silly to even ask. But if you’re somewhere that doesn’t have many jobs or where the pay is that low, maybe this is the best job for you. Nobody here knows you.
what a useless answer@@user-sf9gs2pg1b
I did audio for people in a gymnasium and music playing in the background. I don't think there was any actual parts for me to transcribe, so I gave that one back. Way too chaotic.
I worked for REV as a salesperson for a short time. Not long after I was hired, there was a drastic change in direction with their sales leadership. This change unfortunately led to myself and all of the other recently hired sales employees being laid off due to the fact that they chose to entirely eliminate the inside sales team that they had spent months filling out. Why they even hired us in the first place is a mystery to me, and this event acts as a constant reminder to me that employers see us first and foremost as units of productivity to be discarded when they think they no longer need us.
It's really interesting to see this candid review from a transcriber's perspective. It seems like working for REV doesn't just suck for salespeople.
Too true you look out for yourself, no one else will. Certainly not corporate entities
Why would they need a sales staff?
Note, this isn't on you, but the company does seem poorly ran a disorganized. While I'm sure it was difficult at the time, it's probably a good thing you didn't actually work there.
Of course that's how they see you, did you think companies hire people to be their friends or as an act of charity?
@@lewis6590 No. I did not think so. This event simply acts as further evidence of that truth
why would an employer not only care about profits?
They're not your family. Expecting to be treated as some needy celebrity is your fault
Ayyy Rev was my first "job" out of high school and after dropping out of college. It was decent for pocket money given the fact that i wasn't doing anything else with my time. I didnt have a car or any way to get a ride to work either, so Rev actually worked out well for me for about half a year until i was able to get something more stable going. The trick is to level up your account to at least tier 2 (better pay rates, more options to choose from, etc) and to hunt for podcasts. They usually have decent audio, are long (pays more per audio minute and in general is just a better use of time than doing a bunch of short ones) and some were even interesting to listen to. I avoided court cases and bodycams cuz they are near impossible to hear due to poor audio quality. All in all Rev was ok, or at the very least held me over for a bit.
Thanks for sharing your experience with it! 😊 Those are good pieces of advice
You still work with rev?
Glad I’m not the only one who found Rev work mind-numbingly bored and horrendously underpaid. After doing a couple of jobs I quickly worked out that the wetter paid jobs were the ones with longer sessions which I could not afford to start for fear of not meeting the deadlines and getting booted off the platform as Jon says. It’s dreadful work really.
Yes, there's always the risk of relying on the platform and then getting kicked off for not following their extensive rules
@@Holstead The rules are designed to weed out people who have respect for themselves and their time.
I gave Rev a try back in 2016 when I was a jobless high school student, and needless to say I didn't last very long. Mfers would literally submit recordings of meetings that sounded like they placed the microphone at the far end of a football field, and then reject my captions submission that I'd already worked upwards of an hour on because I didn't know how to interpret "liunfl gsk jdali uhsdf", which was half the recording. Seriously, I'd even get started on recordings attempted by multiple other transcribers (because if you give up halfway through, they still keep everything you already typed and not pay you) and would quickly realize why they all gave up. These Rev customers legitimately expected us to have the listening comprehension of a literal god.
Thank you for sharing your experience!
I had the same experience except it was the beginning of college for me 😭 Rev is absolutely insane
I guess thats why they hired you for the captioning process? To understand what they were saying 🤣
Still work with rev?
@@bethwelbett7095 No, I have a real job now that pays me hourly.
This video is eye-opening and sheds light on the often overlooked and undervalued work of subtitling. It's astounding to see how much effort and attention to detail is required to create accurate subtitles, and yet the pay for such work is often meager. It's important to recognize the importance of subtitling in making content accessible to a wider audience, and to ensure that those who do this vital work are compensated fairly for their time and expertise. Thank you for sharing your experience and bringing attention to this issue.
Thanks for the thoughts Andy 😊
Yeah I did a ten minute video about someone reviewing a local sushi restaurant of theirs and quite enjoyed it, it's a subject I'm very familiar with(worked as a sushi chef's assistant as my first job) and I actually was happy to sit through the video. She was well spoken and, while she didn't know much about the topic, I was able to understand everything she said. I spent about 45 minutes captioning and syncing everything, and made about 5 dollars.
I thought, okay this definitely isn't viable as a full time job, at least not yet, but maybe if I enjoy the subject matter it isn't so bad. I spent a week looking for a video that A, wasn't taken, B, had a single presenter or person speaking at a time, C, had minimal accent/bizarre inflections, and D, was a subject I was vaguely interested in/knowledgeable about.
They don't exist! And even if they did, the pay is absolutely not worth it.
I found out quickly that there are a LOT of English words, even I as a native English speaker, don't understand because they come from a field of work I have zero experience in. Imagine trying to caption a video where someone is describing a complex chemical process and using words you've never heard in your day to day. Rev tells you to Google them to make sure you have them spelled correctly, but that can often take 5+ minutes per word. That's time you aren't paid for, and it really adds up.
