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You can work at home making money either by making crafts for yourself (Crafting Home Business) or for somebody else (Home Crafting Jobs).

Crafting Home Business

For those who are creative and good at artwork and craft making, a crafting home business is a good work at home option. You can making and selling your OWN arts and crafting products.

Most people who successfully working at home doing crafting run their own crafting business. They are creative and make high quality and unique arts and crafts. The kind of crafting products you can make is just endless - greeting cards, jewelry, pottery, artwork, candle, bags and purses, clothing, bookmarks, calenders, blankets, quilt and many many others that you can ever imagine. You can sell your arts and crafts online or at local art fairs or shows. Many crafting business owners sell their products on their own website, EBay and Etsy .

Home Craft Assembly Jobs

There are companies offer home crafts assembly jobs. Usually they require you buy a start up kit which contains training instructions and basic supplies to make the first few crafts to try out.

However, many people found out that the home crafting jobs don’t work for them, simply because the crafting companies won’t pay you until your work pass their very strict inspection, and most of the time your work will NOT pass the inspection. Sure there are people who can pass the inspection but many can’t and therefore end up LOSING money doing home crafting jobs. You probably have heard lot of people complain that home craft assembly are scams mainly due to this reason.

Disciple’s Cross

Disciple Cross is a company I would recommend for those who want to make money doing home craft assembly but don’t have his/her own product line. Many people are making money with Disciple’s Cross because Disciple Cross grants you resell right and Disciple Cross’s necklaces are quite easy to sell. Some people even buy the products from wholesale and sell them to make a profit. Disciple Cross does have a buy back program but lot of people think the their inspection is very strict and difficult to pass. Of course there are people who CAN pass inspection and make money. But basically everyone agrees that the best way to make money with Disciple Cross is to make and sell the products yourself. You can sell the necklaces to local schools and churches for fundraising, you can sell them at local Christian bookstores, local craft stores, jewelry shops and beauty salons and even bakeries. Of course you can sell them online. Anywhere there is retail traffic people will take interest in these cross necklaces.  Another tip for making the Disciple Cross necklace is purchasing the pre-bent nails off the net, because bending the nails is not easy to do, and using those low cost pre-bent nails will make the job a lot easier. You can buy the pre-bent nails at http://www.angelcross.org.

What is Medical Transcription?

When doctors see patients in hospitals, clinics and physicians? offices, they dictate important information about the patient’s history, physical examination, diseases, procedures, laboratory tests and diagnoses. The medical transcriptionists translates the oral dictation into detailed patient records that accurately communicate medical information.

Medical Transcription Job Market

There is a strong and growing demand in the medical transcription job market.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, “Demand for medical transcriptionists is expected to increase due to rapid growth in health care industries spurred by a growing and aging population.” Their report also says, “Contracting out transcription work overseas and advancements in speech-recognition technology are not expected to significantly reduce the need for well-trained medical transcriptionists domestically.”

Why choose Medical Transcription Career?

People become motivated about medical transcription for many different reasons. The most significant reason is to be able to work from home and enjoy all the benefits of working from home. Other benefits are decent income (expect to earn between $30,000 and $40,000 annually once you’re well-trained) and job security.

How to Becoming a Medical Transcriptionist

To become a qualified medical transcriptionist, formal training is required. Besides the skills required for general transcription, medical transcriptions must have strong working knowledge of medical language and terminology. Many medical transcription companies prefer to hire the experienced transcriptionists, but they will waive this requirement if the new hire are graduated from the top 3 medical transcriptions schools.

Medical Transcription Training

The TOP 3 medical transcription schools are: 1. Andrew, 2. M-Tec and 3. Career Step. All three schools offer excellent distance learning /online course. Students who successfully finish the medical transcription courses from the 3 school have no problems finding a medical transcription job.

Training is critical to become medical transcriptionists, and choosing the right medical transcription training school probably is one of the most important decisions to make. Following are some basic information about the top 3 medical training schools, and you can always contact them directly to request free information.

