How Much Can You Earn From Scribie

I was so elated when I stumbled upon Scribie. A transcription service that hires beginners- who wouldn't be. I had this romanticized idea in my head of how I would make so much money from this company. Hell, I was already spending what I didn't earn in my head.

Easy requirement entrance

Before I go into detail about my earning experience working with Scribie, let me just say, that it is a easy company to get on with. They only required that you complete one of their practice test. If you pass, you're in. If you don't, you get nine more tries to do so. In my opinion, the only factor that would trip any aspiring beginner transcription, is the audio quality.

Beware of audio quality

When I took the test, I failed. I failed at least four times. Not because I'm a bad typer, but because listening to bad audio takes practice and skill and I did not have that at the time. Damn near all of the samples to choose from had static in the background. Some even sounded like, a monkey handling a recording device with a banana. It was terrible.

This, is the monkey.

Luckily I found a decent quality from all of the poor samples.

After much frustration, I got in. And I felt as though a world of opportunities opened up.It was as though Scribie intentionally used poor audio for the test files, because the audio for the reall assignment, was clear and concise. The few assignments were cake. I mean, each assignment is six minutes long and you have two hours to complete them. Being a fast typer with decent audio quality, it was a breeze. I was turning in assignments in less than half an hour.


I felt incredibly important and highly optimistic. I saw adequate earning potential.

My fingers were on fire

According to their website, top earning transcribers could earn up to $200.00 per month. I was okay with this, because their site also mentioned other jobs opening up after 3 hours of audio was transcribe ( also get a bonus for 3 hours transcribed.) I saw myself rising up the chain to making more money. I'd deduced that, if I complete 10, 6 minute assignments, per day, for 5 days , I would have $50 dollars every week, or $200.00 per month. Seemed simple, right?


Well, about 4 days into working for this company, the audio was harder and harder to come by. The quality got less, less worthy. My productivity gradually decreased. It wasn't long until, I could barely complete half an hour of audio per day. And sometimes, there was no work. I realized very quickly, that in theory this website was bursting with extra income- not beer money, but, Hey, I can put $200 to the bills this month. 

Beware of the reviewer 

After transcribing 1 hour of audio, the reviewer option was opened up to me. I was now able to transcribe and review other transcribers' work. This was an interesting prospect, as I had considered many times to leave the website. The reviewing was quite easy, if the transcribers did their job.

Given that the website basically allows anyone that can complete the test in, I found that not many, did their job correctly. When the audio was clear, my job as a reviewer was great. When the audio was bad, my job as a reviewer was hell.

The rules changed for reviewing work, only a small amount of errors could be made. If there were too many- and believe me with the audio Scribie uploads, the whole file would be rejected. Well, I suppose that wouldn't be so bad right?

Wrong, the reviewer job also had a rejection rate. If the rejection rate was too high, and the rating (two separate things) were too high, there was a chance of having the reviewing position disabled. Simply put, I started off wonderfully as a reviewer, but then the audio quality got in the way, and a lot of the speech in the audio was foreign. My rejection rate skyrocketed.

After learning from that mistake and choosing only the top audio quality, was I able to get my rejection rate to go down.

Transcription work hard to come by

After 1 month of working for Scribie I didn't make very much. When there was no work to transcribe, I would go to review. I racked more money in this category than anywhere else, because people (which I didn't understand at the time) were avoiding the reviews because of their rejection rate.

I accumulated less than $100, working about 4-5 hours uninterrupted. For 1 month.
According to their website, the max amount a worker would earn for transcribing and reviewing was $500.00.

It was too good to be true. 

In sum, Scribie is great for transcribers wanting to get their fingers wet. Don't expect a full time job, no matter how committed the transcriber is.  Ultimately, bad audio quality, lack of work and review rejections will hinder any maximum potential earnings.