Saturday, February 27, 2010

ClariTrans Transcription on MTurk

So I've stumbled on what seems like a newer requester on MTurk, but so far so good with ClariTrans. Their transcription work is broken down into smaller segments to transcribe, which is nice with a toddler running around. I haven't been able to accurately judge how much money per hour I've been able to make on these, but I'm not unhappy with the results I've seen at all.

Their style guide is a lot different than CastingWords, so that's taking some getting used to. But I do like it, it's simpler, and often just one speaker, so it seems to go quicker.

I aced the first qualification test, and have worked several of their HITs now. All were approved and paid within hours. I did take the qualification testing for the reviewer, and no matter how many times I take it I can't get a 100! Frustrating! On the bright side, I haven't seen a whole lot of the review work come up for grabs. Maybe after doing a little more of their work it will become easier to reach that perfect score.

I had been on a $10 per day streak on MTurk, and was starting to inch above until the snow storms and power loss broke my stride. It's been hard to get back into that grove and hit ten bucks every day. I'm getting there, but I think ClariTrans might very well be able to double my goals in no time at all. Yay!

All in all, I'm happy so far with ClariTrans. There seems to be quite a bit of work posted in various segments of time, batches with as short as 5 second work on up to 35 second work. My only complaint is trying to work transcription at home with a very noisy two year old! But for nap and bed times, it's perfect for making a few dollars each day. I'm definitely happy to find this requester, and I hope they stay around for the long haul.   

17 comments:

  1. Wow, $10 a day is awesome, way to go!

    Can you tell me what the ratings mean? I've only submitted one HIT so far for ClariTrans and I received "5: Thanks" as the feedback. Do you know what their highest and lowest ratings are?

    Thanks so much for this post, it's very helpful!

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  2. I haven't found anything yet on the ratings, I have gotten the same thing as you, but 4s on all of mine. One said "4: nice" so I'm not sure what to make of it!

    I've looked around online and through their style guide, and I just cannot find what the scoring means, what is a perfect score, or how much is taken off for each mistake. I hope they come out with this info in the near future.

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  3. Thanks for responding, so quickly too! I just got 2 more back. One is a 4 and the other is a 3. "4: Thanks" and "3: No leading "Speaker:" needed when only one person talking. Good transcript otherwise"

    I wonder if it's better to get lower numbers or higher numbers. I'm starting to think lower might be better. I'm not even 100% sure that the numbers are a rating for my performance or perhaps for the level of difficulty of the audio. I bet it's a score for me, but I'm still baffled!

    If I ever figure anything out I'll be sure to post about it here.

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  4. It could very well be related to the difficulty. I'm dying to find out, thanks for checking back in!

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  5. Thanks for the really nice ClariTrans write-up. Here's info on our scoring:

    5 - Work was not rated (payout)
    4 - Excellent work (payout)
    3 - Good work - could improve (payout)
    2 - Poor work - feedback to improve (no payout)
    1 - Really poor work - feedback to improve (no payout)

    We've been fighting fraud so we had to pull all of the review work, but we hope to have that operational again in the coming week.

    Thanks so much for helping us with the ClariTrans HITs.

    Dave
    ClariTrans Engineer

    PS. If you ever have questions feel free to send them to "contact AT ClaritTrans DOT com"

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  6. Thanks, Dave! I really appreciate the reply, and this helps a lot! I felt like I was flying blind, wasn't sure if I needed to improve or if I was doing the HITs correctly. Looking forward to working more of these!

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  7. Yay, that helps so much! That's so cool that Dave posted the scoring scale, I really appreciate it too. And thanks again bar10dr98 for this wonderful blog, I'm finding it incredibly helpful.

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  8. I'm glad to hear that! Thanks for the comments. :)

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  9. I'm a stay at home mom who has also found doing MTurks as a way to make a little bit of extra money. I was googling Claritrans and came across your blog. I too, have been working their HITS and ONLY theirs!! It's been great for me and I've really enjoyed it. Where did you find info about being a reviewer? I haven't seen anything about that but was wondering who "judges" the work!

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  10. When they first started posting, the work for the reviewers would post, too. I tried taking the qualification test and couldn't pass. From what the previous comment says, they just couldn't go with it on MTurk so they stopped posting.

    Claritrans has been very appreciated! Steady easy work, and the pay isn't bad. I hope they stay around for the long haul!

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  11. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  12. I do MTurk as well and, by far, Claritrans is my favorite company to work for. You might want to check into Speakertext on MTurk as well. Similar HITS to Claritrans and good pay.

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  13. Hello,
    I am new to transcription work and wanted to know what the website is for ClariTrans. Can anyone help me? I have a 3 and 4 year old, but would have time to do some transcription work. I appriciate any help. God Bless Carrie

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  14. The only thing I found helpful on Google was http://claritrans.com/ but all of the experience I've had working with ClariTrans was through Amazon's MTurk at http://www.mturk.com . There seems to be a good amount of transcription work available on MTurk at any given time. Good luck with your search!

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  15. Thanks for sharing your experience with ClariTrans. I've recently started doing work for them, too, and find it goes very well. Hope that you are still doing great with MTurk and that you're enjoying time with your little one.

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  16. Does anyone know if you can use a usb pedal to do the work on MTurk? I have a new pedal, (new to transcribing) and would love to be able to use it on MTurk work and not just other places. Has anyone else used a pedal with this or with Speaktext successfully? Still trying to figure it all out, but not having to use the mouse to start/stop audio would be a huge bonus for me.

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  17. High numbers are better. Anything 2 or below you don't get paid for. I seen it on a mturk blog. I'm trying to work closer to home so I went from working in a lab 13 an hour an hour drive to working for restaurant (Tudors WV people will know) at 7.50 but 5 mins from home. Got two kids 3 and 7. Like I can spend more time with them. But got to make up the money somewhere. Also doing crafts for shows and etsy.

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