Vocal Media: How Blogging on Another Paying Platform is Going…
Three bonuses so far, but the platform’s so glitchy!
I’ve been delighted to receive three bonuses from Vocal Media in less than a month for posting my stories. One of them was awarded ‘Top Story’ status — great news!
This means I’ve easily made a lot more money in my first month on Vocal Media than I did in my first month on Medium. So far I’ve earnt £20.40 — I’ve only been doing it for two weeks. On Medium I made $1.04 in my first month.
But there’s a glitch… actually there are a lot of glitches… and that’s the problem with Vocal Media. The whole site is so glitchy! I thought it was a new platform and they’d iron them out, but I recently found out it has been around for years — so this is it, I guess!
Most annoying glitches
Today’s most annoying glitches were that it refused to save my story — three times. I gave up. The interface is designed so that you can’t save your story until you’ve uploaded your main picture. I didn’t sort out the main picture until last. Then the platform decided there was an error and it wouldn’t save. I lost the story. Three times.
Vocal Media’s interface is poor compared to Medium. The auto-save function on Medium means you won’t lose your work. On Vocal Media, honestly, anything could happen! It makes the Medium interface seem dreamy.
But, so far, it’s paying well. So stay with me…
Getting started was fun! Not
My first discovery of the glitchiness of Vocal Media was when I tried to get started. I couldn’t type into a blog. After a few frustrating attempts to contact their support team, I eventually realised it doesn’t work on Firefox… or Chrome (Chrome crashed). But if you use Microsoft Edge, it’s OK.
Small mercies.
The upsides...
Fortunately, Vocal Media keep giving me bonuses. The bonuses alone are enough to incentivise me to keep me working on it for now. We’ll see how it goes. At the moment, the reads aren’t clocking up to much (40c) and I don’t see much point in continuing with the premium membership unless read rates improve dramatically (because you get paid more per read — but only if people read).
Other problems I’ve encountered with the platform include:
- The 600 word minimum. A lot of my stories fall short, so I have to make them longer.
- My pictures are either too big or too small, so I have to go into Photoshop and resize pictures before they can be uploaded onto a Vocal Media blog.
- The Vocal Media team have to approve stories, which is fine, except for when they tell you your links are broken, but the links look fine. I’ve jumped through a few hoops trying to figure out why my links are being rejected!
Concluding thoughts
Overall, I plan to stick with it. The bonuses are keeping me interested. Views are slowly starting to build, so we’ll see how it goes. Two weeks on, Vocal Media has delivered a lot more than Medium did in the first two weeks, so it must have something going for it.
Getting articles accepted by moderators is also relatively easy. You don’t have to apply to publications, and no one has told me to change everything to active voice, which is a bonus!
Also, you get paid for reads, whether those readers are paying members or not, so it might be a better platform to send links to your friends.
