As you might know, I am a work-at-home transcriptionist for the past eight long years, and all these years life was going okay though not rewarding. However, times change and so do people and situations! “Raj, you are going to have your pay rate cut by half because of the cuts in insurance reimbursements” informed my employer a few days ago. Though shocked and taken aback initially, such a missive was well anticipated with reference to the current trend in the medical transcription industry. With the rapid changes in technology, from the first day I moved into medical transcription business I was having some sort of insecure feeling or intuition that one day or the other I will end up with this situation and that has become true now. Hence after a brief thought, I reciprocated to my employer that I would better quit and join the basic profession in which I got educated rather than allowing myself to get exploited. Where did I get the courage from? How is it possible to quit a job at that instant if you are a person tangled in family obligations?
The answer is simple. Have a second income to keep the boat afloat or rather multiple income streams if possible, and keep the mortgages at bay or very minimal. From one fine morning, think of feeding a whole family completely dependent on you and meeting their expenses with half of your current income or rather with no income! How horrible it would be! But it is the reality. If you are into the shoes of a medical transcriptionist, there are a lot of chances that either you get terminated or your pay gets shrunken over time or you end up searching for your next employer or at last a drift in career itself. Don’t we have choices? I don’t have a definitive answer but all that I can say is that you are the problem yourselves by willing to work for less pay without really understanding your worth. Moreover, there are a lot of external factors beyond your control; don’t let yourself get strangled by those factors but try to unfold them cleverly. It’s not doomsaying but a bitter fact that your medical transcription earnings could get a hit or eventually get dried up. Anticipating it, better prepare yourself well in advance.
In my case, the paychecks for my transcription work are delayed by almost three months. So even if I stop working now, that pool of money left back with the employer should take care of the expenses for the next three months before I fit into another pair of shoes. Since having that aforementioned insecure feeling, I started planning for facing the doom days years ago with multiple streams of income. Blogging was one among them. I could find bloggers earning five-digit USD online though it is very tough to make a notch initially. So it is actually the self assessment about my capabilities and alternative income streams with zero debt that brought me the courage to refuse to work for an underpayment.
So now you know why you should have a second income if you’re a transcriptionist. Hence act right now. Don’t let your monetary needs compel you to get exploited. Plan for the doom days well ahead and act smart before your boat hits rough weather. Keep updating your skills and educational qualifications in the discipline you got educated, preparing part time. Think of minimizing debts or becoming debt free. Invest your free time and savings to develop another parallel income stream that in any worst scenario, you are not short of money to keep the boat afloat. That should also help you spare your savings. Nothing is constant. Change alone is unchanging.
I wish I could have more knowledge about blogging and how to get paid for it. Could somebody tell me some more about getting income from blogging.
Thanks.
Anil
Read my articles on blogging to have some idea and why you should start blogging on your own domain rather than on hubpages (or blogspot) as mentioned here by Rajinder Soni.
The earnings of a HMT in India may be comparable if not less that of a housemaid or a sweeper doing 3-4 houses per month. You may be handling over a couple of scores of dictators and your quality may be +95% yet your earning remains at 80 paisa (1.7 cents) per line regardless of whether the dictator is crappy or okay, regardless of whether a roster list is provided or not, and with a lot of formatting. You get paid in the third week of next month. This is the standard though the rate varies between 60 paisa to 90 paisa for MTs. For direct upload with MTQA quality the rate here varies between Re1 to Rs1.40 (around 3 cents, Rs45=$1). Work is mostly distributed through third party vendors. No point crying cheating!
This work is not for youngsters who would be better off in high profile industrial jobs if not in their father’s business. As MT work is very demanding and earnings dismal it is just not suited to housewives either who would be better off doing online/offline tuitions or other education related work.
I promote my blog under an assumed name so that I can curse and crap against anybody or any subject. I am able to write well.
I also do online paid surveys.
Again, as already mentioned above that this job is not for youngsters, I live off my pension and savings having set up our own home with all essential facilities before entering this line of medical transcription.
Thanks to the Finance Minister of India who annually keeps increasing income tax exemption limit due to unbridled inflation, I have been out of the income tax net for years.
Yes Dude, I completely agree with you and came up earlier with a post that medical transcription is not for youngsters. You just exposed the current ins and outs of the trade. If medical transcriptionists are out of the income-tax bracket, think of what their earnings would be! Oh what a pity! Definitely it is high time to have a thought on change in career or at least a second stable income.
Oh man, you people r scaring shit out of me. You have confirmed all the fears I had over some time. Time to get to basics.
Yes it is the bitter, ugly truth. Situation has deteriorated to such an extent that I know scores of transcriptionists working from 7 am to 8 pm just to make 15k. Really pathetic. These people want to move away from medical transcription but are in a dilemma in finding another career in their mid life as they have already lost touch with the subjects they were educated/qualified. They are in hope of finding a savior or a bagpiper!
Wow. At a very stage in my career (just one year), I saw the ups and downs (mostly downs) of our industry. Right now, I don’t have any other revenue stream aside from my salary.
Nevertheless, this post, even as bitter as it is, is the sad reality we’re into. We’ll not just MTs but, almost all industries have tend to be the same as well.
THis is a good wake up call for me. I started working on a blog a couple of months just for the heck of it – added adsense, but not a cent has come into my account as well. It’s really on me since I don’t pay attention to it that much, but will try to do so moving forward.
Thanks Raj.
Well Raj, the rates that Mr.Gspal has given above are the prevailing rates or have they gone down further?? bcos these rates have been there for quite sometime I believe..
They have gone down further!