Increase Your Typing Speed Online

I had been a secretary for many years - but long after the age of taking shorthand dictation, I'm happy to say! - and have been a freelance writer for many years as well.

I never had to worry about my typing speed. I assumed I was pretty fast, but I never worried about it.

Then one day last year I decided I was leaving money on the table by not bidding on the transcription jobs offered at Elance.

So I decided I'd better improve my typing speed to be as fast as I could make it, so that whatever I bid for these jobs would be adequate for the time it would take me to do them.

And to tell the truth, I improved my speed by playing Typing Terror on the http://Neopets.com website, at http://www.neopets.com/games/game.phtml?game_id=574

However, if you prefer to not go with whimsy and learn like a grownup, there are a few sites online that will help you, including http://typingtest.com.

(They charge money for a typing course, but there are also games there you can play for free, which will increase your typing speed.)

Software to Slow Down Voice Speed

Regardless of how fast you can type, you may come across some people who will dictate a mile a minute, and you just can't keep up.

The solution is easy - use a software that allows you to slow down their voice to whatever speed you can keep up with.

I use VLC (downloadable from VLC.com - it's also a video player as well as an audio player), which allows me to slow down a voice "finely" or greatly.

Then, you just type away happily until the transcription is complete, then listen to the whole thing again at normal speed just to be sure, and bob's your uncle.

How much to bid?

If you have to transcribe a 20 minute dictation, 45 minutes is the BARE MINIMUM of time you should allot. 25 minutes at slowed down speed to type everything, and 20 minutes to listen to it again for quality control.

But there will *always* be delays, as you have to stop and go back again and again over a particular sentence because the person slurs their words or something...

So frankly, for any increment of 20 minutes, I would bid on 1 hour of work. And when you bid this, explain why, because most clients think that it will only take you 20 minutes to transcribe 20 minutes worth of dictation, but even if you can type 100 words a minute, it would take you an hour to do the job properly.

So in your bid just say something like, "For this 20 minute audio file, it will take me one hour to do it.  20 minutes to type as I listen to it, another 20 minutes because there will be times when I have to go back and forth to hear a sentence that has been slurred or otherwise is hard to hear - and in my experience there will always be a few of these in any audio file - and 20 minutes to listen to everything again as part of my quality control process..."

And if you are transcribing foreigners - remember accents can make the process even more difficult, so allot an extra 15 minutes if you're not transcribing someone from the same country as you!