How to choose a podcast transcription service - costs, benefits and actionable tips

Did you know that according to 3PLAYMEDIA, adding transcripts to your podcast website can result in a 7% increase in search traffic and a 4% growth in inbound links?

And the team at Moz experienced a 15% boost in organic traffic and up to a 50% increase in keyword rankings after adding transcripts to a podcast episode page. 🚀

If you're a podcaster, podcast transcripts should not be an afterthought anymore. Adding transcripts to your podcast episode is essential to make your podcast accessible, easy to understand for search engines and boost your SEO.

Moreover, because a transcript provides a word-for-word text version of your podcast, having one serves as a convenient starting point to repurpose your podcast into various content pieces. This includes creating episode highlights, blog posts, social media content, and even finding quotes for your social media posts.

The main reason why podcasters avoid writing transcripts despite all of its benefits is that it is highly time-consuming.

To tackle this, many podcasters prefer to outsource their podcast transcripts to a transcription service. There are numerous options available, each offering distinct benefits.

If you want to outsource your podcast transcriptions, there are 2 ways to do it:

• Human Transcription service
• Automated AI Transcription service

We’re going to help you evaluate what are the pros and cons of each option, how much they cost, and how to avail them.

So let’s dive in 👇

Human Transcription Service

In a human transcription service, you avail the help of a transcription agency or a freelancer who listens to your podcast episode from start to finish and types it out word-for-word.

Outsourcing your podcast transcription to an agency

Podcasting agencies are companies that provide an array of editing services to assist podcasters, and transcription is among the services they offer. Typically, these agencies charge between $50 and $70 per episode for transcription, depending on the episode's length, setting the price at around $1.50 to $2.50 per minute.

Some companies also specialize in providing human transcription services as their main offering. These companies can often provide more competitive prices compared to podcasting agencies that focus on a broader range of podcast production services.

Here are some reputable human transcription companies:

• Rev

Rev employs a network of professional human transcriptionists to ensure accurate and high-quality transcriptions. And they are known for their fast turnaround times. With Rev you can receive your transcripts within 24 hours, making it a good choice for those with tight deadlines.

Rev costs $1.5/minute to transcribe your podcast & it guarantees 99% accuracy. You can also choose to rush your order for $2.75/minute and receive your transcript sooner.

In addition to transcription, Rev also offers services like captioning and translation, providing an all-in-one solution for all your content needs.

• Go transcript

GoTranscript is a budget-friendly transcription service that provides accurate human transcriptions at an affordable price. They assure a 99% accuracy in transcriptions by employing staff who have more than 5 years of transcribing experience and by doing quality checks through experienced editors.

GoTranscript supports over 50+ languages making it a good choice for a global audience. The price of transcription starts from $.0.84/ minute for a 5 day delivery and goes upto $2.75/minute for 6 hour rush-delivery.

• GMR Transcription

GMR Transcription is one of the highly reputed transcription agencies with 20 years of experience. The key benefit of availing their service is that all the transcription work by GMR Transcription is handled exclusively by US-based transcriptionists with guaranteed file security.

And they offer 2 different types of pricing. One for clean audio and another for difficult audio (if your podcast is poorly recorded or has background noise). Prices start from $1.75 per minute for clean audio transcriptions and $2.25 per minute for difficult audio transcriptions with a standard 3-5 days of turnaround time.

These are 3 of the popular companies which offer transcription services.

Regardless of the service you choose, transcription services offered by agencies generally maintain high quality. These agencies employ experts and experienced staff to manually transcribe, ensuring rigorous quality control over the results.

But this expert service comes at the cost of high prices. If you follow a publishing schedule of 4 episodes/month for your podcast, the transcription expenses charged by an agency will set you back by ~$200/month (assuming the agency charges $1.5/minute and your episodes are 30 minutes long)

For budding podcasters on a limited budget, outsourcing podcast transcription to a human transcription company might not be a viable option

Pros of hiring a human transcription agency/company:

• High-quality transcript: As human transcription companies employ well-trained staff, you can expect a high-quality transcript of your podcast.
• Scalable: Human transcription companies can scale to meet your increasing demand as you grow your podcast, thanks to their large and dedicated teams.

Cons of hiring a human transcription company:

• Expensive: Human transcription companies can be a costly option for outsourcing your podcast transcription, making them less viable for budding podcasters.
• Higher turnaround time/delivery time: Depending on the company's workload and policies, there could be a delay in receiving the transcripts. If you have a time-sensitive podcast or need quick turnaround times, relying on an external human transcription company may not always align with your schedule.

Outsourcing your transcription to a Freelance Transcriber

If the services offered by human transcription companies are too expensive to consider, another option is to outsource your transcription to a freelancer.

Freelancer transcribers are an affordable alternative to agencies when it comes to manually transcribing your podcast & generating other promotional content. You can find a large number of freelance transcribers available on platforms like Fiverr. Top quality freelancers typically charge between $1-$1.5 per minute, but prices can go as low as $0.20, based on the freelancer’s experience and turnaround time.

While hiring a freelancer, you need to keep in mind that freelancers highly vary in their skill and experience. So make sure you’re selecting an expert to transcribe your podcast either by checking their portfolio or giving test assignments, since there are a lot of freelancers who provide low quality services on these platforms.

How to find a freelancer transcriber on Fiverr to write your podcast transcripts:

1. Visit the Fiverr website
2. Type in “podcast transcript” in the search bar & click search
3. Click on the service options to filter the services you want & click Apply

Example: We’re going to select “english” language and “time reference” option for our transcript

1. Now select the “Delivery time” filter to choose the delivery speed of the freelancer. If you pick an express delivery, freelancers will charge you a higher price for it.

