My Thoughts on the "Exclusive" Enterprise

A glitch in the matrix

The first thing I noticed was that when I clicked on notifications, I was getting a "Page not found". I could still see, from the notifications, where the new comment was. It's a few extra clicks. It's no big deal.

Next, I shared my latest micro in a Facebook group. The preview (thumbnail) wasn't the cover picture I'd chosen for the story.

Shoot, I thought. I've copied the wrong link. It looks like I've managed to copy the link to the community, instead of to my story. How did I do that?! What a Grade A muppet I am.

I double checked, and it turns out, I'm not a muppet. (Shame. Look how cool he is.) The link did take me to the correct place (my latest story). I chalked it up to a weird glitch, and moved on.

(NB. I raised this with Vocal and they are on the case. It might have been fixed already.)

Et voila

It should have been no surprise, then, when Vocal dropped the news about Exclusive Stories. That's what a glitch in the matrix means, right?

They're changing something.

TL;DR

Vocal+ members get the option to have people pay for some of their content. It looks like it will be simple enough for us to use.

Pledges

I would not be in the least bit surprised if there was never a single "pledge" on this site. I've wondered occasionally why it wasn't pruned ages ago. It looks like this feature replaces that one.

First Sight, Second Thoughts

My first thought: I don't love or hate this. Writers will use it; readers probably won't care for it, on the whole. There's already so much free content. Who's going to pay for the cow when they're getting so many gallons of milk for free? Exclusive Stories is a slightly better feature than Pledges was, but I can't see it getting much more traction...

My second thought: ...unless Vocal have an overall overhaul on how the entire platform is structured. How they make money, how we get paid. What are the odds of that?

It could make it similar to Medium, if I recall Medium's setup correctly. Mind you, I haven't been over there in a long time. (FTR, I have a Medium account. I've barely used it.)

I had the same thought as others did; Hey, cool! We can make the first chapter or instalment free, and make the following ones paid. Great!

Micro purchases

People are commitment-phobes. They're generally unlikely to start a long series even if the bloody thing is free. Giving one of us a paid subscription is just... unlikely.

Giving each other paid subscriptions is even less likely. Vocal+ members are already paying a subscription. I'm not going to pay Netflix to access their content, and then pay again to watch Baby Reindeer, or whatever, and it doesn't matter how good it is. (Sorry, guys.)

But micro purchases could work. People are more likely to toss you a dollar on a whim, no strings attached. Hell, I've chucked a dollar at several of you in the past, and it wasn't even the same dollar! If Vocal make it really easy for folks to give us money (that's going to be key, I think), then who knows.

Summing Up

• I'm glad Pledges was removed and replaced with something (marginally, probably) better.
• It's an opportunity to (maybe, possibly, hopefully) increase revenue. Wouldn't that be nice? Ah, to live the dream!
• I don't think it will be much better in practise. The bottom line, for me, is this: why would anyone pay for content when there's so much available for free? It just doesn't seem logical. Time will tell.
• I could be wrong! People value what they pay for.
• Micro purchases can be quite successful in increasing revenue, so maybe that's where the magic will happen.
• We could be looking at Medium 2.0 in future (let's hope not). It's not that the lack of your ha'penny will leave my bills unpaid and my bank manager weeping into his hat. It's just... I spend my time here, rather than Medium, for a reason.

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Thank you for reading!

Here's Vocal's article on Exclusive Stories: