Today we’re excited to introduce Challenges, a new way for creators to get inspired and join the rest of the Vocal community in some friendly competition. Starting this week, creators will be able to participate in various Challenges across a range of topics and interests for the chance to win cash prizes, experiences, and much more.

We’re always working to create tools that help reward and encourage you. That’s why we’re excited to introduce our newest update: Likes. Now, you can more easily support your fellow creators, and receive support yourself, through liking Vocal stories.

From building a home for your stories to fostering the growth of an entire creative community, we’ve been hard at work for the last three years helping you create, share, and earn from your stories. A few weeks ago we shipped Vocal 2.0, which along with the new features and updates, sets the stage for the future.

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been nearly 3 years since we released Vocal. We’ve since been joined by over 470,000 creators and their stories.

We believe great stories deserve to be rewarded, so we created a tipping feature to help fund your creativity. Tipping allows your audience to pay you directly for your stories. We take a 7% transfer fee to support Vocal so you can keep creating on it without invasive display ads. This is a great way to raise money for a project or let your audience support your passion.

Creators on Vocal are more than just users; they're our partners. So to make keeping track of your earnings easier, we’ve created Wallet. Wallet helps you keep track of the funds you have generated, including earnings from reads and tips.

Every good creator knows that imagery is a powerful tool. It helps tell our story, and can amplify the impact that story has on your audience. While we rely on images on the web to meet these goals, it is an unfortunate fact that many of the best images we find tend to be copyrighted, watermarked, or just downright expensive.

We launched Vocal on November 30th, 2016 to help creators easily share their stories, get discovered, and earn. Since then, over 400,000 creators have joined the Vocal community and shared stories that have inspired millions of people around the world. We’re proud of the creative community we’ve built, the lessons we’ve learned, and the improvements we’ve made.