4 Ways to Make Money Typing From Home

Of course, the days of the steno pools where typists gathered and labored over clickety-clack typewriters are long gone. There's no need because these days most people are pretty decent typists and individuals do their own word processing. Yet, some people are more than decent at typing. So, is there a way to take those skills and make money at home typing?

Yes! There is still a great need for typists to turn audio recordings into text files as well as other kinds of typing jobs. And now that both audio and text files can be sent over the Internet in just seconds, it really doesn’t matter where the typist is.

Find out what kinds of typing jobs are out there and what kind of skills you need to land one.  

This is the simplest of all the typing jobs. It doesn’t take much experience to break into it, but it pays the least too. This can be a good place to start if you want to sharpen your skills and get some experience. However, if you are already an experienced transcriptionist move on to the next page.

If you want to try your hand at data entry beware of scams. Often work-at-home scams can be dressed up to look like data entry jobs, so be familiar with data entry scams.

To learn more about data entry and look for positions, see this list of work-at-home data entry companies.

Wondering if your typing is fast enough for any of these online typing jobs? Take one of these online typing tests.

So called "general" transcription actually encompasses a lot of different types of specialized transcription and requires typists with varying levels of skills and types of equipment. The basic definition of transcription is to type spoken audio recording, such as dictation, lectures, conference calls, phone messages, workshops, interviews, speeches, podcasts, videos, webinars, etc.

Specializations within general transcription include legal transcription, which requires experience and familiarity with legal terms and procedures are usually required, and financial/corporate, which requires that the typist have a certain level of knowledge of the terminology of the particular industry and/or earnings reports, annual meetings, press conferences, interim results, analyst reports, etc. in a variety of sectors.

Neither of these typically require certifications. Often the more specialized typing will be done in an office, rather than from home, but once you have experience, it is often possible to transition to telecommuting. However, there are plenty of truly general transcription jobs on this list of home transcription jobs.

Unlike the specializations within general transcription, medical transcription does require special post-secondary training and certification — either a 1-year certificate program or 2-year associate’s degree. A medical transcriptionist transcribes a physician or medical practitioner’s dictation, which are then added to the patient’s medical record.

Typically, you will need more than just the training and certification to land a work-at-home job in medical transcription; you will need experience too. Medical transcriptionist also work on a contract basis with their own home business. Read more about medical transcriptionists or search for home-based medical transcription jobs.

Captioning is a bit different from most home-based transcription work because instead of working off recorded audio, the real-time captioner types live video. It requires very fast typing speeds, accuracy, and specialized stenography equipment.  Only the most experienced typist can transition to real-time transcription.

However, there is also caption work for typing captions for recorded video, called offline captioning. In offline captioning, the audio of a recorded video is transcribed and added as captions in the post-production process. Less speed and experience is required for this than real-time, but some transcription experience is needed to become a captioner. Additionally, offline captioners need training and experience in placing the caption within the correct timing of the video. Both offline and ​real-time captioning can be done from home.

Read more about Working at Home in Captioning.