Do you enjoy typing and frequently dream of having a home-based job? Fortunately, the era of typists gathering around in an office and laboring away on noisy typewriters is part of the past.
Thanks to the internet, there are now countless websites you can use to get paid to make money typing. Whether you want a transcription, captioning, or even a data entry job, you are sure to find an option that works for you.
In this post, not only will I summarize the best platforms to get paid to type, I will also address how much money you can make, how fast you need to type, what equipment you will need, and much more.
In This Post:
- Benefits of making money typing
- How much money you can make
- What you need to get started
- How fast you need to type
- Necessary Requirements
- Different kinds of typing jobs available
- How to find a job making money typing
- Best sites to make money typing
- How to avoid typing job scams
Benefits of Making Money Typing
There are many benefits of making money typing. First, it offers a lot of flexibility. You can work full-time, half-time, or even part-time. Simply put, you can work as little or as much as you want to.
Another benefit of making money typing is that you can work from anywhere, particularly from the comfort of your own home. However, you can also work on vacation, while you’re sitting in Starbucks, or anywhere else that you have access to internet connection.
You can also choose your clients and who you work for. This allows you to only do typing work that you enjoy, whether it’s captioning, transcribing, or even data entry.
How Much Money Can You Make From Typing?
The amount of money you can earn will depend on your typing skills, speed, efforts, and the nature of the material and the company you work for.
Simply put, someone who types super fast will be able to accomplish a lot more in a given time frame than someone who has a lower WPM (words per minute).
You will also be paid more for difficult tasks, such as translating from one language to another or writing captions for live TV.
As for the company you work for, some typing jobs will pay by the hour, while others will pay by the task.
Although rates of each platform will vary significantly, the standard amount you will earn is between $0.40 and $1 per audio or video minute. However, as previously mentioned, there are many opportunities to earn more if you have specialized typing skills.
Equipment You Need to Make Money Typing
If you’re working online from home, there is some equipment you will need to make money typing.
Fortunately, it’s pretty low cost compared to equipment you need for other type of jobs. You also probably already own most of it.
Here are the three essentials:
- Computer: Whether you have a computer or a laptop, you should be fine. However, if your going to use a laptop, consider buying a large monitor that you can attach so you don’t sprain your eyes.
- Headphones: The majority of jobs that will pay you to type involve audio, so being able to hear what you’re listening to is vital. I recommend you use noise-cancelling headphones that work with Bluetooth. This way, you won’t have to worry about cords.
- Internet: You don’t necessarily need high-speed internet to make money typing, but the faster your internet, the better.
You may also want to consider buying a foot pedal. It isn’t a requirement for every option on our list, but it can make your life as a typist much easier.
A foot pedal will let you control many things with your foot, such as audio by allowing you to play, rewind, and fast forward with different parts of the pedal.
How Fast Do You Have to Type?
How fast you have to type will vary depending on which company you work for. However, the faster you can type, the more you can make. This is because you will be able to complete tasks quicker.
For example, Daily Transcription requires potential candidates to be able to type a minimum of 50 words per minute. Other platforms, such as CyberDictate, typists are required to a WPM of at least 85 words.
To put it in perspective, the average person can type anywhere around 40 words per minute, while a professional typist averages well above 60 WPM.
If you’re not sure how fast you can type, you can take a free test at typing.com.
Requirements to Make Money Typing
Although you don’t need any professional typing education for most jobs that will pay you to type, you will need some degree of accuracy and professionalism.
Your grammar, spelling, and punctuation skills should exceptional. You will also need to practice confidentiality and discretion. You will be required to never share or discuss any tasks that you complete.
It’s also important that you have an excellent work ethic because there will be deadlines that you have to meet.
I highly recommend you treat your work as a typist as you would a regular 9 to 5 day job. Just because you’re working from home, doesn’t mean you should be any less professional.
Different Kinds of Typing Jobs Available
If you’re looking for ways to make money typing, you may be wondering what exactly a typist does.
Fortunately, there are a lot of different types of jobs they do, so you will have the ability to sign up for a platform that suits your skills, interests, and experience.
Here are the four most common typing jobs so you know what’s out there and what requirements you will need to land one:
Data Entry
Of all the typing jobs available, data entry is by far the simplest. While it pays the least, it doesn’t require much experience, equipment, or a very fast typing speed.
Data entry is a wonderful place to start for beginner typists who want to get some experience and sharpen their skills before getting a job as a captioner or transcriptionist.
If you decide to give data entry a try, keep an eye out for scams. Of all online typing job scams, the majority of them are made to look like data entry jobs.
Captioning
Captioning is pretty different than other home-based typing jobs. Captioners listen to live video and audio recordings and transcribe them. This is how TV captions are created for people with varying degrees of hearing loss.