1. Now go through the listing of each listing to check out the reviews & find which freelancer works best for you.
2. Once you have decided which freelancer works best for you, you can make the payment and go ahead to avail of their services.

These are the steps to outsource your podcast transcript to a freelance transcriber. And you can repeat this process, if you want the help of a freelancer to generate other marketing content from your transcripts like blogs, social media posts & newsletters.

One thing to note before you hire a freelancer is that freelancers highly vary in their skill and experience. So make sure you’re selecting the right person by checking their portfolio or test assignments to avoid any future headaches.

Pros of hiring a freelancer:

1. More affordable: Unlike an agency, you can find a freelancer who fits within your budget since there are a large number of freelancers who offer podcast transcription services.

Cons of hiring a freelancer:

1. Inconsistent quality: The quality of transcriptions are of inconsistent quality when you hire a freelancer, since the skills and expertise of freelancers can highly vary between each other.
2. Speed of delivery: If you want your transcripts to be delivered faster, you need to pay a higher price for an express delivery on top of the regular transcription charges.
3. Communication challenges: Effective communication with freelancers can be challenging if they are from different time zones or work on multiple projects. This can potentially create issues in your workflows.

Automated AI Transcription service

This is the quickest & most efficient way to transcribe a podcast that skips all the time-consuming manual work.

In this method, all you need to do is upload your podcast to an AI transcript generator like Podsqueeze or to a podcast platform with automatic transcriptions, like CoHost. AI will listen to your podcast & automatically generate transcripts and all other marketing content for your episodes within a few minutes.

Automated AI transcriptions present a cost-effective option, often as low as 1/20th of the price of hiring a human transcription service.

Pros of Automated AI transcriptions:

1. Instant transcripts: While freelancers/agencies can take up to a week to deliver your transcript, AI can deliver your transcript within a few minutes.
2. Affordable & Accessible: The average price for AI transcription services typically ranges between $0.05 to $0.15 per minute, significantly lower than the rates charged by human transcription companies and freelancers.
3. Consistency: AI transcription services consistently deliver the same quality output, provided the audio quality remains constant.

Cons of Automated AI transcriptions:

1. Cannot guarantee 99% accuracy: While modern AI transcription services can provide high accuracy, often rivaling human transcription, they cannot guarantee the 99% accuracy that many human transcription companies offer.

How to automatically generate your podcast transcripts using AI

Here is how you can generate your podcast transcripts and other marketing content for your podcast at just the click of a button using AI.

1. Sign up for a free Podsqueeze account
2. Click on the “Convert New Episode” button on your Dashboard
3. Select your podcast name using the search bar or use the upload option to upload your podcast’s audio/video file from your computer

1. Finally, click “Generate Content” & sit back

Within a few minutes, you will get the transcript of your episode complete with timestamps and speaker identification. You can either directly copy the transcript to use on your website or choose to download it as an SRT file if you wish to use it as captions for your video podcast.

But that’s not all! Podsqueeze also simultaneously repurposes your transcript into multiple pieces of marketing content required to promote your podcast on all platforms.

Here’s the list of all the content pieces Podsqueeze automatically generates from your audio file:

• Transcripts: The complete written transcript of your podcast which you can add to your website and a SRT file for subtitles.
• Show notes: A quick glimpse of what happened in your podcast which you can add to podcasting directories and episode pages
• Chapters with timestamps: Timestamps let listeners jump to their favorite segment of your show and improve the engagement of your podcast.
• Title suggestions: AI title suggestions for your episode title which motivate users to check out the podcast and get more clicks.
• Blog posts: A blog post summarized from the learnings of your podcast that’ll help optimize your podcast for a wide variety of keywords on search engines.
• Newsletter content: A podcast newsletter repurposed from your episode’s content to grow your email following.
• Social Media Posts: Social media Post content to promote your your episode on twitter, linkedin, facebook and get more listeners
• Quotes images: Quote images of important points discussed on your podcast which you can share on Instagram/Pinterest, and make your podcast more discoverable.
• Bullet points of key takeaways: Key takeaways from your podcast summarized as bullet points to post on podcasting directories & encourage listeners to check out the podcast.
• Byte-sized clips: Byte sized video clips generated from your podcast episode to create reels and share on platforms like Instagram and Titktok.

Podsqueeze offers a free tier that lets you transcribe upto 50 minutes of podcast time per month with AI. This allows you to fully test it out with your podcast before deciding to subscribe.

And here you have it! We hope this article has provided valuable insights to guide you in selecting the best transcription service for your podcast, whether it's the expertise of human transcription or the cost-effectiveness of AI!

FAQs about choosing a podcast transcription service

• What is a podcast transcription service, and why is it important?

  A podcast transcription service converts spoken audio content into written text, making it accessible to a wider audience, improving SEO, and aiding in content repurposing for sharing on social media or as short blog posts.

• How much do podcast transcription services cost?

  Podcast transcription service pricing structures vary, often based on factors like audio length or even per episode. The price can range from $0.84 per minute (just like Go transcript) up to $2.50 per minute. It's just important to explore different options to find what suits your budget. Alternatively, you can generate your podcast transcript using our Podsqueeze AI with 90% accuracy.

• What factors should I consider when choosing a podcast transcription service?

  There are many factors to look into. We suggest you consider factors like accuracy, turnaround time, pricing, privacy and security measures, additional features (like timestamping), and customer support (by the way, all these factors could cost extra for you or you can get them all using any suitable AI tools).