STOP! Don't Pull Your Hair Out Over Slow Reads Or Writers' Frustration On Vocal +. Even The Great Authors Of Our Time, Like You, Struggled With Writing When They Were Starting Their Journey. Just Ask The Most Successful Vocal Writer In History.

"A writer writes, always."

-Billy Crystal in Throw Momma From The Train

So, like everybody else on Vocal or the over 25,000 members of Vocal +, you want to be a writer, or at least parts of you do. You've always had ideas in your head. Maybe, over the years, you've imagined you would write a book. You have written short stories, started a novel, tried your hand at poetry, or even put together a manual for your regular nine to five gig and thought to yourself, "I should have been paid for that." A writer writes, always.

Then one night, while scrolling through Facebook or perhaps Instagram you saw an advertisement for Vocal promising that you could write stories from home and make as much as $6,000.00 a month on Vocal. If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. A rather aggressive recruitment plan was put into action and Vocal began growing its' numbers, crossing 20,000 and then 25,000 paid members. With a hard to keep track of roster of non-paying members and an ever-growing number of plus users, there is an active roster of both readers and writers. How do you make money at this? What defines "success" on Vocals' platform?

"A professional writer is an amateur that didn't quit."

-Richard Bach

Rejection and Failure

Even on Vocal, there is going to be rejection and failure. That comes with the territory of writing if you ask me. Sure, we could all write just for ourselves, keep the thoughts in our heads private, choose not to share the secret worlds we've built, the intriguing characters, or the tragic stories we have created. What fun would that be? Writers speak up when they tell a story, be it fictional and for entertainment, or non-fiction and for the purpose of educating someone to a cause, or instructional because we need to share some expertise.

Once you've hit that send button, emailing a manuscript and treatment, or even just the submit button, and posted a story on Vocal, you've taken a step towards finding out that what sounded brilliant, heartfelt, and amazing in your head will sound that way to others. That road you're on can lead you to either validation or rejection. Did your story get read? Was it accepted by a publishing house? Did it win a contest? Many times the answer to those questions is going to be an emphatic no.

The master of the macabre, Stephen King himself, faced rejections when he was trying to publish the book, Carrie. After considering throwing in the towel on the project, King finished it at the behest of his wife and was initially rejected. After the manuscript was rejected 30 times it was finally picked up by Doubleday. Carrie went on to sell over a million copies and became a successful film. King himself went on to publish 54 novels and 200 short stories. He has won numerous awards for his contributions to literature. Now, imagine for a moment, Stephen King gave up after writing Carrie as he was known to be particularly harsh on himself. Imagine after 20 rejections he stopped trying. Where would some of the greatest suspense and horror novels of our time come from?

J.K. Rowling rose to fame and fortune from obscurity and poverty in Britain as an unemployed single mother who was 'as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless.' At rock bottom and having an old typewriter and a big idea, Rowling got to work on Harry Potter. After 12 rejections an editor at Bloomsbury picked up the book for an advance of just 1500 British pounds, once telling the creator of the world of wizards that she should get a job as a teacher because she'd never earn a living writing children's books. Rowling is perhaps the best-known author of the past 30 years and went on to sell over 450 million copies in one of the best-selling series in history. Now, worth over a billion dollars, Rowling has successfully rebuilt her life after being repeatedly rejected.

We've all been there. Any writer that's been trying for a while and hasn't sold a book or found themselves making a living by writing, has been rejected. Writing is a skill that takes time, consistency, and effort to improve and perfect. J.K. Rowling isn't perfect, but as close as any author I can think of at the moment and should be a true inspiration to all of us that aspire to be successful as writers.

"A rejection is nothing more than a necessary step in the pursuit of success."

-Bo Bennett

Writing on Vocal is no different, that is when it comes to rejection or failure. You put in the time and effort to craft your story to the best of your ability. However, on Vocal +, you have to do the "leg work" and get your work out there. Sharing it with friends and family, then spreading it out on social media, you put yourself out there for all to see that you're writing and looking for readers. If you just publish it, then it's not going to get as much attention. Sure, it'll get some, as long as it's good enough to compete with the top writers on the platform and be a top story or contest winner. If not, then you're seeing one or two reads here and there if you're in the right community, and lucky.

Social Media

Forgetting for a moment that there are endless possibilities when it comes to considering where to share your work Facebook has several groups of Vocal Media Creators, the Vocal Creators Lounge being the biggest. With almost 3,000 writers as members of the group, there are almost 3,000 people that will potentially see your posts. Self-promoting your work is the best and fastest way to get reads and reads are where you're going to see the money start to accrue in your Vocal wallet.

Currently, I am a group member in over 240 different Facebook groups. I realize this is a lot, but these are all tools that are available to be utilized by people on Facebook. 5 of the groups are Vocal groups. There are, however, a number of other groups that are worth exploring. For instance, search creative writing in groups. How about short stories. Is anyone currently doing fiction? With all of the prize money involved in the SFS Challenge series, I'd be surprised if you weren't. And, how about you poets? There are several groups for poetry posts. For almost anything I've written about, there's a group to post it to that has anywhere from 20 to 250,000 members signed up and all are potential readers.

Don't forget to look for social media sites. We all know about Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram but what about the others. Reddit, Minds, Gab, Puresocial, Gettr, and Tumblr are just a few of the dozens of potential sites to use to get your stories, articles, and poetry out there for the world to read and share.

Attracting Readers

Your title, initial image, or video are everything when it comes to attracting readers. You can have a weak title and a great image but if the image doesn't fit your story will people pick your piece over someone with a catchy or interesting title with an eye-catching photo or image? Probably not. I've literally gone the wrong direction with titles on several occasions. I've chosen the wrong image more than a few times. It is an easy mistake.

