Spreading The Vocal Word

Introduction

Vocal is a platform for both readers and writers, and I have brought a few people to the platform in various ways and this is just a way of documenting this.

If Vocal doesn't have subscribers and visitors then it does not work, so although Vocal has to do its bit, making sure the platform works, and trying to attract investment and subscribers we also have to attract people and that gives us coffee money and grows Vocal and we need to be a part of that.

Things go wrong, and we have complaints about things but that is life. One thing I love about Vocal is there are no adverts, which must be one of the few places that we can visit without being bombarded with things we don't want or our phone heard us talking about.

The music I have included is "Come On Let's Go" by Los Lobos from the Richie Valens biopic "La Bamba", cos that is what I am saying to people not yet on Vocal.

So, What Have I Done And Who Have I Attracted to Vocal?

The image above is my Vocal Ambassadors Page, which you can read about here.

Since I started on this program, over fifty thousand visitors have dropped into Vocal via my links to read a story. Of those 52 have taken out a subscription which has given me a little more coffee money. This has provided most of my income from Vocal even though the conversion is only one for every thousand readers I draw in.

I am a little worried that the conversions have stopped being recorded as the outstanding balance has been there since November 2024 but has been paid. I have reported it but would be interesting to see if others are getting conversions.

That is the macro stuff that I have done, but I have brought a few others to Vocal, some have joined with a free account for reading and commenting and some have sent me emails thanking me for sharing or using their work.

The first individual that I got a response from was from the folk singer Nic Jones who suffered a tragic accident but eventually came back to do live performances with his son, this was when I was on twitter:

This was the story:

The next was from the folk singer Leon Rosselson when I researched and wrote about his song "The World Turned Upside Down", this was his reply:

It is so nice to receive such appreciation from the people you write about. This is a piece I did about his work, which includes a link to the story that he wrote back about:

I often see artwork that inspires me and Angie Livingstone, "The Glittering Fox" produces such magical pieces that I have written twenty stories and poems so far inspired by her work, and we are talking about a book featuring her art and my words eventually.

This is an example of what she thinks of my work:

She also became a Vocal member to send me a tip for my work:

This is one of my stories inspired by Angie's work.

The most recent one is from the wonderful artist Bouke de Vries who replied thus when I told him I had used his work to inspire mine:

This prompted me to run an unofficial Vocal Challenge which has been shockingly successful though it closes tonight I am sure Bouke will inspire many more Vocal writers. This is the Challenge:

Thank you for reading, and I hope I have given you a few ideas to play with.