It's Only A Dollar

Introduction

This is For the Vocal "Passing Ships" Challenge challenge that you can read about below.

The music is "Silver Dollar Forger" by Nazareth for reasons which will become clear.

The prompt is:

Write about a small moment in your life that had a big impact.

It's Only A Dollar (Well Actually It's Two)

New To Vocal

On April 17th 2021 I published my first Vocal story which you can read below.

I had been tempted into Vocal by their lucrative challenges and thought this was a good article that I had published on my Seven Days In blog, but had to polish it up to meet the requirements of a Vocal story.

I shared my stories on Facebook and Twitter and didn’t get too many reads, and the first Vocal Challenge I tried to enter, I missed out because I was unaware that you actually had to enter your story, so I missed out on that.

I wrote a few more stories and got a five-dollar bonus for my fifth story and then ten dollars for my tenth, but the reads were very sparse. In April 2021 I got 5c from reads but that went up to 50c in May. This was not the pot of gold I thought I was going to get from my writing.

I don’t know why, but I started to look for Vocal on Facebook and came across two groups where I saw that I could share my work,

These were the Vocal Social Society and The Medium Writers and Vocal Creators Support Group and there were people sharing their stories there and commenting on them.

Nervously I joined and shared some of my stories and actually got some encouragement and support and positive comments, but was still unsure.

I felt like I was trespassing on the toes of real writers and poets, but thought if I don’t put myself out there I will never know, and if they don’t like me I can always leave.

In June I got a bonus for an “Awesome Story” which was like a “Top Story” but was not featured by Vocal on their main page. The story was "On Writing...on Vocal". The five dollars I got from that enabled me to withdraw twenty dollars from Vocal and in June I doubled my read income to just over a dollar, it was the same amount in July

Things were improving slowly.

THEN IT HAPPENED!!

I had written a story called “Sharing Your Music Collection” and someone with the name Call Me Les sent me a dollar tip. This shocked me in a positive way. I thought someone has read one of my stories and thought it was worth reading and showed it by sending a tip. That made me believe I could write and people would read it.

I was still on a high and that inspired another story called “The Vocal Tipping Benefit” and for that, I got another dollar tip from Call Me Les. So Two dollar tips made me believe that I could write and gave me belief in myself as a Vocal Creator. I spoke with Les about this and she told me that she believed that a tip may inspire a “pay it forward” attitude in those she tipped. It certainly worked with me and is a great way to encourage new Vocal Creators. Take a read of Les's excellent article below.

What The Two Dollar Tips Unleashed

Since then I have suffered from imposter syndrome and a lack of belief in myself but thanks to the support of so many people like Les and Judey Kalchik I have gone on to write over twelve hundred stories in two years.

I joined the Vocal Ambassadors Program in May 2021 and that has brought me a lot of coffee due to new Vocal Creators joining via my links.

I have lost count of my Top Stories and now each month I make enough from reads alone to cover my subscriptions, and then there are bonuses on top of that.

While I keep thinking I am not popular, my twenty-seven thousand reads blow those thoughts out of the water. I have also had many tips, every one appreciated, but without those first two tips, I doubt that I would still be here.

I have still never been placed in a Vocal Challenge but I know how successful I am on Vocal and was recently asked to contact them about putting one of my stories into their Vocal Resources. The article was a Top Story and you can read it at the end of this piece.

I have used my Vocal Stories to create four self-published anthologies on Amazon, the first an accidental publication after a chat with Les about her book. Below is how that came about.

So those two tips from Les are the reason that I am writing and flourishing on Vocal. I am also an Administrator in VSS and True Crime, Horror Story & Dark Poetry (Dharrsheena's group) as well as being a Group Expert in those groups and Judey’s group.

The lesson from this is, if you can tip new creators you can give them some self-belief, that’s what Les’s dollars did for me.