I'd really only recommend it to someone who doesn't really need income, and just really enjoys watching videos about random topics.
nobody who doesn't really need income is going to spend their free time transcribing videos for 50 cents
You'd honestly just have to be a super selfless humanitarian, who wants to make videos more accessible to deaf people that's the only reason I can think of
@@cinnamonnoob4166 I've been doing this full time for five years. To be absolutely frank, If you're good enough, you can make it work. That necessarily means it isn't for everyone. A lot of people significantly underestimate the skill curve and then complain when they realize it's not mindless work.
I worked as a transcriptionist for a short time. The audio files were all horrible, but I tried my best. There were some projects that paid $30. Those took over 4 HOURS to transcribe because I really had to focus and decipher what the hell they said. For a while, I was doing good at it, but then I moved to a different state and tried to update my address... My account was immediately terminated. Immediate, no hesitation. They really don't want people to work on Rev in certain states. I can only imagine why.
Like what states ?
Probably states with decent labor protection laws.
If you moved to Colorado, that'd be a reason. Since they're required by law to state their true wages, a lot of online wfh places will say basically that if you're from Colorado, don't apply.
@@Stothehighest That's the dumbest thing ever, and a very shady business practice. I'm glad I don't have to deal with these types of people
Yup probably for California too because they protect their employees
Writing captions for videos you care about is super fun. Helped write captions for a handful of Markiplier videos before Community Captions was removed because I loved the content and wanted to contribute. Being made to do captions for whatever the heck others desire, however.. not so much. I do enjoy that Rev gave you a style guide, as I have no idea what closed captions standards look like and would've appreciated it back in the day
Did you know it's Markiplier's birthday today, though?
Oh wait, nevermind. It's not.
Yeah, I did too. Funny how sometimes paid transcription are very accurate, but so wrong in specifics. Like, every time "Whyatt Cheng" is mentioned the transcription says "Watching" or stuff like that. I've edited a few of those, plus tried transcribed some short videos, but longer ones are a complete hell. I've tried one 10min educational video, it took three hour-long sessions and I still didn't manage to finish it before Community Captions were removed.
I wish they’d bring community captions back. It was a lot of work but I really enjoyed helping out for content I cared about! Plus youtube’s auto captions are just so bad sometimes
I agree! I used to do captions for random videos about topics I enjoyed, and I'm sad to see community captions gone. I feel like its removal contributed to the decline of quality captions on UA-cam as a whole
Seein the quality you provide, the 100% Honesty, and the fact that you're not one of those youtubers that makes fake how to earn money videos just to make money on youtube, I don't understand why you don't get millions of views. One day you will! But for the mean time, I want to thank you for making such great videos! Your Editing skills, ideas are great!
My guy! Thanks 😍
this video has a million views
@@Holstead I live in a Tent with my 4 kids with Rev as my only source of income outside prostitution...
I've been a transcriptionist for over a decade. Rev and other ones that sell it as an easy gig are the worst, you regularly make sub-minimum wage. Rev's prices are ridiculously low for the quality of audio they give you.
I see others in the comments saying transcription across the board is slave labor, which isn't true. It can be a wonderful and rewarding job if you know where to look for work, but it's getting more and more difficult to break into the industry. If you want to pursue transcription, the CHEAPEST you should accept is $1.00/audio minute, which if you're able to complete an hour of sound in four hours which is average, you make $15/hour.
Please if you ever need transcription for something, seek out a small business and pay them a fair amount rather than pay Rev or AI transcription to do it. It's a difficult job to be accurate and quick, and those of us who have been at it and are really good at it are constantly being undercut by the gig and AI companies who do far worse. It's difficult to find a place that pays fairly and has enough consistent work, but it can be really rewarding when you find a niche. I used to transcribe podcasts, Congress, oral history interviews, etc... and many of those client have taken their work to cheaper, worse companies to save a penny.
If anybody has been interested about transcription before and has questions, please don't hesitate to ask!
I’ve been looking to get into a side hustle is there any good companies out there can accept fast?
i’ve also been trying to find a transcription job so i can work remotely while at school. any places or tips on where to look?
I’m curious as well, is it worth it at all to start with a company like Rev just to gain the experience and then apply to better jobs, or is there a better way to start transcribing?
Commenting to get notifications for this thread bc I’m also interested in doing transcribing work
hey I'm super interested in transcriptioning
I transcribe audio for a podcast part time, and you’re spot on with your gripes in this video. I feel lucky I get paid by the hour, because this per minute bs looks scammy.
Thanks for sharing 😊
Could you name the site or the platform please ?
@@marouazaidi1379 happy scribe
@@marouazaidi1379 You can try looking for work as a customer support agent. Try job searching boards, and apply to as many as you can. The more certifications you have, the better. You can search up courses free or paid and upon completion you'll receive a certificate that will make your application more appealing to hiring managers.
What site are you working with..
I've created videos in the past as a job and part of that was making captions for them. Honestly it's such a mind numbing process, even using tools to get the timings correct I couldn't do more than a couple of videos a day without losing the will to live, so I mixed it up with other jobs to just stretch it out and take breaks from it. Kudos for doing that for 9-5 straight (and for peanuts!) because I wouldn't have the mental fortitude to manage it.
😂
that's pretty wild, I always thought Rev was auto generated and then humans simply come in to correct any issues. I used them for every new video when it was $1/minute (and my channel was more profitable) and the captions were almost always perfect and quickly delivered. I have to assume it's non-English speakers, because there were often words that sound similar to what I was saying, but didn't make any sense in the context. Like, if I said "We're taking a walk in the park" and the captions read "We're taking a walk in the cart".