Andrews School

Tuition of the program is $3800. Payment plan (24 months) with no interest charge is available.

M-Tec:

Tier 1 Premier Program: Cost $3495, offers approximately 1155 clock hours of optimum training; (Strongly recommended if plan to work from home for additional medical transcription practice)

Tier 1 Basic Program: Cost $1925, offers approximately 555 clock hours of optimum training;

Tier 2 Premier Program: Cost $3395, offers approximately 1119 clock hours of optimum training;(designed for the healthcare professional RN, MA, RHIA, LPN, RHIT) wanting to make a career change.)

Tier 2 Basic Program: Cost $1825, offers approximately 483 clock hours of optimum training;(designed for the healthcare professional RN, MA, RHIA, LPN, RHIT) wanting to make a career change.)

Career Step

Online Platinum-Level Enrollment - $1560
Online Gold-Level Enrollment - $1320

The Career Step Medical Transcription training program is designed to be completed in 640 hours, or full time for a period of four (4) months. Career Step provides access and services for a period of eight (8) months beyond the initial four (4) month period, providing all students with access to all materials and services for a period of twelve (12) months. (extensions are available)

The above top three schools are ACCP approved medical transcription education programs. Personally I prefer Career Step due to the cost of the program. It is significantly lower than the other two schools without sacrifice of the quality of the education. You can request free information package from them here.

GPT stands for Get Paid To. GPTs are relative easy ways to make extra money, such as:

1. Get Paid To do Paid Online Surveys
   Paid online surveys is a great way to make extra money, it’s easy and free. There are a good number of legitimate market research companies will pay you for your time and opinions. To be successful on making money with paid surveys, the key is to sign up with real legitimate market research/paid survey companies. Depends on your demographic, you can make between $100 - $500 a month doing paid surveys. I personally make average $200/month and spend an hour/day. MySurvey123.com is an excellent resource to learn paid surveys - It provides the best FREE paid survey lists, paid survey guides and honest paid survey reviews.
2. Get Paid To do Paid Offers
   Here is how it works - you join a paid offer site, and shop or sign up various (free and/or non-free) offers through them. The paid offer sites earn commissions from the merchants, and you get paid by the paid offer sites. This is a win-win situations - you and paid offer sites both make money! Cash Crate is one of the best paid offer sites. They have lot of offers, including many 100% free offers, a open forum where members share experience and tips. They also have a good referral system. Make sure you use a separate email just for them, since when you sign up with those free offers (usually just take a survey), you will get lot of spam emails.
3. Get Paid To Read/Click Emails(ads)
   Here is how it work: you join a GPT site, usually giving them your name and email, the GPT site delivers ads to your email box, and you click on the link in the email to visit the advertisers’ website - yes, you are actually get paid to view ads! Usually you get paid cash or “points” for reading and clicking. Most of those sites also offer other ways to get paid such paid offers and daily surveys. The best paid emails sites are MyPoints , InboxDollars and Hits4Pay. Those three sites have high paying emails, daily surveys as well as paid offers.
4. Get Paid To Drive
   There are companies are willing to pay you for just driving around with their ads on the car you drive. Some even willing to give you a free car. However, you must drive a LOT. Honestly this opportunity sounds pretty good if you drive hundreds of miles a day, but it’s not for me, because there is no way I will drive enough miles to get hired. Recently I came across a pretty good company, called Miles of Marketing - they only accept moms who have kids, and they don’t have high driving mileage requirement (they expect you drive average 20-35 miles a day), and they pay pretty good (usually $100 for a 2 weeks project).
5. Get Paid To do Mystery Shoppings
   Similar to paid surveys, you can get paid to shop and eat as a mystery shopper. Serious shoppers can make $300 a month or even more, but you need to sign up with quite some legitimate mystery shopping companies. Remeber be cautious with mystery shopping scams - those scammers usually ask you to process/return a check, and don’t fall for it! Here is a huge list of mystery shopping companies - start with the good ones and sign up with more gradually.

