6 Years a Vocalite: My Journey

I've reached a milestone here on Vocal, this is my 100th story! Now, I've seen a whole lot of different approaches to this particular story, but I wasn't sure how to approach mine. After some thinking, I thought I'd share a more personal story than what I typically write and answer a few of the common questions I get along the way.

Now, before we continue, it's important to note that I do discuss some pretty heavy stuff in the beginning. Right, let's get to it. This is the story of my continuing journey in content creation.

Back to the Beginning

Back in 2016, I was working on a TESOL course and part of that was to do demo lesson videos. These videos were between 6 and 10 minutes in length, and the first few that I did were a disaster. I was constantly stumbling over my words, going off topic...it was a mess.

To get comf0rtable in front of the camera, I started doing YouTube videos reviewing books, movies, anime and so on. It worked fairly well, I wasn't struggling so much and my demo lesson videos weren't so stressful anymore. As I worked towards the final project in 2017, however, my grandmother passed away. This obviously wasn't an easy thing to deal with and my mind went to some pretty dark places.

As a way to cope, I set up the Crazy Nut Reviews YouTube channel and moved all my review stuff to there from my personal channel. I've been going strong there ever since and have branched out to gaming and knife-related videos as well.

Discovering Vocal

In January of 2018, I discovered a site called Digital Fox Media. It was an entertainment-oriented website that covered movies, videogames, anything and everything related to pop culture. I wrote around 30-ish articles for them in all, and it was great fun. Then the team announced on Facebook that they'd be shutting down the fan writer program for a bit to focus on other ventures...this was in early April of that year.

This was obviously very sad news, especially since the only other writing site that I knew of at the time - Niume - had also recently closed its doors. One of the comments on that post, however, caught my attention; one of the ladies in the group recommended Vocal as an alternative writing platform. I thought about it for a bit and after a week or so, I created my profile.

I won't tell you that it was easy. Vocal had an entirely different system to what I was used to and it took time for me to learn the ropes and figure out how things worked. Thankfully, the support team here at Vocal is absolutely phenomenal and they were able to help me out whenever I needed them. Additionally, the writer's resources post(s) were a huge help and I was soon on my feet and writing.

Finding My Niche

Now, if you're a long time reader of mine, you may recall that my very first article talked about my first major fan convention experience - that article came out in June/July of 2018. A few weeks after that I wrote the first of two news-style articles covering the firing of game dev Jessica Price and a problem that Wizards of the Coast and Magic: the Gathering had.

My original plan was to do more gaming news-type articles and discuss trending topics with maybe a few other odds and ends thrown in for good measure. It was all meant to be super serious stuff, though, and after that second news article I kind of changed my mind. Don't get me wrong the news stuff was a good challenge from a research standpoint, but writing it was mentally draining. Additionally, things were changing much faster than I could keep up with and it just wasn't feasible for me to stay on top of trending news at that point.

With that in mind, I sort of ditched the news stories idea and went back to something I knew I could write: lists. I wrote my 5 Underappreciated Fantasy Films list and a game review in rapid succession. These were a lot more casual and were certainly more fun to write!

My Writing

Switching over to entertainment-related stuff was definitely a great move for me. I've got multiple series' on Vocal obviously and it's been going really well.

The Underappreciated Films series has been running, as I said, since 2018 and has reached 20 entries which is great to me. A short time after the third or fourth entry in the series, I added cartoon lists. My Underappreciated Anime series has been running since 2018 as well but it started with a different website. The 2nd entry was released in 2019 and I've since released the 3rd entry and re-released the 1st entry.

Also in 2019, I launched the Old School Anime Reviews series and it was and is a lot of fun - although my most recent entry was much sadder. One of the projects I launched back in 2020 was the Horror Classics series. The series focuses on classic horror movies that don't really get a lot of love anymore. While it hasn't been running for very long, that series has become one of my favorite projects.

My most recent project was the Crime Chronicles series which launched towards the end of 2023, and covers a variety of crime stories. So far, I've covered a lot of older cases from the 19th Century, but I've also covered both the Lucy Letby and Ruby Franke stories which concluded in 2023 and 2024 respectively.

I've also written a lot of gaming-related content (lists, reviews, and so on) and I've loved every piece I've done.

There are Some Things I Don't Write About...

Now, there are things that I don't write about and I have a few reasons.

I don't write about politics, because for one thing I'm not familiar with US politics. I do have an opinion on the subject, but I don't have any skin in the US political game. Writing about local (South African) politics is something that is just going to get very boring very quickly.

Current events are another subject I tend to ignore, and the reason is...complicated. For one thing, current events are only current for a short time. Two examples that come to mind are the recent Planet Fitness mess and the discussion about trans-athletes in women's sports.

If you're not familiar with these situations, let me give you a brief rundown. Planet Fitness revoked the membership of a woman who complained about a biological man in the woman's locker room. They doubled down and all kinds of other nonsense followed which led to the company losing $400 million in 5 days. Now, that situation is still sort of going, but it will burn out at some point. As far as the trans-athletes in women's sports discussion goes, that is something that I want to talk about. My thoughts there are pretty clear - I just want to make sure that everything is clear.

These two examples are the best ones because not only will they burn out, but they have the potential to give me a serious headache. These stories - particularly the latter example - tend to generate a lot of abusive comments and frankly I don't have the patience to deal with that. Still, I think that some topics are important so I will be broaching them at some point; I just want to make sure all my ducks are in a row first. :)

Some Common Questions I Get

So, before I go into future plans, I wanted to answer some of the common questions that people ask me when I talk about Vocal and what I write on the platform.

Question 01: How much money do you make on Vocal?

This is a common question that I get when discussing the platform and it's kind of sad that that's where a lot of people's minds will go. That said, I currently don't earn on Vocal in the typical sense. My content does generate revenue, but the payment system - Stripe - isn't supported in South Africa so currently that revenue is sitting as snug as a bug in a rug.

Question 02: Why do you write for Vocal?

Building on that first question, I write for Vocal primarily because it's good for me. I can de-stress after a bad day by reading some of the weird stuff that other Vocal writers have put together. I can also just have fun writing about stuff I enjoy whether that's videogames, movies, or something else entirely. Apart from that, it's just a good way to keep my skills nice and sharp.

Question 03: How Frequently do you Write?

As often as possible. I don't have a specific release schedule I just write, edit, and publish as often as I can.

Question 04: Is Vocal Worthwhile?

I think so. This kind of goes back to that first question, a lot of people think of this sort of website as a way to get rich very quickly. It's obviously not that simple, and that might discourage some people from trying it. That said, you can start a writing career of sorts with Vocal - if you want to. So, yes, I'd say it's worth trying at least.

Question 05: What Exactly do you Write for Vocal?

Another common question, and I think this will be the last one because it actually leads nicely into our last section. I write whatever I want. That's the joy of Vocal I can read and write about things that I ordinarily wouldn't read or write about.

Plans Going Forward

I've got a couple of things coming down the proverbial pipeline. I've got the next Crime Chronicles story in the editing phase. I've got a lot of Star Wars content planned for May. I also have several game reviews planned (BloodRayne 2, Medal of Honor, and a few others).

I can't go into too much more - mostly because I haven't quite figured out everything else I want to write. I will be tackling a couple of discussion-type articles at some point - as I said before.

Well, I think that covers everything for now so, I'm going to leave it there. Thanks for reading, I hope you guys found this to be interesting.