I make .05/line on one platform and 0.04 on another

• Voice recognitioin, Avg pay per line or per hour. TIA. sm... - babs
  • Can I ask why the ME below is paid 20% less than MT? - new at this
  • I make .05/line on one platform and 0.04 on another - sm
  • I used to make 6 cpl for VR, but... - sm
  • I appreciate your responses. I had an option of line vs hour ($14/hour) but if line pays more...nm - babs
  • 7 CPL for a national for VR.....nm - no message
    • What is the platform like?? - sm
      • I think $15/hr reasonable!!....sm - no message
    • 7 cpl in your dreams! - nm
      • in my dreams? 9 CPL reg....sm - no message
        • to "no message" - KB
          • Hi, I do both MT/ME work....but....sm - no message
            • Thanks!!! I'm going to check into this :-) Have a great day!!! nm - KB
              • you too, KB - have a GREAT day!!!....nm - no message
      • sweet dreams, because - KB
        • thank you, KB......I never lie....sm - no message
      • Why so quick to disbelieve? Some make 9+ for VR. - We've gone over this. nm
        • thank you too for doing the math!!...sm - no message
          • No problem - but I meant 11+ for reg/9+ for ASR. - nm
            • that's fine - I don't care about the $$....sm - no message
      • Dreams? I don't think so. I make 9.5 as an MT with MQ. They cut my pay 20% as an ME, so you go fi - Me
        • Wait, I did the math for you. I make 7.7 as a VR editor. nm - Me Again
          • That's not the standard rate. I'd keep that job. I've had to beg practically to get 4.5 cpl - anonMT
  • 4 cpl for VR is the going rate at this time. nm - VrEditor
    • Are you kidding? That's a crime. - sm
      • I guess it depends on what company or client you work for. nm - VrEditor
  • I make $15/hr - sm

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

I check my line counts with the software counter every day at the end of my shift and write it down.  At the end of this pay period, if I did a full pay period count on the same counter, my count doesn't add up to the same as when I add each day individually.  At first I thought it might have to do with blanks, but it is off by almost a whole shift's worth lines and I don't leave very many blanks.  I double checked the dates/times I entered to make sure I didn't miss a day.  I did not.

Has anyone else experience this?  I'm wondering if my company gets the count they pay me for this way.  I normally don't add them all up for the whole pay period, so I never noticed it before. 

If there is anyone out there new and still considered a mentoree and able to work full time and make rent please tell me because I need some encouragement.  I want to quit the day job to be able to do this fulltime but when I do the math it just doesn't add up to the rent:-)

Any words of encouragement would be helpful.

but I am wondering if you are doing full QA.  By the line is NOT fair pay for QA.  I know I mentor new MTs on a very difficult account and there is no way you could earn a decent wage on any amount of line pay, no way!

Don't go telling someone they could do better if they are paid by the line.  Quality specialists MUST have ethics in their work.  You can do a decent amount of reports a day and give feedback and mentoring, but you certainly would not be earning $25 an hour on line pay that I have seen....just no way!  The most I have seen QA paid is 7 cents a line and still those women do not average that amount. 

Now, I don't know what you do or if you listen 100%, but most QA positions I have had have had megablanks, 100% listen as well as 100% feedback and you just cannot produce that much doing your job in a proper manner.

I have two accounts of my own and do vacation coverage for a few other MTs as well as occassional work for a lawyer and a psychologist.  I charge .15 for one clinic and .17 for the other clinic... clinic #2 is a husband/wife neurologist team, and the husband was a major A&& at first... with a very strong accent and every possible bad dictator habit you can imagine.  I told wife I would transcribe for her, but not for him, I had plenty of business.  She said charge whatever you want, have whatever turnaround time you want, just please don't leave.  At the time they were at .12... so I upped them to .17.  That was 5 years ago and now after having gotten to know him and his *quirks* I adore them both.  I am an IC, but they give me very large gift cards for Christmas, kind of in lieu of a bonus, I guess. 

