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I joined up with Rev to make a little side money, and when I break down the hours spent for the money earned it turned out to be a LITTLE side money and lasted less than a week. 

I was signed up and typing my "testing" jobs within 15 minutes.  Initially all my work was graded as 5/5 for accuracy and formatting and got the email that I was going from Rookie to Revver early, and if I maintained a certain target I could make 25% more than other Revvers.

Then it came, my first less than perfect review, a 4 for accuracy and a 5 on formatting.  Okay. I keep going and then get one okay review, 3 on accuracy and 4 on formatting.  Next thing I know I get a warning that if I fall any lower my account will be shut down. I'm expected to maintain a 4.5 average for both for the next 120 DAYS.

So after a couple more 5/5 reviews I'm JUST about to hit submit on a project when an error pops up that I've been timed out of my account.  When I try to sign back in to finish I can't.  Sure enough there is the email saying thanks but no thanks.  15 projects / 116 minutes of audio or 30 hours real time, goodbye!

So two bad reviews (below metric) was enough to drag my metrics completely down to account closure.  The reason this company fails, and likely you will too, is the grading.  One person who grades will correct your research (they said the name of the law firm was Atlantic, when I found the actual firm's website and it wasn't) but STILL give you a 5/5 rating. 

The next person will tell you to correct all the "can't" to "can not", etc,  and grades you 4.  Then two projects later the grader tells you NOT to adjust a person's speech and leave can't as can't, after you've set up quick keys to extend all of those to speed up your typing speed.

You pick up a project that 12 others have refused because the audio quality is SO HORRIBLE, slag through the 25+ minutes of bad audio because it's actually an interesting topic and then have 5 graders turn down the grading because of the poor audio.  To walk away with a 3 grading.  It's absurd.

My typing speed was irrelevant in this arena, so was my background with transcription, which I do on the side on different projects but has slowed down at the moment .  Unless you have professional audio equipment, good luck!  Some of these sound like an interview conducted with the iPhone in the purse at Grand Central Station (or worse a drag racecar track).

Why is there so many 'unclaims' on projects? Poor audio and the gambling effect.  The company recommends previewing various sections of the audio before 'claiming' a project, but you can't.  The first time you jump from three seconds to 30 seconds someone else has already claimed it.  So if you think maybe in the first 3 seconds you can hear this one, better click claim or you lose it.  The only exception is projects of extreme length 45min+, multiple speakers, or heavy accents.  So you preview once you're in the project only to dump it moments later because the audio is so bad.

The site says you can make $1400 a month, and if you review the forums people will share screen shots where they do.  Read a little deeper to find out that first, they get first pick an hour before everyone else.  They also have professional equipment, ie: foot pedal, audio software, and on top of that they count keystrokes/min.  They analyze the work so much it feels more like talking to a bot than a person.  If that's your thing, best of luck to you.

I enjoyed the work, but there are just too many things wrong overall that I would caution anyone you likely won't make it, and for the hours spent to make peanuts... well you're better collecting cans.

As a "freelancer," you are sub-contracted by Rev, which means that you are not an employee. You are not protected by local state or provincial labour laws, such as the right to be paid a fair wage (minimum wage), and you can be terminated at any time for any reason without any explanation or compensation.

Rev pays their "freelancers" between 36 and 65 cents per "audio minute." That is not a minute of your time, it is the length of time that it takes you to accurately transcribe 1 minute of audio. These are two very different things.

Full-time, professional transcribers who work with transcription software and foot pedals can transcribe 1 minute of audio in approximately 3 to 5 minutes. 

Even if you were being paid the maximum rate advertised (65 cents per audio minute), and you are able to consistently transcribe 1 minute of audio in 5 minutes with 100% accuracy, which would be extremely impressive, this would give you a 5:1 ratio.

Let's do the math:

1 hour = 60 minutes

Solve for x:
5:1 = 60:x
x = 60/5
x = 12
5:1 = 60:12
12 X $0.65 = $7.80

Therefore, in 1 hour, with your very impressive transcription skills, professional software and equipment, you would be able to transcribe 12 minutes of audio and would be paid $7.80.

The minimum wage in the state of California, which also happens to be where this start-up company is based, is $12/hr.

Now where this gets really interesting is when you calculate the number of hours that it would take to earn the $1495 per month that "top earners" allegedly make.

