To give a court reporter's perspective, I think $1.25 is more than reasonable.  I use three scopists and pay between $1.00 to $1.25 per page.  That is with full audio for every job.  As a court reporter, filling in dropped text or jumbled questions is what we expect our scopists to do.  If I only needed a job to be spot checked, I'd do it myself.  Brad, I think it's great your cousin gave you a job.  I know it is very time consuming to train a scopist and I have always looked for one that is already experienced that I work well with.  I give your cousin credit for taking the time to get you started and hopefully you can take it from here and make it into something!!