Vocal Vs. Medium

Why I’m Moving Away From Vocal Media In Favor of Medium

Medium’s announcement of the winners solidified this decision for me

Back in April of 2021, I was introduced to Vocal Media through a Facebook ad. I saw the advertisement for a writing contest with the grand prize being 20K. So I dipped my toe in, gave it a try. What did I have to lose? Only about $5 a month (until the deal was over then it was $10 a month).

Vocal Media & Getting Reads

Unless I won a contest, Vocal was clearly not going to be a place for me to really make any money as a writer. Their payout for Vocal+ members is $6 for every 1,000 reads, which means if all you wanted to make was $50 a month on their platform, you’d need around 8,500 reads a month (how daunting is that?). This is not an easy feat on Vocal because, in order to get reads, you need to advertise the crap out of your stories and articles on social media. If you don’t have a huge following it can be tough to get any reads at all let alone 8,500. This is the thing that let me know that I wasn’t about to make much money on Vocal without winning a contest.

I shared the links to my stories on my personal Facebook page and at first, I would get a few reads, but that only added up to a few cents. In reality, the people on my Facebook were too busy doing their own thing to really care about reading my articles. I have a handful of close friends who were supportive, but for the most part, nobody was reading my stuff.

Things did get a lot better once I found dedicated groups for Vocal writers in which everyone would read each other’s work and give each other feedback. It was exactly what I was looking for. I quickly immersed myself in these groups and made some writer friends. Everyone was super supportive, but for the most part, it was a “you read mine and I’ll read yours” kind of system. I understand this system was necessary because how else was anyone going to get their reads and feedback. There was so much to read, it felt overwhelming.

The Issue With Vocal

Some people joined Vocal just for the joy of writing, but that’s not me. I want to be able to make money doing this and Vocal’s system feels impossible. In my six months on the platform, I have gotten 483 reads in total and have made $2.90 from reads alone. But I have almost $68 dollars in my Vocal wallet, most of which came from various $5-$10 bonuses that Vocal sent me over time. At this point, I’m fairly certain there are no more bonuses in my future.

In order for me to get any more bonuses, I need to write a story that they deem good enough to place as Top Story or promote on their Facebook or Instagram pages. I’ve written several stories/articles that I thought were Top Story worthy, but in six months of writing on this platform, it hasn’t happened once. Though intellectually I understand that they get 1,000s of submissions a day, I can’t help but start to feel resentful that I’ve never been chosen.

I’ve exercised a lot of patience with Vocal. Many members have complained about Vocal’s lack of transparency when it comes to how they choose the winners for their contests. Over the summer there was a huge scandal when it came to light that one of the winners of a contest went over the 2,000-word limit by 800 words. Yet they still won 2nd place. The Vocal community was livid. I understood their anger and chose to see the upside. I wrote an article about how we should see it as a good thing because they wouldn’t be able to enforce the strict word count in the future. That was my most read article with 52 views, earning me a total of $0.31. In addition, Vocal also sent me a $5 bonus for that story because it was as they said an “awesome story”. It seems Vocal tends to give out those $5 bonuses for an awesome story whenever you write something positive about them. Though I got that bonus, the story itself was not promoted further by Vocal. There have been a lot of other issues and complaints about how Vocal does things, but I remained positive. I could see them improving the site every day.

Unfortunately, I think my patience is finally running out. I participated in several Vocal contests and didn’t win a single one of them. But I was never upset about that. There are a ton of amazing writers on the site and the odds of winning are low. Yet Top Story feels like another form of competition. I’m competing with the 1,000s of Vocal writers for a $5 prize based on whether or not they just generally like the story. It’s getting frustrating and I think I’m over the competition aspect of it.

Though we’ve built a community of writers through these groups, I still for the most part have to ask for reads. And because we all support each other, I will get them. But all this self-promotion is getting tiresome.

Why I Prefer Medium

This month I finally decided to give Medium a real shot and see what could happen. For me, the biggest pro that Medium has to offer is that they help promote your articles. People are coming across my articles organically and it feels good to get reads out of interest and not because I asked.

For another thing, you get more bang for your buck with Medium. Not only is their membership fee less money, but writers are paid at a higher rate when others read their articles. I have a friend who because he works long hours is not able to be very active on Vocal or Medium. He writes when he can, posts his stories, and hopes for the best. When one of his stories finally popped up on my Medium feed, I made sure to take my time to read his story, highlight, and leave him a comment. He made .23 cents off that one read. On Vocal it would’ve taken at least 10 reads for him to make that same .23 cents.

It’s the same for me. I’ve made less than $3 from reads on Vocal in six months versus over $15 on Medium in less than 3 months. Mind you, I just started putting effort into Medium towards the end of September.

The Last Straw

For me, that last straw with Vocal happened a few days ago. The way it works with Vocal is that once you write your story or article, you have to submit it to be reviewed before it’s published, similar to the way it works when sending your work to publications on Medium. This usually takes a day or two, but I’ve heard it can take up to a week. My experience has been that on average my articles are accepted in less than 24 hours, unless it’s the tail end of a contest then it takes longer. The last article, I submitted was accepted so quickly (within minutes) that it felt like they didn’t even read it. And of course, I didn’t receive Top Story for it. Needless to say, I was frustrated.

Then that made me think. People have often wondered if Vocal is really able to read all the contest submissions and then choose a winner within two weeks. I never entertained that idea. I figured they have a big enough staff to make it work. But when Medium received far more submissions to their contest than they had anticipated, they didn’t rush to get through them, they took more time to make sure they could read each one. Not only that but when the winners were announced, they wrote a 3-minute article explaining why they chose each one.

Vocal doesn’t do this. When they choose their winners we have no idea what stood out about those stories to make them winners. Vocal members have been asking for more transparency for months and not getting it. What they did instead was put out an article that gave a bit more insight as to how they choose their winners in general. At the time, I was glad that they finally put out an article giving us more insight, but compared to the way Medium presented its winners, that was nothing. They’ve only given a detailed article about why they chose their winners once, for the coming of age challenge last month. It felt like a one-time random thing that they don’t plan on continuing for future contests.

Am I Really Leaving Vocal?

Vocal makes me feel invisible, whereas on Medium I feel appreciated, I feel seen. And to top it off, I’m earning way more here. But to answer the question, am I leaving Vocal? Yes and no. There’s one more contest that I want to participate in and I was absolutely intending to end my subscription after the results for that contest came in (mid-November). But they’ve recently announced a huge fiction contest with no prompt, just submit your best work, and they’ll be choosing 25 winners and 1,000 honorable mentions. Sounds enticing, but not that enticing. The odds of winning this contest are no higher than the others just because they’re choosing more winners. I do want to participate and thankfully that contest is open until the end of the year. I’ll probably enter into it but I don’t see myself being as engaged in the site like I used to be.

Medium has given me new confidence. Though there’s a lot of talk about how difficult it is to make $1,000 or more on this site. There are writers on here who are actually doing it and so I know it can be done. I’m determined to figure it out. I know it will take time and for now, I’m focusing on making my first $100 on Medium.

Written just a week after joining Medium, when I was still a fan of Vocal.

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