DIY transcription - the costs · Dec 3, 03:22 PM by Ken King
For many, hiring us to transcribe their podcast isn’t a viable solution. I said this in response to an earlier comment:
... without the potential for profit, any expense is difficult to justify – profit puts the R into ROI. Our service is primarily targeted to podcasters who can see a return on their investment, generally those using podcasting as a promotional vehicle for their businesses.
This extends to podcasters who plan to earn money through Google AdSense and other advertising vehicles that are dependent on context.
For those who don’t fit in the categories above, doing it themselves could be an attractive alternative. However, it’s important to think through the costs before going that route:
A professional with appropriate specialized equipment and software averages about 3-4 minutes to transcribe one minute of audio. I have done transcriptions on my own (interviews performed for KMA+C clients), and so have several members of my staff. We averaged closer to 10-15 minutes per minute of audio. For us, the opportunity cost of doing it ourselves was higher than the cost of outsourcing the labour, and so we went with a transcription service.
Each person or organization needs to do its own assessment of the opportunity costs and decide whether it makes sense to do it yourself. For some, unfortunately, the decision may even be not to do it at all – the incremental value created through transcription may not be enough to justify any expense or effort.
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