Clinic #2... just this week took on another physician and I told them point blank it was too much for me to provide quick service and they may want to consider a service.  They said no way, we changed the turnaround time to one week with stats as needed.  I even asked them if they considered voice recognition and the office manager laughed and laughed. 

I am just now putting both clinics on digital, and after the initial cost, this will increase my estimated hourly wage as it will take away my delivery time and cost, and my paper and ink printing cost and time.  Though I still plan to visit each office on a regular basis for customer service and because I know my customer service is what got me here in the first place.

For the *occasional* work, the lawyer and pysch I charge $50/transcription hour. 

I know you will all doubt me.  But I work extremely hard, have put in my time with my education - not just learning MT but learning the ropes of running a business and how to do everything smarter, faster, and in the most efficient and sensible way possible.  I also have another business I do in a totally different field!  I am very blessed.  Well, I also know the fields I have chosen were perfect for me, and also I've had good luck.  You know what I think though?  I think my sense of humor and just being as honest and open and observant as possible has made this possible. 

If a MTSO advertises that the MT works in MS Word and sends dictation by FTP, does this usually mean there will be no demographic/doctor database and the demographics will not be autopopulated?

I got into a mess with a small company (got out real quickly too).  I was required to print out daily email copies of the doctors' office patient schedules (which were barely legible) and type in all information.  I spent more time hunting for the correct patient through pages and pages of these schedules.  Then I had about 25 pages worth of doctor's names that I would have to go through to find the attending, referring, etc.  A total waste of time as I didn’t get paid for that. 

I wish MTSO would give more information as to what platform they use (if any).  Proprietary software is such a generic, totally useless description.  Would they buy a new car that listed, "Car has gasoline operated motor?" 

And for Pete's sakes, why so secretive about the pay?  Give a ballpark figure.  Just say, pay is between 7-12 cpl depending on skill, testing, etc. Tell me if you pay for spaces, headers, etc.  It would save them time because I wouldn’t even apply for a 7 cpl job. 

Before I spend an hour or two testing, I need more information from a company to be sure it is compatible for my needs.  If the MTSO would spend a little time on their website detailing their platform, how they send/receive files, pay rates,  how line rate is determined (spaces/no spaces) employee/IC/SE status, minimal line count, whether work pools consist of 100s of doctors, or smaller pools with 25-50 doctors etc.   Having all this information on their website would save them time and the MTs time.   Phoenix Medcom has a really good layout describing pretty much everything an MT would want to know before testing with them.  I am just tired of testing with a company and then finding out the job wasn’t exactly suited to my needs. 

I've been working for MTSOs for years now, using their templates which sometimes cause productivity problems (macro issues, etc). I'm wondering if productivity is increased when working on a structured platform, such as one that a national company provides for its transcriptionists?  I've never used a platform, but it would seem that all one needs to do is straight type onto the screen and the platform program takes care of margins, page breaks, etc?

Any thoughts (as well as companies who are hiring who use platforms) would be appreciated.  Thanks

You can get an idea in the difference using documents you have already created, assuming you're working in Word. Simply open a document and check the properties. Click on the statistics tab and you will see the number of lines as well as characters with and without spaces. If you're currently getting paid by the line and a line is 65-characters with spaces, do the math and see how that number of lines compares with the number of lines in your stats.

One thing to keep in mind: if you have a blank line between paragraphs, instead of hitting the enter key twice, format your document to give the appearance of blank lines between paragraphs.

Marla in So. California pays 11 cpl for a 55 ccl, Oracle pays 9-1/2 cpl, MDI-MD 11 cpl, JLG 10 cpl for gross line, etc.

Of course, these are rates negotiated and paid to qualified MTs.

A gross line is anything on a line versus 65 gross characters per net line the other way.  You make more money working for the gross line than for the 65 gross character line, as long as the line rate's OK.