Why You Should Give Vocal Media Another Look

16 Days In, (almost) $40 - but only $1.52 was in “Reads”

A Newbie Blogger, on Medium first…

I joined Medium on April 16, and I love this platform!

Medium is a great community. I’m always finding new writers to follow, and there’s a constant array of interesting articles to read, depending on my mood at the moment. I’ve done OK, 80% curation rate, and earned $41.87 within 35 days (on Medium). I’m hopeful that will increase.

Soon after joining, I found another site that would reward me for my writing. I was pleasantly surprised with the results, after little more than two weeks.

Vocal Media

I joined Vocal Media on May 3rd, after finding out you can just re-post the stories you have already published on Medium. Which is super-cool, to get exposure/income from a second site, for not doing much additional work - just copy, paste, and tweak the formatting.

I’ve never done this in reverse, that is, post to Vocal Media first and then post to Medium. The reason being, I usually post here to publications other than my own (I have a fledgling publication, The Big Blue Marble) and most publications want unpublished stories only, although there are some exceptions.

Please note, if you do re-post an existing story to your own blog page or publication on Medium, be sure to go into your advanced settings and check the box under “canonical link” that acknowledges your story was previously published elsewhere. Otherwise, it does something wacky to the Google search engines when they find it listed twice.

That being said, after joining Vocal Media on May 3rd, I went about re-publishing several stories that had already appeared on Medium.

I have not, to this day, written an article exclusively for Vocal Media. All of my stories on that platform are re-posts.

Note: the folks at Vocal Media did send me an email when I first submitted, asking me to verify these were my own stories, since they could tell from Google the stories had been previously published elsewhere. I just said yes, and gave them a link to my profile here. They immediately sent another email stating everything was A-OK, and started publishing my stories. I mention this because I’ve read that up until recently, Vocal Media disapproved of pre-published articles. But that has definitely changed!

The Pay

I wasn’t expecting much in the way of earnings, after reading the fine print.

Vocal Media pays free members only $3.80 per 1000 views, though premium members get $6 per 1000 views. They also take a cut of your tips. Ouch!

And… they’re more expensive than Medium for a premium membership. After your 30 day trial period, in which you can go premium for $1, premium membership renews at $9.95 per month. Double the Medium membership cost.

There’s also the downer that you can’t withdraw your funds until they reach a certain amount: $20 for premium members, $35 for free members. So it might be frustrating to watch your funds grow, penny by penny, and potentially stall before it reaches that minimum.

One major perk, however, is that all of your reads count. Not just other paying members’ reads. So if you have a hefty LinkedIn or Twitter following, I can imagine you might do very well, if you can convince people to go and read your stories.

It’s also very user friendly to outsiders… they’re not confronted by a pay wall or a prompt to sign up for an account. They can just click your link and read your story. They can even tip you if they want!

If I had to choose, I think Medium is a more fulfilling experience, especially since you have a sense of community here. that really goes a long way.

But…you don’t have to choose one or the other! Why not do both?

The kicker for me, the real reason Vocal Media may be worth it, is not about the reads. It’s the potential earnings from bonuses and tips!

Day 2 on Vocal Media

Day 2 was a big day for me! I had uploaded maybe 7 or 8 stories, but they have to go through the administrators’ approval system, and it sometimes takes a day or two. Several stories were in limbo, and when the fourth story finally got published, I’d only made about eleven cents in reads. Not feeling all that encouraged.

When suddenly…an email arrived.

Cool! I have this story on Medium, too, published around May 1st, and even though it was curated, it still only has 13 reads. In comparison, on Vocal Media, it now has 168 reads.

Part of the reason for the 168 reads is this second email I got, a day later.

At first I was confused. It doesn’t say what the bonus was for.

Could it be a redundant email, just notifying me again that Vocal Media was granting me $5 to use my story on their homepage??

I was still puzzling this out, when I received a second email, identical to the one above. No more info, just a notice of another $5 bonus.

It takes a while for stats to be current on Vocal Media, unlike Medium. Generally they run a day, or sometimes even two days behind. So I waited for my stats/wallet to catch up.

The Answer Was in My Vocal Media “Wallet”

You can see on May 4, they issued a $5 bonus for that story to be featured on Vocal Media’s Twitter, Instagram, and FB pages.

Also on May 4, another $5 bonus for the same story, to be featured on their website homepage. Plus, a $1 tip for that story.

On May 5, they granted another $5 bonus for publishing my 5th story with them! At this point, I decided I really liked Vocal Media.

More Perks

You can see from the stats, I’ve only received $1.52 in reads for all of my stories (18 so far).

Even though the story “Free Pot for a Shot” has 168 reads, it’s only earned me $1.01 in reads. But it’s earned $12 in bonuses and tips.

Apples to apples: On Medium, that story has earned $0.66 since being published on April 30

If you add up the credit column, you’ll see as of yesterday, I made $33.52 so far, on 18 re-posted stories in 15 days. (Stats end on May 19) All but $1.52 was earned in tips ($7) and bonuses ($25)

Also note, Vocal Media gives a bonus for “milestones”, such as 5th story published ($5), 10th story published ($10!). I’m hopeful they give a bonus for 20th story, too, because I have my 20th waiting in the queue for approval right now.

Today, Another Top Story Bonus

Vocal Media published my 19th story today. It’s one I have here on Medium, as well.

I was thrilled to get an email a few hours later, announcing this:

Which brings me to $38.52 from Vocal Media, earned on re-published stories, in my first 16 days.

I would urge all of my fellow writers to give Vocal Media a try, at least for a month. You’ll see for yourself how easy it is for your re-published stories to earn you additional money.

Writers work so hard, and we usually get paid so little to write! It’s only fair that we should be able to earn more from the same stories on different platforms.