The Depressing Truth on the Value of My Writing

I joined Vocal officially as a Vocal+ member in June of 2021. I began writing here shortly after my Medium account was suspended for the second time. It has yet to be reinstated despite multiple requests, and so I have continued to publish here for the past almost three years now. While at first I railed endlessly against their counterproductive censorship policies, absurd minimum word count requirements, bizarre "community" structure, and bare bones text editing capabilities I have come to accept the limitations and have developed something of a fondness for it. One thing that has not changed much since my Medium days is my popularity and viewership stats. I was never very popular there and that trend has continued apace. While I like to think I am a fairly decent to maybe even good writer, the general public continues to strongly disagree, at least based on the dollar value they have assigned to my work.

According to Vocal as of yesterday I had published 550 stories on the site. In that time I have earned a total of $30.13 from 5021 reads (~$0.05/story or $0.006/read). That's right I have earned a shiny nickel per story. If you add in various bonuses for top stories and tips that number rises to $85.13 or (~$0.15/story or $0.016/read). Fifteen cents per story! Wow. Now we are talking some real money. Of course since I pay ~$100/yr to be a vocal plus member I have spent around 300 bucks for the privilege of publishing here which brings my net profit to an amazing -$214.87. Yes, that's right, I have lost over $200 of my own money over the past three years writing and publishing over 500 stories here on Vocal. Of course that number does not take into account the time investment required to write all those stories. I have no real way to estimate that but for sure it was in the hundreds of hours over three years. On the plus side I have shown great restraint in not withdrawing a single penny from my account in three years. From a financial perspective, it seems my writing career has been terrible investment.

On the one hand that is all very depressing. Fortunately I did not begin to write with the hopes of fame and fortune and have a rewarding and decent paying day job as a research scientist. While, like anyone, I desire to be liked and admired and would love for more people to see and enjoy the things I write, I recognize that is very likely never to be the case. The topics I write about, my style, tone, etc. are just not everyone's cup of tea. In fact, if these numbers are to be believed, they are almost no one's cup of tea. But, that is OK with me. I actually have no problem with that. I know for a fact that those 5000+ reads I have gotten have affected my readers in a positive way. Hopefully it made them smile or laugh as that is generally my goal, but also, hopefully, it made them think. That is always my overall goal with anything I write. To challenge my readers to see things in a slightly different way, to make them think deeply about a topic that maybe they never thought at all about before. For me, one smile or one laugh or one confused reader is well worth the time and money invested. Just thinking about that one random stranger I have never met and almost certainly never will, sitting down at their computer, or looking at their phone and stumbling across something I have written and just busting out in laughter or smiling from ear to ear or even slamming their fist down in disgust makes me smile and brings me a joy like almost nothing else. No dollar value can be assigned to that, nor should one. So, I will go on writing, and likely, you (the reading public) will (mostly) go on not reading and the world will continue to go on as it always has.