Why to Join Vocal Facebook Groups, and Some Internet History

Once upon a very long time ago (over 20 years), there lived a website that paid writers a dime every time someone clicked on a link and read an article. This is a good deal, the writers thought. Maybe we could make a living with this new-fangled technology and stop having to pitch magazines and wait months by the mailbox for replies and rejections. And for a while, things went swimmingly. The writers wrote, the readers clicked, the website paid.

But, dear readers, this is a fairy tale with a moral to the story. It didn’t take long for the writers to figure out how to make that goose keep on laying golden eggs without feeding the poor thing. They set up link farms and private discussion boards and clicked on each other’s articles without reading them, and stopped trying to bring in new readers because that was a lot more work. The company realized what was happening and tried to close the barn door, but it was too late. The horse was already out and the goose starved to death.

If you thought that little tale was pure fantasy, I’m going to pop your bubble in the same way the dot-com bubble burst. I was there. It happened. Much has been written about the dot-com bubble over the years, and most of it has focused on the tech and retail companies that bloomed and withered, but that was also a heyday for writing on the internet. Those companies had so much money they paid for almost anything, passing out dollars per word and stock options as rewards like they were lollipops. Until they ran out of money.

Now, the demise of the dime-a-click website wasn’t entirely the fault of the writers. Everyone was out to make a fast buck and the company’s business plan consisted of throwing shit at the wall to see what would stick. They weren’t the only ones. A lot of websites wanted writers to provide content and paid in varying degrees. They tried to pivot with the times and survive the popping of the bubble, but most of them aren’t around anymore. Remember Suite101? No? There you go.

This brings us to the present. People learned from those early failures. Companies got smarter about little things like revenue and business plans (ignoring for the moment that no one has figured out just how Twitter is ever going to make money). And now, ventures like Vocal Media (and others) are on the scene and there’s a new/old way for writers to at least get their work out there, if not make money.

Vocal is clearly much savvier and focused than that dead goose of a company from times of yore, and that’s a good thing for the thousands of writers who have signed on with dreams in their hearts and hopes in their pockets. Yes, we get paid based on clicks, but those clicks have to result in people actually reading the article. Software and algorithms have come a long way. And the pay-per-read is a much more realistic rate in terms of the company’s long-term survival. But to both survive and thrive, they need us to read.

Sure, Vocal makes money on premium memberships, and that’s likely the main source of revenue. And no, I have no knowledge of the company’s inner workings and no connection with them, I just have decades of writing and business operations experience behind me, including five years as the managing editor of an arts and culture website. I joined because Facebook showed me an ad for a writing contest involving Moleskine and $20,000. I didn’t believe I could win – I’m not a terrific fiction writer – but I saw enough on the site to make me think it could be a good place to become a better fiction writer, share some of my other work, have a little fun, and maybe earn a few dollars. I was right.

Then I found some Facebook groups dedicated to Vocal writers. If there’s any myth about writers that deserves exploding more than that we’re solitary creatures, I can’t think of one. Writing is often a lonely pursuit, and we often write because we’re lonely. We’re a little complicated, amiright? We want company. We need to reach out to others in our tribe, even if we don’t know who they are yet. Hence the growing popularity of the Facebook groups.

Because I’ve been writing since the days of fairy tales, I approached the groups with a little skepticism. Would this just be the modern version of link farming? People dropping their links and running? Well, the truth is that yes, sure, there’s plenty of that and always will be. I’m even a little sympathetic. Starving writers have to eat at some point. But so far, there have been enough people interested in community, fellowship, critique, reading, learning new things, and support to make the groups useful and fun, and to make up for the runners. This outside engagement is important for Vocal’s sustainability.

That big-prize contest brought in a lot of new writers to the Vocal community. Once the winners were announced, some people complained, some people were sore losers, and likely some people canceled their memberships. That’s to be expected and it happens every time that contest winners are announced. And it’s highly probable that Vocal already has those kinds of ups and downs factored into their outlooks and plans for what’s next. There’s nothing you or I can do about that.

What we can do is support each other. Take the time to read each other’s articles, stories, and poems. For every article you publish, read two. Or three. All the way through. It’s a simple formula. Engage with your fellow writers. Join groups. Comment, drop hearts, follow the prompts of group moderators. Evangelizing is important to sites like Vocal – there’s a reason you have an option to share your work on social media after publishing – but not everyone is comfortable doing that. Not every introvert is a writer, but a lot of writers are introverts.

What none of us wants, even if it hasn’t occurred to you yet, is a closed circle. That would look too much like a bubble, and you know what happens to those. Vocal needs to stay above a certain threshold of number of active writers to survive and thrive. To do that it needs to keep current writers engaged and to attract new ones. Offering challenges and advertising them on social media is clearly their main strategy at the moment, and it's clearly working. They likely have others in the pipeline.

The important thing for us to remember is that we aren’t just passive participants in this endeavor. We can have a hand in the success of Vocal just by reading each other’s work, and that in turn helps us be successful. Join one or more of the Facebook groups for writers:

The Vocal Creators Lounge

The Vocal Creators Support Group

Vocal Social Society

Vocal Media Creators Hub

Vocal Creators Saloon

– but don’t just post your stories and run. Read, heart, subscribe, and comment. Without reading other people’s work, without engaging your fellow writers, this will all fall apart and we will have starved the goose.

If you find this helpful, please consider subscribing. I'll be offering lots of writing tips and helpful advice in the coming weeks from the perspective of a professional writer. Hearts are highly appreciated. Tips are always welcome. The following are other articles that I hope you find useful.