The Life and Times of a Writer

Today, after two years of subscribing and writing on Vocal Media I decided to try to understand the platform a little more than I do.

Overall, I love the platform for various reasons. First, the editor is easy and intuitive to use. Having said that, I have yet to find some of the bells and whistles so readily to hand on Medium. I know they are there as I have seen them in use in other people's stories. So that one is on me.

Two outstanding features of the Vocal Media editor I adore are the direct connections to Unsplash and Grammarly. These make the life of the writer so much easier. I used to write on Medium and then transfer across to Vocal Media. These days it's the other way around. I do think it is high time that Medium got its act together and included those two essential features on that platform.

Vocal Media also allows me to post stories, articles and poetry written elsewhere. So everything I have written on any other platform, can be easily posted on Vocal Media. This immediately allows me access to a wider market and the possibility to exponentially increase my exposure.

I also like the fact that Vocal Media actively promote new stories, top stories and writers that they love. However, I have a problem understanding how Vocal Media selects Top Stories, for which there is a five-dollar payment to the writer.

I have taken the trouble to read many of those Top Stories and I have compared them to my own humble efforts. I have to say, at the risk of being accused of blowing my own trumpet, my own stories are easily the equal, and in some cases better, than many of those stories selected.

I would be interested to know how a Top Story is selected. Is it random, purely the luck of the draw, the throw of the dice? Or is some other system in play like a series of algorithms?

I am also struggling to understand how some of my stories which went viral on Medium, attracting up to eleven thousand reads, have achieved absolutely nothing on Vocal Media. And those stories have earned me quite a pretty penny on Medium.

To be precise, on Medium I have earned almost three thousand dollars over the same period of two years that I have been on Vocal Media. What's more, my monthly subscription fee on Medium is five dollars a month as opposed to the ten dollars a month I pay on Vocal Media!

In the two years I have been on Vocal Media I have earned the princely sum of eighty-two dollars and fifty-two cents. Eighty dollars are bonus payments for reaching certain milestones, such as a certain number of articles published. This means that just two dollars and fifty-two cents is for reads, in two years!

Another curiosity I have just come across is a section on the home page called 'Creators we are loving' Here I found one writer with just one story from eleven months ago! The story was promoting a product called Dune. This came across to me as what is called an advertorial.

So the article was written by a professional copywriter (I know because many years ago I earned a darn good living doing exactly the same thing for newspapers and magazines). Some would call the piece in question 'product placement'.

Anyway, my point is this; how can Vocal Media promote a one-story writer from almost a year ago, yet not ever mention somebody who has written and published 160 stories and articles and has paid them 240 dollars in subs? It is my belief that any platform should support the creators who support the platform with regular submissions of creative content as well as monthly subscriptions.

On Medium I am ahead of the game in terms of earnings. On Vocal Media, I am well behind the game. Fortunately, I am not driven by money alone. If I was I would have given up this writing lark years ago. But it is nice to be appreciated. This week, for the very first time I received some positive comments from a few reader writers. That was a pleasant surprise. It would be nice to see that continue.

What exactly is the reason for my lack of success here on Vocal Media? I can only concur that, for whatever reason, there has been a lack of promotion of my published stories. Had I published my stories elsewhere and they also failed there, then I would say that that was on me. But that is most certainly not the case. How can a story work spectacularly well on Medium and fail miserably on Vocal Media? It has to be to do with the negligible promotion of my stories. Or perhaps it is to do with Vocal Media having a much smaller share of the audience market? Maybe it is a combination of the two.

So, what does this all mean? Well for the sake of personal finances, I should just concentrate on Medium and quit Vocal Media. But, one, I am not a quitter and two, it is not all about money, never has been and never will be. There is one thing I can do to improve matters from my end of this Vocal Media relationship, the writing challenges.

Writing challenges are such a great idea, I am amazed that Medium has not chosen to take that route. The Vocal Media challenges offer writers a great incentive to improve their writing, and to get financially rewarded for doing so.

And so it is with that in mind I shall set to chasing the main prize, which can be up to one thousand dollars. There is hope I can pull this Vocal Media thing around, and still be writing here well into the future.