You weren't wrong. It is common to auto generate captions and fix issues to save time.
Hi Alex :)
It seems like the only people who actually do the job, are people from non-English countries, where the US dollar is worth a lot to them so it's a good job for them. So you're right.
exactly why i thought these were auto generated lol
$3 an hour in the Philippines is 3x the minimum wage here. No wonder people outsource their business here. My country is so defeated. 🇵🇭
Ty for how honest this video is. Appreciate all your hard work
Thanks for the support!
Yeah I worked there for a bit, spent 8 hours on one video and made like $27, never again. Not to mention it's a major pain trying to get everything right, there's so many rules and when you think you're following them the people that double check your work say you're not
So many rules absolutely
Can you help me get the account
Can you help a brother, just give me that account. I will work on it
@@Holstead I got into trouble on rev with an editor for not following their style guide. Problem was, the customer specified they wanted it in a different style as I entered it originally. I challenged it but only got one changed in my favor over 5 errors. Spent about an hour and realized I was getting like .98 cents while the editor was getting like $3 per hour. I signed up for work at the nearest restaurant that week. Made about $17 per hour as a busser.
U didn't answer the question
Wow finally an honest youtube channel about side hustles, thanks mate it's really refreshing to see someone genuine among all these gurus claiming that you can be a millionaire in a year with some bullshit courses haha, subscribed !
😂 Glad to have you!
0:10 Where I live, a skilled tradesman like a Plasterer, earns about $50K a year, even more if they also do tiles and drywall.
👌 I've since learned that they earn a lot 😂
Interesting video! One of my side hustles is teaching English online for a little above minimum wage. It's fairly easy, but you'd go stir crazy doing it full-time.
The same with this captioning hustle too I'd imagine!
What company do you teach through?
Ah to do this you need to know a language that’s not English already
Thank you for uploading this video. I'm a full time translator and sometimes I feel tempted to join these types of sites to make money during down times, but it's never been worth it. I did a transcription job recently and charged $2 per audio minute and I charge on the low side. It shouldn't be legal for anyone to pay less than a dollar for 30 audio minutes.
That's so stupid that this is so little money. Thanks for sharing this with us Jon, I always love watching your videos because they are so money informative. Keep it up!!
I know! Outrageously little money for non-stop focussed work
I personally havent tried this yet but every video i saw did this alot quicker and was making 15 dollars an hour so if they transcript 10 mins of video it should take around 20 mins for a good job and you get paid about 50 pence per minute so 5 dollars in 20 minutes is okay
@@GCZocco15$ per hour isn't enough but i guess its typing haha
It’s actually a great wage for certain people. I don’t really think it’s targeted at westerners. Poverty line living at 5$ a day and it’s a good job. There are plenty of people with these skills who can live off that.
It all depends on where you live. One of the best things one can do in life is travel but not just for vacation. You'll see that ppl work a lot harder for much less $. Its just that we have a higher standard if we're in more financially attractive countries/cities.
Hey, just wanted to say - check data privacy and compliance rules at your company before using any third party speech to text services! The audio/video uploaded is shared confidentially with Rev, so if you send it to another company for machine transcription, that might actually be illegal
Nobody will know or care.
"Up to" is one of the most evil phrases in the English language.
Wow, this is so surreal! I worked full-time at Rev for over two years, and remember crying after my first day because of how little I made ($4.30). I got WAY faster with time though and even ended up doing quality control for other captioners (knew that damn Style Guide front to back). But even with how fast I got, and with being one of the top captioners on the site, I could never pull more than $250 from 32-hour work weeks... which is REALLY FREAKING GOOD by Rev standards and also well below minimum wage in my state.
Rev is an okay-ish option for people in VERY specific situations (like me, I was a student and living at home, so I didn't need much income-wise), but otherwise it's straight up exploitative. Their turnover is extremely high and their captions end up being pretty hit-or-miss because of it. It's a shame because good captions are such an important service and Rev could really stand to make a difference if they cared more about compensating/retaining agents.
Does that even pay for the produced electricity bills?
As long as people continue to work for Rev despite their horrible wages, nothing will change.
If you are spending 40 hours per week on rev for less than $300, why not just get a 40 hour job instead and make minimum double to triple that? That makes literally no sense
@@vicc6790 For me, I didn't have a car at the time and lived in a remote rural area with no buses, so I wasn't able to transport myself to a job. I needed online work that I could start right away, and Rev was the best I could find. For as crap as the pay was, I was saving it to purchase a car :)
Other companies who offer similar work (know the long pdf, do boring tasks whenever you like) pay more for less demanding jobs. So from the sound of it this one would never be worth it.
I have a huge respect for transcribers. I'm not a transcriber, but it took me ~22 hours to transcribe a ~2 hour recording by hand. Writing word for word of a long recording takes several hours to finish.At least from my experience. I had to pull an all nighter to get the transcript done. The second I was done, I immediately fell asleep from ~9am to ~5pm, for ~8hrs. Again, I have a huge respect for transcribers, it's a mostly underappreciated job. I know what it's like to transcribe a long recording. Most people don't get that. Especially, when more than one person is talking at the same time, as someone else. It makes transcribing even harder, speak one at a time please.