Please note those are just ways of making extra money, not a substitute of a job, and won’t make you rich or even enough to pay bills . However, they are GOOD extras and can be very handy.

Technorati Tags: paid surveys, paid offers, GPT, mystery shopping

Legal transcription job market is unique and there is little competition and plenty of jobs. Legal transcriptionists are widely used by large corporations, private practice attorneys, governmental departments (such as court system), insurance companies and banks that all have a need for more accurate legal records.

Legal transcriptionists listen to dictations, such as count hearings, testimonies, interrogations and pleadings, and type them into documents that are edited and turn them into easily understood records. Those records are extremely useful for lawyers for research purpose and to win a case.

While looking for legal transcriptionists, many companies require individuals to have a strong working knowledge of legal procedures and terminology, these skills are necessary in addition to the skills required for general transcription, and usually companies prefer the individuals who have prior experience in the legal field.

If you want to become a legal transcriptionist, but have no prior experience in both legal and transcription fields, you might want to get into general transcription first, at the mean time get legal transcription training (which is preferred by many employers) to prepare you for legal transcription work.

Regarding training, many community colleges offer associate degree or certification courses in legal transcription. In addition to college course, many employers will allow individuals to train on the job. While working as a general transcriptionist, you can express your interest in legal transcription, and you might get such training opportunity and eventually get into legal transcription.

Here are some companies that offer legal transcription jobs (and general transcription jobs):

CyberDictate - cyberdictate.com
Neal R. Gross - nealrgross.com
SpeakWrite - speak-write.com
TASK Document Services - usetask.com
Ubiqus - ubiqus.com

Ready to enter the field of general transcription? Here are something you need to know.

What kind of work does a general transcriptionist do?

General transcription work could include but not limited to: Interviews, business meetings, conference calls, focus groups, press briefings, radio shows, video shows, panel discussions, seminars, lectures and speech etc.

Who would use general transcription services?

Many businesses and professions use general transcription services, such as: government, insurance companies, financial professionals, teachers, students, marketing researchers, professors and other general businesses and corporations.

How do I get started if I have no experience?

Fortunately there are some transcription companies will hire workers with no experience. However, you still need to have the required skills I mentioned in my last post (Transcription Job overview), and practice and be prepared to take transcription tests which could include transcribing a short audio, grammar and punctuation tests.

Please remember how fast you do a certain transcription job depends on the quality of the audio, how familiar you are with the audio material subject, your listening skill, your grammar, proofreading and editing skills. Another point is since audio sujects vary greatly, if you have a basic knowledge of a wide varity of topics, you probably will find the job much easier.

Following are some resource you can use to test and improve your skills:

• Sample audio test: here is a a good audio sample test: http://www.freelancetranscriber.com/transcriptiontest.pdf
• Practice audio: do a google search for “free podcasts”. Podcasts are usually crystal clear audio and short, and you will have a variety of topics to choose from.
• Grammar: grammarbook.com (the blue book of grammar)
• Typing: although typing skills is not essential, a few companies do require minimum speed. Following are some free typing test and practice sites:

learn2type.com
testmytyping.com
typingtest.com

There is no formal training for general transcription, it is just a matter of getting your foot in the door and doing it regularly to build your speed. There are companies that willing to hire with no experience, such as TigerFish and AccuTran. TigerFish even have their test posted on their website. You can also check your local transcription companies and craigslist looking for temporary assignments that will give you the experience to apply for other companies later.

Here is a few good companies that offer general transcription jobs:

Accutran - accutranglobal.com
Cambridge Transcription - ctran.com
Domenichelli Business Services - moderndayscribe.com
Escriptionist - escriptionist.com
Morningside Partners, LLC - fdch.com
Mountain West Processing - mountainwestprocessing.com
Net Transcripts - nettranscripts.com
Rapidtext - rapidtext.com
SpeakWrite - speak-write.com
Tigerfish - tigerfish.com
The Transcription Company - transcripts.net
Ubiqus - ubiqus.com