Captioning requires accuracy, very fast typing speed, and specialized stenography equipment. Typically, only highly experienced captioners can find work for real-time transcription.
However, there is also offline captioning work for recorded videos. For offline captioning, the captioner transcribes the audio of a recorded video and it’s added in the post-production process.
Compared to real-time captioning, less experience and speed is needed. However, you will still need transcription experience to get a job as a captioner.
Transcription
General transcription refers to transcriptionists that listen to audio recordings and type out the words into a document.
This includes a number of different audio recordings, such as speeches, seminars, lectures, conference calls, interviews, etc.
Some specializations within general transcription requires typists with different equipment and varying levels of skills. For example, legal transcription requires familiarity and experience with legal procedures and terms.
Financial/corporate transcription requires a certain level of knowledge of the terminology of the particular industry. You may also be required to be familiar with annual meetings, interim results, press conferences, earnings reports, and analyst reports in different sectors.
Medical Transcription
A medical transcriptionist listens to audio recordings from personnel in the medical field and transcribes them into notes for the medical files of their patient’s.
Unlike many specializations in general transcription, medical transcriptionists need special training and certification. This may either be a 1-year certificate program or a 2-year associate’s degree.
However, you will most likely need more than just certification and training to land a home-based medical transcription job. You can learn more about medical transcriptionists from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook.
How to Find a Job Making Money Typing
If you’re looking to make money typing from home, there are countless platforms that you can use to look for work. In fact, if you search the phrase “typing jobs from home” in Google, there are more than 160,000 results.
Not only can you find jobs to make money typing from home, you can also consider starting your own home-based typing business.
If you decide to start your own business, you can set up your own website, create business cards, join local networking groups, and best of all, set your own rates, which are typically higher than you can get from an online typing job.
10 Best Sites to Make Money Typing
If you decide you would rather get paid for quick and easy typing jobs instead of going through the hassle of creating your own typing business, there are many micro job sites you can use to find typing gigs.
However, with so many platforms available, you may be wondering what the best ones are. A few of them include Rev, TranscribeMe, AccuTran Global, and Freelancer.
To help you figure out where to start, here are summaries of the 10 best websites to make money typing from home:
1. Rev
Rev is one of the most top-rated transcription and captioning platforms out there. Users can make money typing captions for YouTube videos, transcribing audio files, and much more.
One of the best parts about Rev is that there are hundreds of projects uploaded everyday, so there always work opportunities available.
Transcriptionists usually get paid anywhere around $0.30 to $1.10 per audio or video minute. On the other hand, captioners have a rate of $0.54 to $1.10 per video minute.
However, if you speak multiple languages that are in high demand for subtitles, you will get paid around $1.50 to $3 for each video minute.
Rev makes payments via PayPal as long as you live in a country that has it and are eligible to apply.
2. GoTranscript
GoTranscript is a UK-based platform that offers transcription projects to freelance typists all around the world.
Their platform specializes in transcription, English captions, foreign subtitles, and translation.
Typically, captioning starts at $1 per minute, and subtitling can go up to anywhere around $7 to $10 per minute. Top earners on GoTranscript have earned over $1,200 a month even while working part-time.
One perk that sets GoTranscript apart from the rest is that you can earn refer-a-friend bonuses. For every friend you invite that signs up, you will earn a 10% commission for every task they complete.
3. Casting Words
If you’re looking to complete some quick typing tasks to make some extra money, Casting Words is a great option. You can get paid for both audio and video transcription services.
As of now, Casting Words currently pays $1 per audio or video minute, which is a great rate compared to other platforms that will pay you to type.
Most of the typing jobs offered on their platform are divided up into smaller tasks, which are usually no long than 10 minutes.
Unlike many platforms that require you to live in the United States or Canada to work on their website, Casting Words is available to anyone that lives in a country that allows PayPal.
4. Kolotibablo
Simply put, Kolotibablo is a platform where you can earn money by solving captcha images.
The process is streamlined, so you should be able to work through a lot of captchas to make as much as possible every hour you spend solving them.
For 1,000 captchas you will only earn $1. However, if you type super fast, you can definitely make some good money with their platform.
In addition to typing fast, your pay rate goes up as your accuracy score increases. Considering this, the longer you spend completing tasks on their platform, the more money you will be able to earn over time.
5. 2Captcha
Similar to Kolotibablo, 2Captcha is a platform that also pays users to type out captchas.
Although the rates are very similar to Kolotibablo, the more complex the image you solve on 2Captcha, the more money you will earn.
On their platform, you can also earn money from their refer-a-friend program, known as a referral bonus. You will earn a small percentage of the money your friend makes in the form of a commission.