Thanks for sharing your experiences! 😊
@@Holstead No problem.
I do some transcription work for Rev on the side for some extra money, if you choose jobs carefully and know some tips and tricks you can just about work for minimum wage. I can earn anywhere from £10-20 per hour depending on how lucky I get with the jobs. Only downside is that as most of the jobs come from the US you only really get good jobs from 11pm-4am UK time so really if you want to earn any sort of worthwhile money you have got to do it during the night.
Useful info!
Can you help me with the Rev test?
thats perfect, i start my other job at 4am, so a little pocket change before work
I have don 3 rev test and they rejected all so i lose my trust for rev. How do u guys do this test and get acepted
$10-20 an hour when you get lucky isn't a good thing.
Thank you for saving my time. Trust me, I was literally doing the pre-tasks to appoint myself. Thats the reason why its hard for the freelancers. Thank you.
I once did voluntary closed captioning for a creator I like -- it's surprisingly difficult. Not just getting the words accurately, but timing and spacing the words as well. For example, if someone says a really long sentence, you can't have that whole sentence on screen at once. Then you need to decide where to break that sentence up so it does not become confusing to read. But also, the words have to stay up long enough for the average person to read comfortably.
Harder still, trying to get all that right, but still preserving a semblance of comedic timing. Your punchlines can't appear too early, or you spoil the joke, or too late that it loses effect. (Honestly, I once watched a DVD of a musical - Little Shop of Horrors to be specific - where they not only did not transcribe the song lyrics, but lazily typed "Sings a song about X" where X was a sudden punchline a whole minute down the line. Worst closed captioning ever.)
If people are speaking off-screen, like multiple people on a phonecall, you have to be mindful of identifying who is speaking during the back and forth.
And then describing tone, which is important for the hearing-impaired. Describing sounds etc. A lot goes into it.
Thanks for sharing your experiences 😊 There sure are a bunch of considerations and challenges that can come with the work
@@Holstead I think it's a worthwhile endeavour. Without closed captions, people with hearing or cognitive impairments are effectively excluded from a lot of content. Not to mention the people who think they should censor closed captions. (No, don't treat people with hearing impairment like they need protection from swear words!)
As a secretary I have done both medical (psychiatric and radiologic) and legal (workers comp) transcription. I could potentially do this as a side hustle but refuse to do so. They want to make you jump thru ridiculous hoops for peanuts. I would literally work/make more money in fast food where at least you might get a free meal.
For sure, a minimum wage job is at least reliable income compared with rev.com
thanks for being honest and showing the truth. I was so excited to start working on rev but it doesn't worth it
Glad it helped!
You can create an account and sell it..it will be helpful to some of us out here
@@zimkhithakutwana28 Yeah I still do want it
I was trying to write subtitles for my videos and it is definitely the most BORING and mundane part of making videos. Never AGAIN.
I see you more often than Christopher Moon.
Great video as ever. Had wondered about caption side hustle. Def won’t bother trying that! Make more videos like this please! I think there are translation versions of Rev as well. Most UA-camrs will have you believe Rev can be done almost full time. Clearly not.
Maybe it could if you're fluent in a foreign language like you say but nah! Yes, more to come!
How should I start making money as a Indian 17 year old
With only a phone
@@abhinandannandan3863 Get a job like the rest of us. You can use your phone to call your mom so she can pick you up from work.
Haha. I did this for a while. I actually enjoyed some of the transcriptions, like a little fly on the wall of some things. The money was abysmal. You start to learn what's hard fairly quickly. Most of the scripts are American but it's easier to do your own accent so less options. But as someone else noted, getting your script marked is the worst part. Numerous times they'd mark something as wrong and I'm sure they must have been people with a different accent because they were clearly right, yet if you complain they really disapprove.
Captioning quickly and accurately is a highly specific skill, to hold that attention for so long and have it all done just right. It deserves more than a measly few cents when 1 full minute is on average going to take someone 8 - 15 minutes depending on the content, how many speakers, music or audio interference, technical/legal/medical terms that need to be researched to double check if they mumbled the right word or not, etc. I tried doing it and I have a natural knack for it, but these ‘agency’ type sites are highly competitive with long wait times and not enough jobs to go around. Accessibility features such as CC aren’t valued enough for the time and work it takes to really make it anything more than a desperate experiment between jobs, or a hobby to make pocket change off of. 😢
Thank you for sharing your experience 😊
Wow, just found this channel and watched a few videos. The effort and transparent insight into side-hustling methods is super valuable information to have. I'm very thankful for this and subscribed, excited for more content!
Great to hear 😍
oh man, thank you for this video! i thought about doing this job briefly since i notice so many wrong subtitles on tv (and feel bad for those who can’t hear properly), and i also just wanna find a stay-at-home job. this seems tedious and frustrating tho😭 so, thanks for the warning haha
👌
I have an idea -
What if instead of YOU listening and typing, you use the voice recorder tool on Google docs and connect the rev video to the doc via a microphone? Maybe then you could leave it running in the background for the whole day on a secondary device and come back every once in a while to just copy paste the captions that Google docs wrote into rev and place the captions with the video timestamps? If you try do this for some big videos maybe you can scrape the $20-$30 mark per day?Correct me if I am wrong.