$1495 / $7.80 = 191.67 hours (per month)
191.67 hours / 30 days = 6.39 hours per day (average)

So even if you were a professional transcriptionist, using professional grade software and tools (such as the foot pedal), and you were getting paid the highest possible rate, you would have to work an average of 6.39 hours per day, every single day of the month, in order to earn the amount advertised.

Most of us are not professional transcriptionists; however, and for those with little to no experience, it is not hard to fathom that it might take much longer than 5 minutes to transcribe 1 audio minute. Let's say it takes the average person 10 minutes, instead of 5. Now you are being paid at a rate of $3.90/hr. To earn $1495 per month, you would have to work 12.78 hours per day, 7 days per week.

Does Rev sound like an ethical company to you?

The work that we do as transcriptionists and captioners can be very interesting, but also tiresome. I've completed many projects for shows that I ended up really enjoying. Unfortunately, the amount of effort required does not match what you are paid. And the amount of mental fatigue I have experienced in my time with Rev surpasses the mental fatigue I've ever had at any other job. 
To start off, no one teaches you the ropes. You must teach yourself the Style Guide. But the Style Guide isn't actually the Style Guide, it's basically a beginner's guide. The actual Style Guide is speckled throughout a help centre, so you have to dig for the information yourself. You don't understand what you're doing incorrectly until you receive a poor grade, which I think is unfair as it impacts your metrics. Just a pipe dream, but I wish Rev would choose to properly train Rookies so everyone is on the same page and we can all complete our work with confidence. Hearing one thing from one 'Expert' and the complete opposite from another 'Expert' makes a really confusing situation, especially when it involves your metrics. 
Their Style Guide is strict, which is understandable, but most of the time the recordings are gargled garbage. You can't decipher what is being said because of poor audio quality or very thick accents. It'll take you forever to figure out what is being said, and by that point you're making pennies per hour. 
The flexibility of the job is nice, and I like that I can work from home and select my own projects. But lack of direction, low payment, and confused graders are the reasons why I am taking a step back. Rev is barely beer money, considering the amount of time and effort required for a buck.

I have work history of Live Transcribing for years so I thought this job would be easier since you can rewind the audio files etc.

However I was disappointed in the amount of time they have you take to complete their application and then send you an email saying you didn't qualify based on the testing. Got an email saying only 12% of applicants get through which should reflect their incompetent interview process of giving you transcription rules to follow and then punishing you for following their rules. They don't tell you what you did wrong but says general mistakes are using incorrect form or tense and omitting words. First they don't want you to change the speakers words and if the sound is not audible they mark it against you for omitting words when in their rules they state omit words if you can't hear the audio.

Beware:
Application process takes a very long time. 
1. They ask you various questions about grammar.
2. They give a overview of their program and rules ex. do not correct speakers grammar or change their words or sentence, indicate when you are not able to hear the speakers words etc. SO BASICALLY your learning their program during the application.
3. They have you transcribe a poor audio file. It says time doesn't matter but I'm sure they recorded it somewhere.

The email says you can reapply after 45 days which makes me think they use this application process for free labour. 

PAY: Basically what I gathered you will be working on a clip for longer than expected thus your rate of pay will be less than advertised.

The only good thing about this is you can work when you want and how much you want, but pay is extremely low for the amount of time and work you have to put into it.
There is a choice of audio files to pick from but most are unintelligible with incoherent speakers, lots of background noises, inaudible etc. Once you pick an audio to transcribe, it might take you hours for 15 min clip, and you only get paid per minute of audio, not the amount of time you spent working on it. So on average, minute per audio is 0.40 cents, which means you would only make about $6 for working on it for about 3 hours. Even if you are fast typist, it doesn't matter if audio is low quality and difficult to understand. 
Once you submit it, it's graded by another agent, and they give you a score on it. If customer complains about it and isn't happy for whatever reasons than it's graded again by Support. There are many dishonest customers who complain for trivial or fake reasons, in order to get discounts, so Support will than downgrade your overall score and thus prevent you from reaching target necessary to advance and get better pay. 
You have a choice when accepting low pay or low grade audio files, but you have no choice or say in client's unreasonable and dishonest complaints, so it's very much a demeaning type of job, hard work is not appreciated or acknowledged by any means. 
I would definitely NOT recommend this type of work for this company until they raise their work ethics.

I worked for Rev one summer when I was honestly super desperate to make money. I have a 90-100wpm typing speed and I thought this would be the perfect way to make money.

