Why You Should Try Writing on Vocal

At the beginning of June, I thought it would be interesting to explore other writing platforms besides Medium. Other writers have mentioned Vocal and after some research, I decided to give it a try. For those who have never heard of Vocal or are interested in trying writing with them, I’ll be discussing my experience and why you should try writing there too.

Why You Should Try Vocal

Writing Challenges

This was the primary reason I decided to try Vocal. I’ve read that challenges used to be open to everyone but now they’re exclusive to Vocal+ members. One of the challenges that asked to “tell us about what fulfills you and why people should support your passion” had a first place prize of $22,500 😮 For anyone with a passion, writing included, this was a great opportunity to win a 5-figure prize. Sometimes I find it’s hard to come with new ideas to write about, but with a challenge, you have clear guidelines and a chance to win money. This is a win-win in my mind.

Vocal still has the offer for 1 month of Vocal+ for only $1. For $1 this was a no-brainer for me to try Vocal for at least 1 month. Just remember to cancel your membership before it auto-renews the next month for the full $9.99 if you decide to pay for Vocal+.

Write About Other Topics

I have other interests but they’re not popular topics on Medium and wouldn’t get many reads. On Vocal, you make money from anyone reading your stories, regardless if they’re a Vocal paying member. Every 1,000 reads get you $3.80 or $6 as a Vocal+ paying member for $9.99 per month or $99 a year.

If you like writing about topics not popular with paying members on Medium, try Vocal and optimize your articles for SEO. There’s no curation system on Vocal which means you can optimize the text for SEO even if the story doesn’t read well. Vocal stories are promoted if it’s selected by editors as a top story but most views come from SEO or sharing with your followers. One of the stories I wrote about my crafting hobby for a challenge was picked as a top story and got me a $5 Vocal bonus.

Another Platform For Your Articles

Use Vocal as another home for your articles to make additional money, especially if your topics are popular on Google but not popular with Medium readers.

You can also earn bonuses for meeting milestones. The great thing is you can make edits to your stories to further optimize for SEO if you couldn’t before because you wanted your story to be curated. I’ve copied over my existing stories to meet the milestones and made $20 already along with $0.49 writing about my hobby.

My Writing Experience

Story Submission

Medium has publications while Vocal has communities. In order to figure out a community for my story, I searched for similar ones on the same topic to check what community they were published in. You can choose up to 3 tags on Vocal but you can only select from a pre-defined list.

On Medium you can choose to self-publish your story or submit it to a publication. On Vocal, you need to submit your story for review by the editors to make sure they conform to community guidelines. I usually had a one day turnaround for my story to be approved and published but when I submitted multiple stories in one day, each story took one day to be approved. This means submitting more stories doesn’t mean you’ll get more stories published on the same day.

Writing Editor

This is hard to believe but there’s no auto-save feature in the Vocal editor. If you accidentally hit the back button or close your browser without saving, all of your work is gone — forever. Remember to periodically save your changes as you’re writing.

If you copy and paste your Medium stories into the Vocal editor you’ll lose the formatting. You’ll have to reformat the text but it doesn’t take too long.

Story Length

Vocal requires their stories to be at least 600 words. I prefer not having a limit because sometimes I’ve said all I need to say in less than that. If you’re always writing long content this shouldn’t be an issue for you.

If you like writing poems they need to be more than 100 words and submitted to the Poets community in order to be published.

Editing

Once you publish a story you can’t make edits unless you make a request to Vocal support. They can revert your story back to draft mode for you to make edits but you’ll have to resubmit and wait for approval before it gets published again.

Stats

There’s a stats page on Vocal but it’s very basic information showing views, likes, and earnings by story. There’s no detailed information for each story like the Medium stats. You have no idea how long a reader spends reading your article and how they found your article.

How You Make Money

There are 5 ways to make money from Vocal.

1. Article reads — Every 1,000 reads get you $3.80 as a free member or $6 as a Vocal+ paying member for $9.99.

2. Challenges — You can enter writing challenges to win prizes.

3. Tips — A reader can tip you for an article they enjoyed. You get more of the tip if you’re a Vocal+ member. See the difference in their Vocal+ comparison chart.

4. Bonuses —You’ll be given a $5 bonus if Vocal editors select your article as a top story. Vocal also gives you bonuses for meeting milestones.

5. Affiliate Program —Vocal’s affiliate program is referred to as the Vocal Ambassador Program. More information and the link to sign up for the program are in this announcement from Vocal. You get $5 for each person you refer to sign up for Vocal+.

Final Thoughts

If you’re interested in writing about other topics not popular on Medium or want to find another platform to make more money from existing articles, consider giving Vocal a try. For $1 you can try Vocal+ for one month and enter a few challenges for the chance to win extra money.

If you liked this article please consider leaving a tip. Thanks for reading and happy writing!