Ooo very interesting idea 🤔 Thanks!
As a South African who has done Rev, the exchange rate makes it a lot more worthwhile. It's not super lucrative but it's a good side hustle. For reference, our minimum wage is the equivalent of $1.17 currently
Were you transcribing videos or audios? I'm also from South Africa and waiting to be accepted by Rev
@@nomamajola8494 both. The list of available jobs is constantly updated, and you choose which one appeals to you.
It took them 10 weeks to get back to me, so hang in there
I work a lot with speech to text (computer generated, in many many languages) for my day job. Especially lately (whisper) it's become super good, and can transcribe very accurately in real time, including punctuation, speaker identification, music, etc. Haveing this background, I could NEVER do this job, let alone for dollars a day. Interesting video, thanks.
I wonder if rev will implement this soon!
Glad you reviewed this! This is really helpful! Also gonna go checkout your other videos!
Thanks for going through this for us and saving us time
🙏
I transcribed 20 hours of interviews as part of my master's degree. I used a speech to text program and basically just repeated *very clearly* what was said in the interviews, while playing the recording at ~60% speed. That went a lot faster than typing. However, once there are several people speaking and/or with heavy accents or dialects (words I don't know and which are difficult to find online) it became a nightmare. I think it took me around 40 hours to transcribe it all. Even though I was quite fast, the only reason I worked so quickly was because it was breaking my spirit...
The start was extremely disheartening since I really had the idea the work would be rather relaxing and quick. However, it would take me around two to three times as long as the interview to transcribe it (for example: 1 hour of interviews took me nearly 3 hours at first). So I had to learn quickly how to speed it up and got to around ~1.5hours of transcribing for every hour of interviews (speech to text really helped me, even though I had to correct the output frequently). Nowadays I would try and find an AI that transcribes it for me and I would only fix errors in its output. It's too intensive and precise work otherwise.
Thanks for sharing your experiences!
In my country if you convert $ to my currency, if I got $1 an hour and worked from 9-5 for 7 days a week, if you didn't have a job, then with the amount of money you got just for that it would be a substantially decent amount for the type of work. My country has a very bad currency rate so here that is A LOT of money. And yeah, it's kind of a norm to be fairly very fluent in English as our second language. Sometimes even third language. So for someone living in a country like that it's decent work because our minimum hourly wage, converted into $ is about $0,70
I live in South Africa and with our exchange rate, working on Rev was somewhat viable. If you're fast, you can make some good money. However, the work availability became abysmal and the pay rates kept decreasing to the point where it was insulting. I worked there for three years and became really good at it, but once I found a real job that paid me well, I left Rev in the dust very quickly. Transcribing body cam footage and mind-numbing meetings really eats away at your sanity. I'm grateful that they provided me with an income, but I couldn't help but feel like I worked in a word sweat shop that I could be thrown out of if I mispelled someone's name once in a 10,000 word transcript
Did it for pocket money when at uni. I quite enjoyed it. Money wasn't great, at all, but I'm quite nosey and like listening to things. I did an interview with a speedway legend, several lectures about heart surgery, a bunch of adverts and some police things too.
😂
I tried this in 2019. It's a scam!! So glad someone did a video on this. People keep condescendingly telling me to try it and I have to tell them "no listen, I have done it, IT IS A SCAM!" and they don't believe me!
Glad it's helped!
Make more videos like this, you will blow up to 1 million subs for sure. Just keep posting good ideas, good titles, good thumbnails, make multiple thumbnails, test out, build a community. Come on.
Let's go 😁
I tried to join Rev years ago, I never got accepted though. The application process was super complicated for me. I had to write captions for very strange videos, and they never said I did good enough. There's a lot of random things that confused me and made me not want to work with them.
Thank you! Genuinely! I've seen far too many of this "quick money" scheme videos mentioning this and other website, glad you took your time to debunk this, I hope you debunk other quick money scheme like using Chatgpt for affiliate marketing etc, etc.
Great idea for a video, what would you use chatgpt for specifically for affiliate marketing?
My thanks for showing me the difficulty with this job. And for those who do caption videos and do it well. I greatly thank you, and hope that you are well rewarded for your passion
I’m so happy this blew up! I’ve been watching your videos for a little bit now and you’ve put SO much effort into your videos and dedication. All of your videos are amazing! I can’t wait to see your channel grow more!☺️
Thanks so much 😍
@@Holstead of course!
I use rev on and off for hobby money. Based on how long it takes me to hardcore transcribe audio, my hourly rate would be half of the minimum wage here, but that’s not counting the ungodly time spent even looking for a decent project, of which are so few.
The only pro is that sometimes you get cool projects like unreleased celebrity interviews.
"Yeah transcribe this Genius interview with this mumble rapper for me"
"Mumble? Oh...."
Dude. I love that you made this video. Thank you so much.
No worries at all! Hope you enjoyed!
I didn’t do captions online, but i did work as a transcriptionist for a few months about five years ago. You got paid based on your hourly output, no pay for breaks or the time it takes to log in or set up macros and other tools to help make things faster. It was all financial advisors talking, too, so you had to learn a BUNCH of lingo. I got pretty fast so i was making decent pay, but the minimum was 15 hours a week and even that was KILLING my hands. It was also super demoralizing and mind-numbing to listen to these people talk about their millionaire clients and how much money their money was making while I was barely hitting minimum wage. Never again.
