Virtual Assistant Rates

If you go to a Café and order a cup of coffee at R10 a cup, you simply pay for your coffee or you go to the Doctor for an appointment at a price of R180 per hour, you don’t tell the Doctor that you have only had 15 minutes and therefore would like the hourly rate deducted down, you simply accept the rate and leave when your appointment is over, you don’t quibble on the price, the same with your coffee you do not ask what it takes to get that coffee, you accept it as it is, coffee does not make itself, a person must use time and make a cup of coffee, boiling water, preparing the coffee, milk and sugar, you use electricity to boil the water it does not boil itself, but we accept the price of that cup of coffee with no complaint about the price. Time costs money.

But when it comes to typing and transcription, you certainly want to know exactly what you get for your money and you want it at the lowest price you can get.

Virtual Assistants and Transcriptionists are like every other business, we have our expenses. It is not just a case of doing your transcription for you, we need to use our listening skills, we have to type fast to keep up with the recording, our grammar and spelling skills need to be used, our sentence construction, punctuation, proofing skills, our concentration and time also costs us money, we use electricity to run our computers and to run our modem so that we have ADSL access to do the clients work. We need to pay for web hosting to have the website that you saw our details on when you were looking for a Virtual Assistant or Transcriptionist. We have costs so that is why we charge the rates that we do as we are like any other business, we have running costs. We cannot run for free or give of our services for free because it costs us to do the jobs we do. Our rates are based on what we need to earn to cover our costs, no business runs without having costs.

Tips for Newbie Transcriptionists

PRODUCING HIGH QUALITY TRANSCRIPTS

I suggest that you join a forum aimed at VAs and transcriptionists. For South Africans I would recommend TAVASA. Working from home can be a lonely experience and trying to sort out technical problems can be very daunting. By joining a forum you will be in contact with people who understand exactly what is required and can assist with questions.

Best of all, this is where the more established people post their requests for assistance with overflow work. Having secured a shot at subcontracting this overflow work bear the following in mind:

• Obtain a template from the contractor and STICK to it – every comma, every underlining, every space. Do not get creative and do not try to improve on the template.

• Often the contractor will send a sheet through with his or her typing preferences and requirements. Read it carefully before you start typing and again before you proof your work and ensure you abide by the instructions.

• Communicate – if you are having problems with the recording it may be a bad recording. On the other hand, if you are the only typist experiencing problems then it is probably an incorrect setting or your equipment may be faulty. The only way to find out is by asking the contractor about the recording quality. Do not go merrily ahead and turn in a transcript littered with [unclear], [inaudible], etcetera.

• Make notes as you go, especially for names and words that you are not sure of. Should these become clear as the transcript progresses, it makes it easy and quick to do a global replacement.

• Proof your work thoroughly. Put those earphones on and go through the whole transcript – this is time-consuming and quite often expensive – it takes a long time to type your very first transcription and it can be quite discouraging in terms of your hourly rate, but you would be amazed at what you pick up on the second run-through. Words previously indecipherable will be clear once you are familiar with the context of the transcript.

• Spell and grammar check – spell checking is an absolute requirement but adding the grammar check function is very useful in picking up mistakes other than typos. Bear in mind that transcription is usually rendered verbatim and the most common grammar mistakes are made in speech. Do not be tempted to tidy up the speaker’s grammar unless specifically requested to do so.

• Google is your friend. If, for instance, you pick up a name and a designation but not the company name, chances are you will find it on Google. Many terms are industry-related or, in the case of medical transcription, the names of patent drugs, etcetera, are unfamiliar to most people. It is not enough to spell a word phonetically, add a question mark and move on. In the long run your efforts will be rewarded.

• Ask questions. We were all new at this once and I believe we would rather answer a dozen seemingly insignificant questions rather than receive a badly-typed transcript.

The above steps are very, very important. It is as well to remember that not only do contractors offer the jobs that will get you started as a transcriptionist but that they often recommend – or not – typists to other contractors. Shoddy work will put a halt to your career before you start. Commit to producing high quality transcription from day one.



Michele Johanson is based in Cape Town and owns Good Hope Transcription and Typing Services http://goodhopetranscription.weebly.com which offers general and legal transcription, typing, article and content writing and editing/proofreading functions. Recently we have added recording of small meetings to our profile.

How to Series - Work Schedule

Another article in my 'How to Series'.

I keep a work schedule of every item of work that I get in. I list the date/time, name, description of work, urgent/non urgent, who does the work, (myself or contractor) proofing (I sometimes send work out to a proofreader), time/date complete and comments, time worked, price of job. I keep all this information in an excel spreadsheet and have it set up monthly.
I work for a lot of clients on a weekly basis, so keeping good records of the work helps me to stay organised and know what is going on, it assists with time management, priorising the work and keeping track when I send work out to a contractor. It also gives me the stats at the end of the month to see how many jobs I do on a monthly basis and how much I make on each job that I do. These stats are important to have as you are running a business.
As a client send me in work, i then enter that work on my spreadsheet, giving as much details as is involved, then when the work is complete I finish the entry on the spreadsheet.
I hate doing admin at month end but this is such a help when it comes to doing my invoicing which I do at month end as my clients pay monthly.
If you have any comments on this procedure please share with me, I would love to hear what you do and how you run your VA business.