Why I don't care whether I make money on Vocal?

I feel like lately at least once a week I see a 'Staff Pick' titled "How did I make $4,000 on Vocal?" or "How to make real money from writing on Vocal?". Don't get me wrong, there's nothing more I wish I could do than write all day and get money for it. Win all those cool challenges and see my savings account growing, planning my next vacation with the money I earned from writing for vocal.media. Yes, that would be awesome, BUT...

For a very long time I was kind of frustrated that I only one of my posts ended up as a 'Staff Pick' and that I won exactly 0 challenges and that I clearly can't make Vocal my priority because it will not pay my bills at all. I saw people writing about how to get placed in a challenge and if you don't hot to approach it the next time, blah blah blah.

I'm not trying to rain on people's parade. If you can live off money from Vocal, if you got placed in a challenge and want to share how you did that, that's absolutely awesome and I will read your post for sure! After all you must have done something right. However, how many of the Vocal creators have never placed in a challenge? How many of us have never been a 'Staff Pick'? I can guarantee you there's more of us than we could ever imagine.

Still, there's one important question left. Should we chase this dream of being successful on Vocal hoping that one day we will be part of the 'cool kids club' where people make loads of money from their writing? Or should we just keep on writing whatever we feel like and maybe just maybe, one day we will get noticed? Or maybe you absolutely don't care if you ever get picked? If you don't, that's settled, you're my favorite vocal creator!

I read many articles that advise us how to write in order to be one of the lucky ones. Numerous tips that will help us place in a vocal challenge or be a 'Staff Pick'. I'm always interested in those people have got to say but one day it hit me. What if I don't want all that? I mean yeah, I kinda do want to be one of those who made it BUT I kind of like what I write. Of course there's always room for improvement, that is why I read books and go to college and read other people's articles but in the end I really enjoy writing for Vocal. Not because I make money of it, believe me I don't. I love it because it inspires me to get out of my comfort zone.

Before I joined Vocal I would be only writing travel blog posts for my website. I thought that if I started posting them here I'd get more people visiting my site and well, I don't know what's after that but it was a cool idea. At some point I found myself writing different pieces. Mainly because of the Vocal challenges. I saw the first one right after I joined. It seemed right up my alley, something about the first day our of quarantine. I decided to share my tour guiding experience and describe my perfect day in DC.

Afterwards I kept going... I wrote "I'm nothing without travel industry" that to my surprise ended up being a 'Staff Pick' (first and last time). That was actually the very first article I wrote that talked more about my feelings and point of view. Before that I stuck strictly to tips on how and where to travel.

From that moment on everything has changed. I wrote bunch of different articles talking about my journey as writer, hating my own book and all that. I came out of my comfort zone and started writing about literally anything that I felt like sharing. I started treating Vocal as my outlet and with time I kind of forgot about the whole 'money making' purpose of it. These days I treat vocal challenges more like an inspiration to give me a new subject to write about. Something that maybe I wouldn't come up with by myself and now I have a reason to actually get into it. I absolutely accepted that I might never win a Vocal challenge and that's okay, because there's a whole journey behind it.

Do I hope to one day be featured as a 'Staff Pick' again or even win a challenge? Of course I do! I'm not saint! If one day I see my name on the main page, I am most certainly not going to pretend that I don't care. I'll be sharing it all over my social media saying that my dreams came true. Until then I'll keep on treating Vocal as my ultimate outlet to all the creativity I have in me. If anyone reads it, that's awesome. If no one does... I don't really care. I'm proud of it anyway.