Can You Make Money Writing For Vocal?

This will also go for sites like Medium that have the same concept of pay-per-click articles. People have been publishing on this platform for years, with dozens of articles from independent writers being uploaded every single day. It’s not exactly clear on how many visitors the website gets at any given time however, so answering the present question may get a bit tricky.

Hundreds of people are regularly publishing on the site, with the front page “Featured” section being updated on a near daily basis. Right away, if you are able to get a Staff Feature for your article, you will get a $10 payout from the site. It will also considerably increase your views and promote a little more longevity in consistent viewership later.

So all you have to do is get your articles to featured, right? Well, considering how many articles are published each day, it may be difficult to gain a regular presence on the front page. I’ve been writing on this site for about two years (though somewhat inconsistently), and three or four of my articles have made it to the front page. Even when I would publish 2 or more in a week, my featured rate was probably less than 10%. So unless you’re pumping out 10 fantastic articles a week, you’re probably not going to see that $10 payout regularly.

Aside from the feature, how else do you make money on these platforms? The answer is views. Pay-per-click is the dominant system here, similar in concept to how YouTube operates. If you have a standard Vocal profile, you’ll make roughly $3.80 for every 1,000 views. Not a bad rate by comparison to other websites. The hardest part is getting that 1,000 views. On months where I don’t publish at all, I average around 300-400 views. So consistency would be absolutely essential to gaining a substantial amount of revenue from the site. If you wanted to make $1,000 in a month, you’re going to need to gain around 325,000 views. Unless you are a member of Vocal+, which actually doubles your pay rate. However, it will cost you about $99 annually for the subscription. So unless you’re covering that cost with your revenue anyway, it’s probably not worth the upgrade.

It is hard to gauge financial success from sites like Vocal and Medium because there isn’t a lot of information out there on successful writers. I remember reading an article a while back about a woman who published a piece that generated about $1,200 in revenue over the course of a year, but I’m not able to dig it up again so take this with a grain of salt. Over the course of my two years of inconsistent publishing, I’ve generated a little over $30 from views, and about $25 from tips and Vocal payouts. Meaning that based on the estimate total number of hours spent writing, editing, and sharing the posts, I averaged $.91 per hour for my work. Granted, most of that is passive, but that’s still barely a wage.

So is it possible to make a substantial amount of money on Vocal? Probably, if you’re willing to sacrifice all your time and possibly a portion of your sanity to do it. In a similar fashion of sites like YouTube, persistence, consistency, and quality will determine whatever success you reach through your work. I’m sure there’s at least one person out there who’s at least partially paying their bills with Vocal money. But even if you’re not making a living wage from your work here, it gives you experience in editing your own work. Plus, it’s still satisfying to check your stats after not publishing for a couple months and still finding that you generated a couple bucks.

Don’t get into writing on here to make money, do it because you enjoy it and you want to express yourself to the world.