At It Two Years

Thoughts After Two Years On Vocal

Ninety-Five percent of the people that will see this probably won't. That is the reality of Vocal and writing a meta-article about my time on the platform. Hell, it's the reality about every story, every poem, and every article on Vocal, no matter how good it may or may not be. There are good things about writing on Vocal that mustn't be taken for granted. And even though the experience was never what I hoped it to be, it wasn't all bad.

I remember seeing my first advertisement in November 2020. "Makeup to $6,000 telling your stories from home." I believe it was on Instagram. It was a part of a mass marketing and recruitment campaign that came at the right time, at least for me.

So, after two years, how well did I do? There are a lot of different ways to answer that question. In some respects, I didn't do that badly. In the roughly 20 months I've been a paid member of Vocal +, I would have spent 200.00 dollars on the membership. In that time, I've withdrawn $408.14. I earned a little more than twice as much as I've spent. That is all thanks to the readers that were kind enough to read my stories, ramblings, articles, and poetry.

After two years, and nearly 550 pieces, 408.14 isn't a lot considering it's less than a dollar a story. The reality of Vocal, even as a paying member, you don't make a penny a read. For every two readers, you'll cross the one-penny mark. The math to earn 6,000 dollars on Vocal turns out to be 1,000,000 reads. That's a million people that you have to get to read your stories to make 6,000 dollars. How many people have made it that far?

A Million Reads

Anyone that writes and self-publishes online will share their successes as a way to maximize their following, their long-term prospect for passive income, and their exposure. Doing a Google search I find one person has written an article about crossing the million-read line.

How did he do it?

Aamir claims to have learned five things while writing and self-publishing on Vocal. They're common sense pieces of advice that people may or may not agree with. The first of those is to utilize SEO. Search engine optimization.

This will help get more readers because it helps your work stand out when the subject of your articles, stories, or poetry is searched online. Studying SEO is important to self-publishing and digitally marketing your work. There's more to marketing yourself than just dropping your links on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or wherever else you might have found.

My first article to garner over 25,000 reads was posted on Medium and I used SEO tactics while writing it. On Vocal it didn't do as well as Medium. But, following SEO principles did get a ton of traction.

Production

Being productive as a writer will help you to gain a following. If you're not writing, then you should be reading the works of other writers and developing those relationships. A big number of your reads will come from the writing community.

Don't stop there. Try not to become bogged down by spending too much time on one niche. Being stuck in a niche limits your potential exposure. Even Stephen King, James Patterson, and other celebrated authors flexed their skills into other subjects.

Keep Positive

Besides being solid life advice, when you're writing and publishing online you never know when something might take off. What you call a failure today could be your success piece tomorrow.

Trying your hand at different avenues of writing will help build your skills, keep things from becoming mundane, and keep you from cutting yourself off from potential exposure and even earnings.

I've been on Vocal for two years, and it has done something for me. I've struggled, I've hand wrung, and I've passionately written nearly 550 stories, articles, and poems. I've gotten better as a writer.

I'll never win a challenge. That's one thing I'm dead certain of, and sure it makes saying keep positive sound hypocritical. Even with promotion on social media I now have 30 stories I couldn't get anyone to read, and 20 pages of low single-digit stats.

Ultimately, I've learned that Vocal challenges aren't a nut that everybody can crack, but Vocal has forced me to work harder, and think more, and did turn me into someone comfortable enough to try Medium, and now Newsbreak.