Where can I find work like this I type pretty fast and wouldnt mind doing some extra work like this.
I did Rev transcription about ten years ago (they were just introducing video transcription when I stopped) and I would average $10.00 an hour. I tried to do it full time but there were never enough jobs I deemed acceptable so I would average $300/week. It was very hard on my body. I did find some of the content really interesting and that helped pass the time.
i had this same experience. i used rev for extra income during college and it was nice to be able to work whenever i had time available. the work was grueling and the job availability was inconsistent however
Were there some other online ways you guys used to get money ? Can u name them please ?
Im from Liberia and good wage here is 5$ a day for like 10-14 hours. If i could work on that site i would be sooo happy, but instead i have to sort electronic trash for 10h every day...
Great video! I worked for them before they started doing subtitling. It was mainly translations then, as in one language to another language. I worked as a translator for about 5 years for them. With something like a birth certificate, you could easily do 5 of those an hour and make $22 or so for each one, making over a hundred/hour. Then they got rid of all transparency, and told all of us translators to get lost or take a $100/hour to $2/hour pay cut (lol) and start doing subtitling. I tried subtitling for a week or so but it was grueling and paid nothing at all, like you say here.
Thank you for sharing, hope you found something better 😊
With rev, I used to sort them by most attempts, and usually, those were audios worth $30-60ish, and they would more often than no be like 80% done
Interesting 🤔 thanks for the comment!
I am glad this video showed up. I have been thinking about doing this for quite sometime as a side hustle only. But if you’ve gotta out in 8 hours per day for about £10.00 it’s nonsense. This platform is mainly for third world nations who actually have a good company of English.
Hope the video has helped your decision!
I did some transcribing for Rev for a couple years, and it was excruciating. Even when I really need the money, I just do not have it in me to go back to that. As others have said, the audio quality on most of the videos was essentially static, the deadlines were ridiculously tight, and the grading was totally arbitrary. I would get docked for things that the style guide told me to do!
Yes!!! I got feedback on my first 3 videos that was totally contradicting what they teach. And to get marked down for following the rules is infuriating!!
I was a linguist and transcriptionist for the military and intelligence services and when I got out I was really looking for some sort of work. Naturally, transcription work and subtitles sounds very appropriate, right?
So I tried working for Rev for a month or so back in 2017? 2018. I really needed money and transitioning to civilian life was not doing so good. It just seemed like a natural fit; even if the pay was bad, I was literally a professional REAL-TIME transcriptionist and translator. So it should be really easy and I can be efficient enough to at least make a little more, right?
Wrong. Rev sucks.
I make more money now doing surveys and research studies in my spare time than I would have ever made on Rev.
The transcription market is dying especially for English because it's just too easy to do a robot transcription. We had people come in and use us for training to try and do the same for other languages (mostly target languages. ours was pashto.). It was pretty hard to do because the quality of clips was so bad. It was actually impossible for that language, they just would give up every year after trying again. And that's government stuff; not just a firm.
Even bad quality clips in English are now getting easier to use robots for; we're obviously not 100% there yet and editing is needed. The strength of a live transcriptionist is that we understand context and can figure out words that may otherwise be unintelligible. AI can do that too, but it has trouble with proper nouns.
I hate that this video popped up on my algorithm, such bad memories. I was damn good at it though. Court transcription is just too different to shift into easily.
We even had a class action against Rev that I participated in. I think I got like $21. This was a year or two back, I think.
Thank you for sharing!
The only well-informed video ever on the internet. Truth people! Truth! Thank you Jon. 🙌
I'm glad to hear it was informative! 😊 Thanks for the support
I've enjoyed working for Rev and earned useful money to supplement my regular income. However, I wouldn't recommend it for most people due to the sheer amount of time it takes to earn $200 a week. I don't have a family and don't go out much, so I can afford to spend those hours working. It has led to some late nights, however. Rev has always paid me on time and I've worked on several TV programmes and films, some of which are properties recognised worldwide. I generally like the work a lot and have learnt a lot as a result of captioning some documentaries, but it's not for everyone unless you're happy to invest a lot of time. It's also seasonal, so as I type this in late December (holiday season), work's a little thin on the ground.
Great insight, thanks!
You'd think TV and film would pay someone more than that for their subtitles...
@@YehNahYehAyy That used to be the case, but as with everything, when a cheaper way to do something comes along...
@@YehNahYehAyy
Tv ads cost hundreds of thousands if not millions.
Even if the captioning is just a fraction of a fraction they make probably a thousand to ten thousand?
So yeah.
I can guarantee if it is American media networks the transcribers are probably getting .1% or .01% of the contract cost. Whoever owns Rev probably gets 98-99% of the contact money.
It makes "fast food worker" look like a neurosurgeon pay.