I started my training with Rev...which they provide little guidance. Once the training was finished I quickly realized how many hours it takes for you to get paid money. A 12 minute audioclip would take me 2+ hours to complete. I want to also reiterate that my typing speed is almost 100WPM. The reason that it would take this long is almost all audio recordings for you to choose from (which btw is  a lot of competition, you really have to choose them quick when they become available) are terrible in quality. I would spend minutes just figuring out what one word was being said. I would obsess over every word because they dock you points based on the accuracy of your transcription. Your scores matter becomes you have to be higher than a certain threshold. A lot of background noises, multiple speakers, and overall terrible audio quality. It was mind-numbing work. Once I was finished about 2 hours of transcribing I'd be paid like 6$. It was garbage pay but once again....I was desperate and would take anything I could get. Now that I have an actual job I just want to warn people that it is NOT worth your time.

You get paid per video minute and none of the projects will be "easy".  The videos will be hard to understand (thick accent, heavy background noise, distorted audio etc). Whatever it may be; you'll spend a LOT of time on these measly video minutes.  I'm a quick typer (90 words per minute) and a 19 minute video took me five hours to complete.  I chose one with a clear audio but it had intense back and forth dialogue.  Four hours writing in the dialogue and one hour to sync every caption group (there was over 500 caption groups for this 19 minute video).  Having pride in my work I took great attention to details throughout.  After spending 5 hours to earn my measly $8.50, I get an e-mail with my project grade.  Expecting a solid 5/5/5, I was surprised to see they gave me a grade of 5/3/5.  The 3 was due to my captions lacking a speaker ID (name of the speaker) but a name was never provided for either speaker in the video.  Both speakers are never seen, only heard on this voiceover therefore: I followed their Style Guide as best as was described and yet my metric is now compromised due to this so called "mistake" and there's nothing I can do to reason with Rev or rectify this.  (Your grade will affect your metrics which affects the quality and quantity of jobs available to you.)

My recommendation is to save yourself the disappointment and work elsewhere

You aren't even managed, the things you need to transcribe are barely at a standard where you can even hear them. The amount of time I would put into a 25 minute transcription job is insane... 3 hours... I'm only on this because I'm too young to get a real job. Anyways, I was recently removed from transcription work because i was 0.2 off of their requirements. My accuracy was 4.3 and their standard was 4.5/5, I was also up to the standard on everything else. After doing a transcription job, I would always feel tired, because trying to write out unintelligible gibberish from a group meeting is really tiring. If you're thinking about working at Rev, don't. The pay is complete garbage. You would be better if you did housework for $5 an hour. Overall, at Rev, they treat every worker as if they are disposable, and once again, the pay is garbage. I worked on a 25 minute project for 3 hours, and got paid $12. that's $4 an hour, basically a slave wage.

Do literally anything else. The people who work at Rev are pricks who underpay you, go work for another transcribing company or something, because the money is not worth the wrist pain, and headaches.

The freelance nature of the jobs does admittedly allow for lots of flexibility, and an opportunity for this to be a second income on top of another job. However, the wages are almost criminally low and the work is harder than it seems. There were very few videos to choose from, and the good ones were taken quite fast. Almost all of the ones that were left either had unreadable audio quality, weren't in english, or were so short that the money really wasn't worth the time. For me, each captioned minute of video took about 3 to 6 minutes of real time to complete, and I'm not any slower that average. On top of that, in my experience, each minute of video captioned paid about 30 cents Canadian. That means that working at my top speed, I could make at most 5 to 6 bucks an hour. That's criminal. Also, you are graded for each video by I assume a real person, but the people grading are such grammar perfectionists that it only took me a day to recieve my first "major violation" for a grammar error which, in the big picture, didn't affect the readability at all. Although it may seem enticing, steer clear. Until wages increase above illegally low levels, it's not worth your time or effort.

Before you sign up for Rev, understand that you need to put time and effort into this before it is profitable. Once you do though, it's a perfect way to supplement your income, or make a tidy sum if working from home full-time.
I love working as a freelance transcriber. I have hundreds of files to choose form, I can pick ones that are interesting, and they give you ample time and direction to always get it done quickly and correctly.
I've heard that you can be fired easily for mistakes, but if you are careful and make sure to put in the effort deserved to get the file done correctly, you'll never have an issue.
Not only is Rev great because I get to learn a lot of things as you're transcribing University files, medical files, lectures, YouTube videos and more, but it's totally based on your time and when you want to do it. Just sign in, and work away.
I will say, Saturday and Sunday's are normally slower, so if it's just a weekend job, I'm not sure how lucrative that would be.
I did it full-time for a period of time, and absolutely loved my job.

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