A while back I had written about how I gave up on transcribing the documentary footage myself and turned to Elance to outsource the task.

The terms were for $100 they would transcribe 15 hours of footage over 2 business days. Well let’s just say you get what you pay for.

It ended up taking about a month for everything to be completed. Now normally that would be unacceptably long, but I was so busy with other stuff I didn’t have time to work on the film, there was no rush. Plus the low, low price and headaches it saved me was worth it.

The transcriber dude (or company) said the hiccups were due to the footage containing a lot of techno mumbo-jumbo, and I’m sure the people doing the transcribing were not native English speakers. I bet he wanted to charge me more after he realized what a headache I provided, but he stuck to the original price. For what I got it was well worth it.

The transcribed files were to my specifications, with time code marks and speakers identified. I’ve printed them all out and they fill a 2-inch binder. They’re now covered in notes and highlights and is the bible for editing. (The provider was CreativeBlox. Despite the length I would recommend them.)

I’ve been experimenting with Elance for other jobs but haven’t had as much success. One was for someone to build a custom WordPress theme for this site and another site, but all the bids I got were for generic, corporate lamo blog designs.

I posted it under programming, but I think I needed a graphic designer. Ideally a graphic designer/WordPress guru. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Another job was for this weird text editor program idea I had, similar to JDarkRoom or WriteRoom. This was a really simple lifehackery mod to a text editor program I wanted to put on this site. I thought it would be cheap and easy but I was getting bids for hundreds of dollars. Any programmers? Bueller? Bueller?