As previously mentioned, transcribing captchas pays less than other ways to make money typing. However, it’s still a great option if you want a mindless way toto make some extra money in your spare time.
6. TranscribeMe
TranscribeMe is a platform that pays users for video and audio transcription services. Their platform has some of the highest rates in the freelance transcribing industry. You can earn $15 to $22 per audio hour.
Using their platform, you can choose from a wide variety of steady work, allowing you to choose your own schedule.
Users that work for just a few hours a week have average monthly earnings of more than $250. However, the top earners on their platform make over $2,000 a month getting paid to type.
To get started, simply create a free account. However, before you can start applying for tasks, you will need to pass a test, to make sure you qualify to work for their platform.
7. Hollywood Transcriptions
As its name would suggest, Hollywood Transcriptions is a platform that pays users for transcription, captioning, and translation services within the entertainment industry.
If you love watching movies and are quite the film buff, their platform is great fit for you to make some extra money typing. Simply put, you will be paid to type about the next blockbuster movies and their exclusive trailers.
You will be paid around $16 an hour for creating subtitles for new movies and TV shows.
Keep in mind that you will be required to own a foot pedal to work on their platform. However, you can buy one for a fairly cheap price.
8. AccuTran Global
AccuTran Global is a Canada-based platform that will pay you for real-time captioning, CART services, transcription, and voice writing.
They will also pay you for scoping medical, legal, financial, press conferences, meetings, and much more.
With their relatively high standards, you will have to prove you can type at least 60 words per minute by completing and passing their typing test.
Although this is a very fast speed to type, their platform will pay you significantly more than other sites, on both a per hour rate and project basis. On their platform, you can make more than $40 an hour.
9. UpWork
UpWork is one of the best and most popular freelancing websites. There are hundreds of job listings posted everyday in a number of different job categories, including typing work.
Common ways you can making money on UpWork by typing include content writing, translating, copywriting, ghost writing, grant writing, and creative writing.
However, the most common type of writing you will be hired for is writing content for blogs.
Once you create your account, you will be able to customize your preferences to only show available work that’s relevant to the services you offer. So, if you only want to do data entry work, you can customize your account profile to reflect that.
Job postings on UpWork are either a fixed price for certain tasks or an hourly rate. However, rates will vary greatly because anyone can offer jobs on UpWork.
10. Freelancer
Freelancer may just be the ultimate freelancing platform that posts hundreds of jobs everyday with over 900 job categories, including jobs that will pay you to type.
One feature that makes their platform stand out from the rest is that you can filter through the types of jobs available.
Considering this, if you like captioning but not transcribing, you can instantly find jobs of this sort from a simple search.
To get started, all you need to do is sign up for a free account and start applying for these jobs. Each job listed will include pay rates on a project by project basis.
Transcription jobs start at around $23 an hour, subtitling at $44, translation at $41, and data entry jobs at around $17.
Additional Sites to Make Money Typing
- SpeakWrite: Specializes in general transcription for law firms, protective service agencies, police departments, and investigators.
- Scribie: Audio transcription services of files around 10 minutes or less.
- SigTrack: Data entry for voter registration.
- Allegis: Specializes in general transcription for the legal and insurance industries.
- Daily Transcription: Captioning and translating for audio and video files.
- Audio Transcription Center: General transcription specialized for government agencies, market research firms, financial organizations, and academic institutions.
- CyberDictate: General transcription specialized for law firms.
- Speechpad: General transcription services for videos, captions, and audio.
- Transcription Hub: General transcription services to convert video/audio seminars, lectures, interviews, podcasts, etc.
- Aberdeen: Captioning for videos and audio in real-time.
How to Avoid Typing Job Scams
It’s important that you’re very careful when searching for jobs to make money typing online. Unfortunately, many freelance typists fall victim to scams.
These scammers will pose as employers and request your contact and financial information. This is why you always need to keep an eye out for scams while you’re applying for jobs to make money typing online.
Here are several tips to avoid scams when looking for typing jobs online:
- Research their reputation by doing a quick Google search before applying.
- Do a search on the Better Business Bureau website for any complaints.
- Use well-known job search sites to find legitimate typing jobs.
- How much are they offering to pay you? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
- Trust your instincts. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.
The Bottom Line
Anyone with a computer, a headset, high-speed internet, and decent typing skills can make money in their spare time by doing transcribing, captioning, or data entry work.
With so many great options on our list, you’re sure to find at least a few that work with your schedule, skills, and pay range.
If you’re a beginner typist, don’t hesitate to start small and work your way up to jobs that require more skill.
2 thoughts on “10 Best Ways to Make Money Typing”
Fascinating! I never knew. Might look into this.
Hello Wendy,
Please let us know what you think after you look into it.