Hell yeah!! A new video - can’t wait to watch this 🤘🤘🤘
My dude
as someone who needs subtitles at all times, it's downright infuriating that so many captioning jobs are freelance. this is an extremely important accessibility option, and captioning through these companies should be a job that offers benefits, above standard wages, and opportunities for growth and movement (references and recommendations for captioning cable networks, streaming services, specific sports/news outlets, at events with live captioning devices for attendees, et cetera). if we actually acknowledged the sheer amount of education, competency, computer and language literacy, and time this service requires and treated it like a real career, subtitles would be more widely available in general.
this especially applies to translators! i've used captioning devices at live (pro wrestling and hockey) events, but, in new york and toronto, there've only been english options - even if performers/athletes weren't speaking english! there isn't even a freelance market for live caption translating comparable to same language captioning, from what i can tell; as i understand, the only translating that's prioritised is when someone such as yourself captions a video, then the company repackages the video and subtitles for freelancers to translate. you'd be surprised how hard it is to even get french or quebecois subtitles in french canada on certain programs...!
anyway, as someone who can barely hear: thank you for having CC on your video and shining a light on this industry. i'm sending you one million dollars telepathically
Cheap gig economics
Wouldn’t that be great… too bad catering to the tiny % that’s hard of hearing isn’t profitable. Unless you want them to charge for captions.
@@flyingchimp12 you are so incredibly stupid i won't cater to your need for an intelligent explanation unless you pay for it. get off the internet before it melts whatever grey matter you have left, dude. love you. peace
You see, if only that million dollars was real
@@flyingchimp12 i mean captions are also important for not just HoH people but children (helps with literacy), people learning a new language or watching something in their second language, etc. They’re helpful for a good portion of people (and even if they somehow were only helpful to people with hearing issues it would still be worth it to cater to them)
I've written translated captions without rules, for a fan-channel and the ("wriggle-room")-freedom that came with typing was great!
I would transfer English stories into Dutch and would have a blast finding similar sayings, proverbs or certain typical posh/urban words that I felt so-and-so would say.
I knew the people that were speaking in the video, I knew the roles that they were playing and the jokes that they'd make or not-make and I found it a great adventure to translate untranslatable jokes into similar (or better) ones in Dutch.
I don't know, it was a lot of fun. I hate that UA-cam took the function away. Accents as well, were so much fun to translate. I made Northern into Amsterdam and posh into Gooisch or oldfashioned Dutch (like spoken in the 50's.) Not fully ofcourse, but once a sentence like 'that would be correct' was used with a posh accent, I would make sure that the translation had a similar feeling to it.
Welsh became Twents (or, if you get to the core-element of Twent's dialect, you get farmer) and so on.
Plenty of Dutch folk know enough English to watch the whole thing in the original language, but the captions in Dutch are nice anyway, for when you want to learn Dutch, show your grandma or younger sister, and for if you're just tired that day and don't want to put effort into understanding English.
It did take some time, but I was having enjoying it so much, it didn't feel like work and the satisfaction was enough to keep me going for I-don't-know-how-many video's.
I wish that I could have continued.
Sounds like a good time 😂
@@Holstead It really was :D But it was voluntarily (hobby) without any deadlines or things I 'had' to translate, it was optional.
I cannot imagine having a good time if I am not able to pause the 'work' or having to translate video's I did not care for.
You definitely can make more than a minimum wage job with it. I've been with them for about 5 years now and honestly, the reason you struggled is because you're running it 9-5 UK time. You have to remember that the company is based in California/Texas (they have HQ's in both) so the most active times are always gonna be American time. I've always worked better on night shifts than during the day anyway so it suits me fine. I do between 8-10 hours a day and I've only had a few weeks where I've made less than £450.
It's not for everyone though. I love it as it means I can still work and keep my mind active while not being able to go out and work in "the real world" due to my disabilities.
Time wise, you're on the very slow side of cracking them out. Ideally you wanna be aiming for no more than three minutes to type each minute of audio out and then an additional two minutes to sync it at the end. So a ten minute video shouldn't take you longer than around 45-50 minutes to fully complete and submit. Without being around that kinda timing, you're never gonna make any money from it.
Apples and oranges, though. It isn't for everyone and some people prefer the stability of a full-time job elsewhere whereas that just isn't possible for me. So long as I can earn enough to keep a roof over my head and food on the table, I'm happy.
I did this for about a year as a way to make a bit of extra money on the side but ultimately realised it wasn't worth it. Getting paid pence to transcribe horrible quality audio and then having to worry about being down rated into oblivion just isn't worth the stress.
I'd really recommend UserTesting for people looking to make an extra bit of cash. It's basically website testing for companies but you make $10 per 10/20 minute test which isn't bad at all.
I made another video about UserTesting 😁 ua-cam.com/video/pNGtku7TNLs/v-deo.html
3:38 Why not provide the song lyrics? They literally have the entirety of it already captioned.
I like to watch your this kind of videos because it's your genuine opinion about the work you are doing as you know their are many UA-cam channels out their who claims that you make that much huge money by doing this or that but no one practically do it
I really like your work, take care
Thanks!!!
I’d rather work at McDonalds. I don’t want to work at Mcdonalds but this is just BS. I bet homeless people holding a sign panhandling are making more $.
Screw fast food! But I would rather wait tables. I heard there are good transcriptionist jobs but they require a little bit of college.
