New Beginnings at Vocal in 2024

Building Writing Platforms

Sometimes change is good if it works into our strategic goals. This is the case for me as I upgraded to Vocal Plus at the beginning of 2024 (today). The half-off first-year price and overall features Vocal Plus offers were too hard to resist.

Focusing on building the writing platforms I already have, instead of always expanding and spending my limited time and effort with onboarding new platforms, has been an important goal for me over the last two years.

While there is a time for expansion, there is also a time to limit this aspect of our efforts and focus on building the platforms already invested in.

I wrote 6 stories here at Vocal over the last two years. The platform tempted me to come and write more, except the features without V Plus weren't acceptable. Not being able to edit after publishing wasn't OK and I didn't want to pay the money at the time.

Committing to Vocal Expansion

Things have CHANGED, as the picture explained, and now I'm here as a V Plus member excited to do some writing at this familiar place and see how it goes.

I also write at HubPages, NewsBreak, and Medium. I've been a long-time HubPages writer, so I don't want to let it go, yet Vocal offers a platform without the spammy ads and pays me a consistent rate (higher too) for views. See, the writing I do there would be good here.

I want to write exclusive creative writing stories here at Vocal. I'll probably syndicate my golf articles here too -- my best article out of the 6 published here is a golf article. Also, I will write exclusive articles here for any writing contests entered and probably another topic or two.

I was surprised that Vocal has 1.5 million creators on the platform. This is probably everyone who has registered for an account, both readers and writers. This is the number they gave when they sent me an email congratulating me for becoming a Plus member. I wonder how many are Plus members?

Vocal not showing how many followers or subscribers each writer has is significant. The focus is much more on their writings instead of their social status. From what I can tell, writers can't even tell who subscribes to them, which is also a significant departure from being mistaken as a social media site.

Also, wanting stories to be 600 words or more is another way Vocal departs from being a social media type site. I've seen stories here way under this amount, so there may be categories where stories can be under this number.

Here are the main reasons I've changed to become a Vocal Plus member:

• no ads
• pays per view
• can edit stories
• no AI
• has a large committed writing community
• values the artistic
• need to build up a new writing platform
• pays with Stripe
• can enter into writing contests
• another egg in the basket (if I make more than the yearly fee)

Conclusion

It feels like a new beginning for me at Vocal. For the last two years, I've been on the fence about using this platform in a significant way. This has given me the chance to keep an eye on the site, investigate it from all angles, and become familiar with it.

Overall, I think it is a good opportunity for writers and the platform is clean for readers. It is a great place to feature your writings because the writing community values artistic expression.

While I'm not sure how well I'll do after a year of effort, I'm excited to find out.

Tell me, how has your time at Vocal been?