VocalReviews of vocal.media

ugh...I really wanted Vocal to work. I felt really excited about having worthy contests to enter. However, when my story got published, there were words missing that were there in the original writing. When I tried their edit feature the words were there. SO CONFUSING! I wrote customer service and tried to explain but just got vague replies. I wrote back 4 times each time getting a canned response. I even asked if I was talking to a real person, no response except for "your story has been returned to edit". SO STUPID! I'm done.

It seems that most of these reviews are about minor website issues that can easily be fixed if the problem is made known to Vocal. Not people who actually gave it a shot. Vocal is by no means a walmart manager that isn't taking your expired coupons. It's an up and coming platform attempting to give those with a passion to write a voice. Yes there is a small monthly cost that is no more than a spotify subscription. The funds for contest payouts have to come from somewhere? As far as areas of work goes: The most important thing to note is that this is a platform of writers. NOT readers. Writers will read others works in trade for them to read theirs back. It's not very genuine at times. There needs to be more work done in creating authentic reads. Perhaps a different side of Vocal made of people who want to read about specific topics as opposed to write, publish, and seek exposure. Maybe a penny paid for each paper read too? There are incentives for reading and hearting other peoples writings which is nice, but there is far too much supply of content than there is a demand for it to be consumed. Many writers wonder why their reads never skyrocket and this is why. Unless your writing isn't promoted heavily or picked in a contest, the read count might not go very high. It's sad to see people externalize their worth and creations into pennies, views, and hearts. That saps the passion away.

I got an email inviting me to try the contest on the Vocal site. Figured I would give it a try. Followed the link, paid the $1 for the account. Published the story, but vocal would not confirm if the story was entered into the contest. the story was confirmed and published to the site, still no indication that it had been entered into the contest. I had realized that when they announced the winners, that my story was not listed as one of those being in the contest. Now I think my story was pretty good and at least deserved a chance to be entered. They should have at least had some type of notification that the story was entered. The second issue with the site is exposure. If you publish your stories there, you are but a drop in their ocean. The already established authors rule the publications. Unless you had already established yourself, you will be completely unkown on this site. My stories were on this site for 2 weeks and I made 3 cents. When I checking into the list, my story was lost in the thousands who were publishing as well. A big example of their sea was that almost 9000 stories were entered into the contest I was trying to enter. They gave themselves a week to judge the stories. Which is 1200 stories a day, or 52 stories an hour. There is no way you could evaluate all the stories, fairly, entered into the contest. I did not give them one star because they do have a good idea for the site. They have executed the site pretty well and have deleted the stories I published fairly quickly when requested. There are just so many authors that you are lost trying to get exposure for your work. I myself do not write to make millions, I just love telling stories and providing escape to those who read my work. thanks... Stan...

I tried this site out at the suggestion of my partner who writes on there regularly (mostly game/movie/music related), thinking I could switch from a free site I was at to something that might make me a few bucks just for writing but I fail to see that happening. For a site as big as this with money to go around as prizes for writing challenges (the winners are a joke btw), you would think they could at least have a more robust text editor function and/or a simple 'preview before you post' button but don't. It made trying to transfer my work over a pain so I stopped. I still have not figured out how to delete my account. From other reviews here I gather it's not at all easy.

Pathetic. I submitted a piece, and it was arbitrarily placed into a category that DOES NOT EXIST AND IS NOT ACCESSIBLE! So I have had friends try to search for it specifically, with no luck ... how on Earth does anyone ever read what you write? I feel as though if the piece is not PC enough, and doesn't appeal to SJW's, they sweep it under the rug and make it impossible to access. Meanwhile they showcase Youtube channels and writing that is frankly so amateurish and full of virtue-signalling that it is rendered unreadable to any discerning adult. For this utter rubbish they want you to subscribe for more than a Netflix account would cost you? A totally demoralizing experience - avoid it like the plague!

The contests are a complete joke. They pick ridiculous winners with entries riddled with spelling errors, and one winner didn't even abide by the word count. It's a giant waste of time and they clearly don't have the manpower to read every submission so they select winners at random... or have some poorly formulated algorithm do it...it's unreal. If they truly selected the winners, they have no grasp of writing mechanics. I'd also suggest they give one or two sentences on why they are giving that piece thousands of dollars.

This is not the website for you if you're trying to make money for your writing. Personally for me it is the site for me, for now. Especially after they work out their kinks. I'm not trying to make money from writing just was looking for an easy platform to submit and share. And other established platforms seemed too instagramy for me. Vocal is relatively new and still has heart. I can understand people's frustration, it seems to be in its early developmental stage. An issue they have is that there isn't an edit feature (edit: they introduced one today for paid members). The stats are all also delayed by 42 hours. I think they would benefit from some sort of community communication. I can understand why they don't allow people to comment etc. But even a feature like allowing other writers to have a column on their profile of favorite stories (from the website) would be beneficial. At the moment it's just write publish and that's it. They do have staff picks. But that is problematic within itself cause it would be inherently bias cause it's coming from a limited source of people. It's okay and vocal media does have potential, sticking to it for now :)

May be good vocals but nothing is catchy- not a great selection - for my taste i wont find a hit. For my taste overpriced - rather stay with SoundBetter