Awesome and eye-opening... Please do this for more transcription websites
I help transcribe for a podcast I like listening to and I used to do community captions on YT before they cut it. I'd say, transcribe for things you like and you might get a few bucks, but as a job or even a side hussle, it's not worth it. When people start talking about shows you don't know, or random things, that cuts into your check because you have to google the right spelling and that can take 2-5 minutes and then you're even farther behind in pay.
Very good points! 😊
I made okay money doing Rev when I did it, but that was a long time ago and more 'in the beginning'. The ability to make money was all built on picking the right jobs. I preferred old westerns or certain TV series which had very little dialogue and often a caption file or script I could use to assist if needed.
I was able to caption while watching the videos at 2x speed as well, which helped.
Made for an okay job while I was traveling around in parts of the world that are cheaper than the US, but not so much at home
Still work with rev?
I worked for gengo doing translation work with a similar structure like this. Just like this 90% of the jobs weren't worth it, due to heavy competition and unreasonable time expectations. It was also difficult getting customers to reply to you in time to get context.
👍👍
Although I’m 6 months late but at least in Oregon in America they’ve pretty much raised minimum wage to $15 an hour. But I’m also not saying doing this gig isn’t worth it.
It's definitely an option to make a little extra 😊
Let's be honest. In a country like mine and for someone like me who doesn't pay for anything. This might be a decent source of money.
But the problem is you can be a translator instead for a big company and get paid better
Good point!
A classmate of mine works at google for translation making good money, and her only qualification for getting a job there was because she speaks fluent Italian. Nothing else. She said she doesn't care for the job, but is easy money.
@@TampaxVortex.666 i'm sorry but can you tell me did she get it? I'm really interested
@@redtruth121 She has been working there for a year or so, and the only prerequisite was her fluent Italian. She didn't really like the job and was eager to finish her degree and go somewhere else. lol!
I'm assuming the way you're supposed to do this is by using something like the auto transcribe tool from premiere and just change it up where the AI made a mistake. This is what I often did to transcribe my videos and it brought the process from something that would take hours to something that would pretty much take as long as the video length.
An idea for a follow-up video! 😁
OpenAI Whisper makes this a breeze
@@Holstead Use Loom
I suspect they're might be issues using third party tools from a privacy point of view.
@@Nettietwixt that tool runs locally. It used to be a cloud feature.
Outstanding 9 hours shift lmao. Here we work from 8 to 6 plus extra hours for 1 dollar an hours. You people just don't know how good You have it
People really don't get that it takes about 3 or 4 times the time to type something as it does to speak it. And captioning is even more complicated because you have to make it match the audio. Rev is a legit company in which you can make money, and they do pay consistently, but the metrics they have you trying to meet and the style guide are ridiculous. You look better working on the transcription side editing the AI transcripts.
Hey Jon! I gotta say, I'm really enjoying your content.
After watching some videos I noticed a lot of these side-jobs don't really payoff or are really not worth the time.
I was wondering. In your opinion, what would you say would be the best choice for an online side-job available?
I like UA-cam, i.e. Video content creation - with the ad revenue, affiliate links, sponsorship deals, etc, and you get to make content about whatever you find interesting!
$12/ hour is less than minimum wage here in Colorado. I get pissed when jobs try offering anything less than $18.50 or it's simply not worth my time
Typing captions for 10 hours in order to receive 8 bucks in exchange? I know I live in America and we’re spoiled but that just sounds like glorified slavery with extra steps if you ask me.
Thank you so much for letting us know the truth about this kind of jobs. Definitely not the best way to make a living.
No problem!
Thanks for actually highlighting the reality of these online gigs, so many UA-camrs are still posting unrealistic income claims about them seemingly without actually trying them themselves, makes it difficult to see if any are worthwhile - hope you will cover some more of the common online niches - copywriting, data entry, data annotation, proofreading, search engine evaluation
Wouldn't it be better to have some program write you the automatic-subtitles and then checking them? This should be a bit easier as most of the work (timing included) would be done semi-automatically (if the audio is clear you should be able to write the subs for 1 minute in less than 2 minutes...)
A good idea for a follow-up video!
The only thing I miss about working for Rev is that I used to learn about so many things! It was very interesting, but I also found it very stressing due to the metrics, and now you’ll find barely any work if you’re not a revver+
Thank you for sharing!
12 dollars geez, i live in México and 12 dollars Is what you get pay for 8 hours of hard work, god bless my mom for put me on english lessons .
I have worked at Rev for a few years now and you get better at it with time. You have to be really selective about what files you choose and to drop them if they're too difficult, otherwise you're wasting time. Starting out sucks because you can't get all the good files, you gotta hang in there and level up and then you can get MUCH better jobs. I typically do $150-200 a week to supplement my income elsewhere but I have done many $500+ weeks too. Works out great for me, especially because I am not American but get paid in USD.
Wow! Thanks for sharing and glad to hear it's working out for you!
Do you mind telling us where you are from?
Yes, was just going to comment basically this. Once you get the hang of figuring out if a file is going to be worth your time and get into the habit of the formatting style, it can actually be a pretty decent bump (ditto on the USD situation for me) to your week. I am using Rev to travel and it is a good option for the flexibility and control.
Hi Jon, I tried turning on captions on this video but they were a bit shit.
Would you mind typing them in manually when you get a chance? Thanks in advance..
Ha 😅
I hope you were being sarcastic about asking him to type them out lol