A couple of months ago, I started dreaming about doing more travel. I wrote about how I would like to be a travel blogger or cruise director. But with the season I’m in, time and resources didn’t seem to be in my favor. I knew we needed to get our income up if I wanted to take some trips.
I stopped working at the end of 2016, just before we welcomed our fourth child in less than two and a half years. Needless to say, we’ve been a bit swamped since then, and we added our fifth last fall. But she’s finally moved into her own room and I’m getting a solid six hours of sleep at night, so I started looking for other streams of income to fund my wanderlust. I came across a list of side hustles for moms. One that I’d not heard about before that intrigued me was writing captions and transcriptions for Rev.com. I decided to look into it.
It seemed like a good fit for me because I’m knowledgeable about English grammar, can type quickly, and have pockets of time during the day which I can devote to this type of work, generally during my kids’ nap time and after they go to bed at 7pm. The application process was quick, taking less than an hour, and I received an email that I’d been approved the following day. I could immediately start the training process, which I was paid to complete, even though only at half of the rate I would be making once I passed Rookie status. Within in a week, I had been promoted from Rookie to Revver for captioning, which opened up a lot of captioning jobs I could claim, and the opportunity to apply for transcription work (same process as for captioning).
A month and a half into this endeavor, I am currently at Revver status for both captioning and transcribing, but I am focusing on caption work so that I can reach the final level of Revver+ for captioning, which has the most earning potential, due to the type of work and number of jobs available. My goal is to reach Revver+ in the next two weeks. After that I may go back and catch up the transcription level to Revver+ to give me even more options, or I might just stick with captioning.
Pros
- Flexibility! I stay home with all of our kids, and I don’t want to be chained to a work schedule, even one that I set. The flexibility of Rev means I can pick up a job when I have time, and not worry about it when I don’t. Some nights I don’t caption because I’m doing an online grocery order, which does take awhile, even though I’m grateful that I don’t have to spend time at the store the next day. My husband and I went on a trip to Chattanooga recently and I knew I wouldn’t be working then, and didn’t sweat it. This is bonus income, after all.
- Learning! Besides learning the skill needed for captioning and transcribing, I’m learning a lot of different things from the content of the videos I work on. Everything from sermons, to cooking shows, real estate, documentaries, lectures, and more are available, and I can choose what interests me. In our family, lifelong learning is one of our values and I enjoy this aspect of the work.
- No purchase necessary. Because my husband already had a chromebook I could use to do the work, I did not have to buy any equipment to get started. I looked into teaching for VIPKid, and similar companies, but one reason I did not go that route was because I would have to buy a laptop with the compatible software, storage, and processor. Other side hustles, like multi-level marketing companies, require you to buy products or even stock your own inventory ahead of any sales.
- Good leadership. This has been exhibited to me primarily by the way they take ownership for problems and mistakes and work hard to make it right for everyone. They send out payments for the previous week via PayPal on Mondays. One week the payments were delayed, and they sent an email with their apologies, and said if it caused an issue for anyone (such as missing a bill payment because of the lack of funds) to let them know so they could make it right. It wasn’t an issue for me, but I sent an email just to thank them for their consideration of the inconvenience it may have caused.
Cons
- Not easy money. Sometimes I get lucky and I’ll claim a file that has already been completed but either wasn’t submitted or was sent back for errors, and all I need to do is clean it up a bit. That’s easy money! But generally I work for several hours to finish a 30 minute video, and the payout is small, compared to, say, teaching a 30 minute class for VIPKid. But maybe “easy money” is hard to come by, and at least with Rev I know what I’m getting into before I claim a file, and if I bite off more than I can chew, I can unclaim a file without a penalty within an hour.
- Unpredictable availability. This is not a huge problem, but a couple of times I’ve sat down expecting to work for a couple of hours, and there really weren’t any jobs that I felt cap able of doing, mainly because of poor audio quality or the complexity of the file. That’s one reason I’m looking forward to moving up to the Revver+ level, because there are more files available to choose from.
Overall, my initial experience with Rev.com has been positive, and by the end of the month I will have earned enough to cover our big family trip to Virginia next spring. One trip down, lots to go!
