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How freelancing is different from being employed
You may have been employed for a few years, or even a few decades, doing typing work. Like many nowadays, particularly after COVID, people want flexibility in their working lives. Doing transcription from home can definitely afford you this flexibility, but you have to be prepared for the shock of the real. The reality of it will hit you – maybe not initially, but at some point you’re going to realise a few home truths, and if you weren’t prepped and informed about them beforehand, it could be upsetting at least, and costly at most. This is why it’s important to know what might be waiting for you if you…
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Overcoming challenges
Limiting beliefs and multiple commitments can keep you stuck in a loop, meaning you’ll continue to put off the decision to begin your dream freelancing career. Us humans have a tendency to go with the status quo, and it can be very hard to motivate ourselves under such seemingly impossible circumstances. But you also have a commitment to yourself to do the best that you can to be happy and create a career for yourself that’s flexible and enjoyable. And if you’re signed up for my newsletter or following me on social media it’s obviously something you’ve been thinking about… We humans also sometimes aren’t really the best at asking…
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Is Transcription in Demand?
Are you worried if you put all of your efforts into attempting a freelance transcription career you’ll find there won’t be enough work for you? If you work smarter you’ll be in with the best shot at success and you won’t have to worry. There is plenty of work available, particularly over the last 18 months after everyone having to figure out Zoom/video conferencing. But not just here: in areas such as marketing, research, and many more. As businesses and entrepreneurs need to get their message out there quickly and effectively, transcription is a growing industry and is showing no signs of slowing down. You may have heard of AI…
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From Typist to Transcriber
All new businesses and freelancing endeavours need a plan. You might think you can immediately transfer your skills as a secretary or typist seamlessly into freelance transcription, but I’m here to break it to you that a) nothing worth having is easy and b) there will most definitely be a learning curve to conquer! “Proper preparation prevents poor performance.” – Charlie Batch I’ve seen it hundreds of times before: people think they can wing it with no preparation, and a very small percentage might scrape by, but most can’t and fail miserably, putting an unnecessary barrier between themselves and success. Don’t let this be you. If you make a smart investment…
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Top Transcription Truths: It’s All In The Details
If you’re looking to pursue transcription as a career, typing skills are essential! Being successful at transcription isn’t always about speed – granted, you’ll earn more money the faster you can type – but it’s much more important that your accuracy skills are in good shape to ensure that you last the distance. Attention to detail is everything in transcription. This is where you really need to take charge and be proactive, and it’s never too late to start. It’s highly likely you brought along some bad habits to your new career. I know I did – we all do. Some of the people you’ve worked for, pre-freelancing, may be…
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Crucial Call to Action Tips – How Not to Miss Out On Sales
In this article, we’re going back to basics, ‘communication 101’! I see so many VA and transcriber freelancers/businesses on their websites and social media with no apparent easy way to get in touch. I’m not quite sure why, but perhaps just a simple oversight, fear of spamming, work-in-progress issues, and there are of course many non-obvious, easy to miss options on social media. Often, raw contact information is either not present at all or is hidden deep within the website or page, requiring time and effort to locate – time and effort, in actuality, that people usually have no capacity or patience for. It’s well known – and well researched…
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How to boost your VA business with transcription
Are you struggling to grow your Virtual Assistant business, particularly in the midst of the current economic downturn due to the COVID-19 pandemic? The good news is you can do something immediately to keep earning, and that very same thing can also future-proof your business, ensuring that when times are tough you have something to fall back on. Many VAs use transcription (doing typing work from home) as a means of supplementing their income while they wait for other client work to come in, or between projects and assignments as a stopgap. As VAs usually come from administrative, secretarial or PA backgrounds, touch typing is likely to be something they’re…
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Meaning of ‘portfolio career’ (and other terms) to describe freelancing
I think ‘portfolio career’ is the perfect term to describe the career of a Virtual Assistant. Thought to have originated in around the late 1990s, the name describes multiple separate part-time jobs combined into one. And a ‘portfolio’ of skills is essentially what you might be building by becoming a transcriber – adding it to your list of expertise, perhaps along with your VA work, just like so many other Virtual Assistants do. Here are some other names and terms commonly used to describe freelancing work: Entrepreneur (controversial!) Mompreneur Solopreneur Side hustle (controversial!) One woman band / one man band Paddling your own canoe Multi-hyphenate career Hired gun Free agent…
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Hello world!
I’m Fiona, business owner and VA. I started my business by myself back in 2011. I continued to building it up solo for the next four years and then gathered an amazing team of transcribers, and since 2015 my wonderful little UK-based business has been providing services to other businesses and individuals worldwide. If you’re interested in finding out more about what I do, you can find Outsource Typing here, or follow us on Twitter. Don’t forget to subscribe to The Home-Based Typist newsletter and subscribe to our blog, so you’ll be informed whenever a new article is published. You can also find The Home-Based Typist on Facebook and Instagram.…