The real trick is finding the companies that can do a job that’s up to snuff without breaking the bank.

Keeping Transcription Costs Down

Before I get into my recommended companies, let’s cover a few things you can do on your end to keep your transcription costs down.

The better quality your recording is, the easier it will be to transcribe.  Your goal should be to provide clean, crisp recordings with minimal background noise.

One way to do that is to use high quality recording equipment.  For example, if you use a portable voice recorder, then make sure it’s a good one (the Olympus DS-4000 is a favorite among heavy users – it’s just recently been replaced by the DS-5000, though).

If your recordings are going to be made via the phone, you’ll find you get better audio quality using a landline phone than a cell phone.

Also, rates will go up if you have multiple speakers on the recording.  For example, if you’re recording a meeting with 5 participants that all need to be tracked, you’re going to pay a lot more than you would per minute for a phone interview.

Also, if you’re in no particular hurry, you can get far better rates.  One popular services, Casting Words, will do your transcription at rates as low as $.75/minute as long as you’re willing to wait a couple weeks to get your recording.

Best Affordable Transcription Companies

• Casting Words
• Verbal Ink (Formerly Escriptionist)
• GMR Transcription
• AffordableTranscription.net
• InteleANTS

Outsourcing

If you’d rather outsource and know who will be doing your work, you can try out one of these services:

• oDesk
• Rentacoder
• Elance
• Guru

Virtually anything can be transcribed these days including (but not limited to):

• Seminars
• Teleseminars
• Webinars
• Speeches
• Lectures
• Meetings
• Interviews
• Dictations
• Conferences
• Teleconferences
• Podcasts
• Videos
• Focus Groups
• CDs
• DVDs
• Tapes
• LPs