How One Court Transcript Proofreader Earned $43,000 in a Year

Below is my interview with Caitlin Pyle about her flexible work from home job as a court transcript proofreader (working entirely from her iPad), and also a little info about how you can get started doing it as well.

Transcript proofreading is different from general proofreading and focuses specifically on legal transcripts created by court reporters, not blog posts, books, or emails.

I am blown away by the number of positive testimonials from readers who have come back to share their own success stories as transcript proofreaders!

There is a completely free 7-day email course you can sign up for here that walks you through this line of work and explains what it entails while also helping you figure out if it's a fit for you.

Tell us a little about why and how you got started working from home.

It was all an accident, actually! I got fired from my last job and went to school for personal training.

Turns out, I didn't like it as much as I thought. I had already been proofreading for two court reporters for a couple of years, and all the proofreaders I knew just did it as a side gig, so I never thought it could ever be anything more than that.

But I did really good work with my clients and the referrals started rolling in and before I knew it, I had enough work to make up for the income from my old job — actually, it was double what I'd been making, but I'd only worked half the hours. It was really a dream come true.

Tell us a little about proofreading transcripts and what that involves.

All of my clients are court reporters. They go and “report” the job, whether it's a hearing, deposition, trial, etc. and use fancy software to transcribe it into English.

They send their final draft to me via e-mail for proofreading, and I return corrections back to them via e-mail in a PDF. I do all the work from my iPad on my own schedule from wherever I am at the time — I've proofread in airports, airplanes, trains, waiting rooms, the couch — and of course, from my nice, comfy bed. 🙂

What are the best things about working from home as a proofreader?

I totally dig the autonomy and flexibility.

I remember the first time I left the house at 11:00 a,m, to go to Costco on a weekday, how great it felt to be able to just make the decision to do my grocery shopping whenever I wanted to! No more fitting it in on my lunch break, or battling the after-5 crowds — I was free!

I also love the fact that there is no commute time, very few phone calls (clients do call, but it's very, very seldom) and extremely low overhead. Being able to fit in my household tasks, like laundry and cleaning, in between my transcripts is also great.

Is transcript proofreading a fairly lucrative industry?

If you know what you're doing, it can be very lucrative.

On the flip side, there are many transcript proofreaders who got started long before I did and are making next to nothing, or have to work a regular job and keep proofreading as a side job.

That could be for a variety of reasons. Maybe they just don't want to do proofreading alone for income.

Maybe they crave an office environment, or maybe they love listening to a particular radio show on a morning commute to the office… but maybe they aren't making money because they're using really archaic, slow, time-consuming methods with outdated technology that isn't allowing them to maximize their output and ability to take on more clients/work.

For me and the people I've mentored, we use an iPad, which is the fastest and most efficient, lowest-overhead method, and we know how to market ourselves, meaning we have been able to earn as much as we want.

Some of us want just a bit of extra money, whereas some of us want to ditch the desk job altogether and travel.

To give an example of how much we can earn: I'm able to read about 100 pages per hour, so if I read 600 pages in a day and if I charge $0.40 per page, that's $240 in one day.

But, for someone who, instead of using an iPad, chooses to print out the pages and then scan in each page with corrections, that tremendously slows down their output. It does take time to build speed and stamina to read 600 pages in a day, but it is entirely possible.

My maximum pages I read in a day is about 400, so that'd be an income of $160 per day, which is about 50% more than what I earned at my desk job twice the hours of work.

The earning potential can also increase if the pages are rush (say I bill rushes at $0.55 per page), or if the jobs just have fewer words per page, which means I can read even more than 100 pages per hour.

I didn't make millions of dollars, but I did earn over $43,000 (gross) in one year, which isn't too bad for part-time work. I also took over three weeks of time off for various trips, including a week in Jamaica and a 7-day cruise!

Please note that Caitlin's numbers reflect her experience after building speed, systems, and a solid client base over time, and they are not necessarily what someone should expect immediately when starting out.

Is it a hard industry to break into? How is this different from proofreading websites, books, or other texts?

Not if you know what you're doing! It definitely used to be harder to break into, because there was no formal education system or pathway to get into it.

If you proofread books or websites, your clients only have content when they choose to produce it.

Court reporters, on the other hand, transcribe legal proceedings for a living, so they have work a lot more consistently than your traditional proofreading client would — and they generally earn more money, too, so you earn more as well.

What methods have you found most effective for getting new clients?

To be completely honest, I used to think it was getting plugged in to a larger agency, but I've since changed my opinion. Simply doing good work to earn referrals has undoubtedly been the best way to get clients.

That's one reason I love this kind of work. You do a good job, and that good work actually markets for you — and the best kind of marketing is the kind you don't have to do yourself. 🙂

You can create testimonials automatically when you continuously do a good job for your clients. They will start talking and handing your name out when they hear of anyone needing a good proofreader.

What sort of training and qualifications would others need to break into this industry?

It's definitely an art, and it's so much more than being able to spot spelling and grammar mistakes. You've got to have a very good eye for detail and that knack for catching errors.

Most people who have this gift describe errors as “popping off the page” at them. That's not something I can teach, either — you have the talent, or you don't.

Many people think you have to have perfect grammar to be a proofreader — but as a transcript proofreader, you're reading spoken words that were transcribed verbatim, so if someone speaks with improper grammar, you can't fix it!

So that's cool for me, because I actually don't have perfect grammar myself!

I don't even have a degree in English, which is another common misconception about this kind of work. My degree is in communication, but I've always had a knack for spotting errors and inconsistencies in a variety of texts.

Patience, the willingness to work hard, and the guts to take action are also paramount. While I can provide all the tools and resources for starting up, I can't catch errors for you and I can't do your marketing for you.

Ready to Learn More About This?

If you’re curious about this type of work and want to learn more before committing to anything, the FREE 7-day transcript proofreading eCourse mentioned above walks you through what transcript proofreading involves and helps you decide if it’s a good fit for you.

👉 Go here to get it for free and see what it's all about.

Good luck if you decide to try this out!

Caitlin Pyle started proofreading transcripts for court reporters in 2009. She lives in Orlando, Florida. She also writes a travel and lifestyle blog called The Work Anywhere Life.