One tool I have come to use is a Headline analyzer. Your headline and your image are like bait. So, if you can find a headline that is statistically more likely to get a reader to click on the story you're ahead of the game. Play with different titles. Write them down, see how they look, and then type them in and analyze them. The analyzer will give you a score. This is not always a guarantee of higher readers. With my last few stories including a score of 97 out of a possible 100, they all were slow to catch reads.

"The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write."

-Ernest Gaines

Interact With Other Writers

Remembering that you're not alone, it's important to interact with other writers and readers. The writers in these groups are all trying to do the same thing as yourself, grow their skill, find their voice, and maybe, just maybe, turn their passion for writing into a successful career. One way of doing that is going to be reading. Trading reads with other writers can lead you down a road to new friends, and most importantly, a road to see what others are doing and what successes they've had with their work.

When you see something that's incredible, even though you may be hundreds or even thousands of miles away, be sure to comment on the work. It lets the writer know what you thought, that they've gotten a read from you, that they might want to look at your work, and makes them feel appreciated for the work they've done. Internet communities can be just that, a community. These communities are filled with like-minded people that are from all over this crazy world of ours. Interact with them as much as possible.

I didn't write The Steele Inheritance. I wish I had, but it is a beautiful piece of work. The Steele Inheritance has a classic, suspenseful, who-dun-it kind of feeling that reminds me somewhat of Alfred Hitchcock's style. It was done as a short story by Jennifer Widelitz and has gotten rave reviews from the readers. The story was brilliantly crafted and the ending left me on the edge of my seat. For an amateur writer, this was a very memorable and intense read. When you find yourself reading a piece of fiction, or poetry, or a non-fiction story about something and it invokes real feelings in you, then remember to show that to the writer. You'll get it returned when you post works of your own.

Finding Success Takes Time And Steps

Vocal +, as I've come to learn, is a long game to success and any kind of lucrative income. Success can be measured in many different ways. It's all a matter of perspective, I guess, and there's a steep learning curve around here that needs to be part of the process. Vocals recruitment drive, as a company, has been impressive. There are still tweaks being made to the platform. Three new communities have popped up in just eight months, the last being fiction. So, success on both the operators of the platform and many of the users is still being measured. There are a few simple things to focus on if you're just starting out.

1. Writing-writing good quality content is important. Being consistent is important to the process because as I pointed out, this is a long game to financial success.

2. Perfecting your skills-when I look back at my stories from eight months ago, and a few from this year, I realize that they weren't my best works. My best works may not be the ones that got the most reads. No, my best works are the ones that after rereading them, months later, I'm still proud of what I finished.

3. Setting goals-set realistic goals for yourself. When to write, how much to write, what to expect based on your work, when to post to social media, are all things to weigh against what you want to get out of your time on Vocal. In early June I set the goal to reach 10,000 reads by July 1st. I missed that mark by almost 10 days but did get very close.

4. Don't quit-don't quit, whatever you do. Walk away beforehand and get some perspective. Take some time to yourself, decide why you're writing and with a clear head and fresh perspective, then make the decision. I've let it get the best of me a few times and my new online family has given me the encouragement to see past my frustrations and continue on this journey.

“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!”

― Sylvester Stallone, Rocky Balboa

Measuring Success

Decide what it will take for you to feel good about writing and writing on Vocal. What do you expect and what are you willing to sacrifice to achieve those expectations? There are multiple benchmarks to success and the little wins do come around with time and effort.

A success! This was my top story, my only one so far. I was trying my hand at something different, getting out of my comfort zone, and taking a slight break from fiction. It was my comeback story after seeing my daily reads count plummet from a few hundred to barely in the double digits on certain days. I was one foot out the metaphorical door, sitting at my desk, and decided I would do the one thing that I hate to do most in the world. I shared my feelings about a time in my life I felt like I didn't fit in. This was a contest entry for the Social Shock challenge. While I didn't win and didn't get a particularly high read count the first couple of weeks, seeing my story on the top page was exciting. A $5.00 dollar bonus to go along with the achievement made it all the more worthwhile as I had covered half my monthly membership with just one story. Then, by surprise, because I never expect it to happen, I received a $20.00 tip for the story. That's two months of vocal paid for, and I was thinking of giving up...

All total I have racked up an unimpressive but equally rewarding $160 dollars and change while I've been on Vocal. With just over $61 of it being from reads that leaves just below $100 of it coming from tips and bonuses. After 8 months on the platform and two months of being a $9.99 a month Vocal + subscriber, it's been a good experience overall for an amateur writer whose only professional writing experience before this was lengthy reports about arrestees and inmates in the criminal justice system.

Opportunities

Vocals platform is providing an opportunity but the opportunity must be seized and taken full advantage of. Taking a look at the current challenges, of which I've completed four and am waiting for my fifth one to be approved, there's a substantial amount of money on the line. To say it's a gamble or a long-shot is a fair statement, but how many lottery tickets do you buy a month. 9.99 is a worthwhile investment for a shot at 65,000.00 dollars in prize money and the potential for a bonus for finishing all 8 challenges. If you're a vocal user but not a plus member, now is the best time I've seen since I joined to follow the rest of us down the rabbit hole and start writing entries for the challenges. Click the image below if you're considering a subscription.

The Most Successful Writer In Vocals History

I actually have no idea who the most successful writer in Vocal's history is but I do appreciate you sticking around and reading this article. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it, please consider leaving a heart below. There's an option for tipping, but it's not expected, yet always appreciated.