VocalReviews of vocal.media

I published work on here when I discovered VM last year. I didn't get feedback or reads until I joined their Facebook groups, (there are many). You can share your VM published work on these groups then you may get more reads, and feedback. I even managed to get a Top Story, maybe because someone from the group liked one of my poems? I'm sure that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't joined their FB groups. Payments - I am not a paid Vocal member, so obviously I dont get paid hardly anything, however, I should have been paid bonuses for submitting over 10 articles and the Top Story I had. I didn't. I asked on the Facebook groups about this, I'm not the only VM contributer who had not been paid bonuses - I discovered its a common thing. I was told to email support, I did, several times but got no proper answer, even got suggested by someone on the Facebook group that I had used AI and that was the reason! No I don't use AI and never will. All my work is original. She clearly hadn't read any of my stories, otherwise she wouldn't have suggested it. I'm still waiting to be paid what I'm owed, and waiting for a proper explanation as to why I'm not receiving my bonuses. I think, like FB algorithms, not everyone sees your published work. When you go onto the FB vocal groups you see the same publishers all the time. They always get top stories and often win competitions, challenges, story of the day, week etc. I think many of these publishers who seem to do well are actually VM moderators who read each others work so they all get hundreds of reads in order to get paid. On a plus, it does get your work out there, your friends and others on Facebook can see it if you share it. You can also share your published work on Medium, Pinterest, Tumbler, Twitter etc in order to try and get more reads, but it's harder than it sounds. But making money and becoming an established writer through vocal.media? No

I'm giving them two stars for being a decent enough platform, and a star for their milestone bonus program. They lose three stars for an underdeveloped tech platform, poor customer service and censorship. To be fair, Vocal is best for people writing fiction and poetry - that seems to be their real bread and butter. Opinion or think pieces like mine are there, but they don't seem to do as well. I don't think Vocal does a good job of promoting new writers or writers that could use a little boost. I see the same names over and over. It's probably a money-driven decision, which I get, but very, very few people make any real money here. Their milestone bonus program is pretty nice. I don't know of any other blogging platform paying people for bonuses just for publishing, I don't remember what the milestones are, your 20th article, your 50th, whatever. And they're decent sums, I think I made more on 1.5 years on Vocal than I did in twice that time on Medium. I was a paying subscriber for awhile but the small monthly fee is more for those living outside the US because of the exchange rate. And I wasn't getting the views or the support - I got a featured story exactly once, and it was a fluffier piece about a celebrity. The tech platform isn't as developed as it could be - The downside of using Vocal is they don't have a version backup so that if you accidentally delete a chunk of content you're working on and you don't realize it before you save your work (which you have to do as Vocal also doesn't have autosave) you lose that work. You can't retrieve a previous version like on Substack. The platform is terrible when you're trying to highlight something to format it - it jumps around the project, highlights the wrong stuff, and often deletes stuff. You have to watch this platform with an eagle eye, and when I had to spend an evening re-creating an article I hadn't realized was missing two-thirds of it because I'd accidentally deleted something, I moved to creating on Substack, went back to being a free Vocal member, and used it only as a copy-and-paste for previously published work. One big warning: NEVER let Vocal be the only place for your content. Have a copy somewhere else, if just in your own storage, because they've got no backup system for your content the way Facebook, Twitter, and Medium have got. If you get shut down without warning - and I was - you lose it all. Since I publish my work in multiple places, I lost nothing. Vocal was extremely unprofessional in how it handled an issue with one or more of my stories. They suspended my account for 'hate speech', allegedly for a few articles but the only one they named was one critical of the trans movement and its abuse of the English language. So I assume it was 'woke' complaints, since I didn't call for harm, threats, violence, or 'genocide' against the trans movement - I am, however, quite critical of the misogynist, homophobic elements within it. I got no notice or any communication there was a problem with my account. One moment it was there, the next moment it wasn't - in fact I saw it disappear but I assumed it was a tech flake on Vocal's part. A few days later it was still down so I emailed tech support - three times - and got nothing. Finally, in response to a marketing email from info@, I replied back saying I had no account with them and no one seems to care. Got a response saying it had been escalated and sent to Vocal support, who didn't get back to me for a few days, only to tell me I was suspended for 'hate speech' by some kid who clearly doesn't know how to handle a customer her employer has unfairly treated. (I was polite; no abuse, no swearing). I had to push for more information and all I got out of her was one allegedly offending article. There was no opportunity to review the article or be offered the chance to rewrite it or delete it (I probably would have done the latter). I found it extremely unprofessional and for these reasons I don't recommend Vocal as anything more than a copy-and-paste platform (and not if your views are controversial, i.e., not 'woke' enough) unless your specialty is fiction and poetry, otherwise you might find it more successful. Just know that very, very people make much money off it, similar to other platforms that pay (Medium's truly successful writers, as of a few years ago, were <10%...OnlyFans, as I understand it, is largely the same). In the end it was no big deal as I was already thinking about abandoning Vocal altogether anyway. Even cutting & pasting an article is too much trouble as you lose all the formatting and have to add hyperlinks, bold, italic, quotes, etc. But it should be understood they censor content & have an autocratic system of handling problems. And their technology is still stuck in 2004.

I recently joined vocal after seeing a contest posted. The contest required that the first sentence of your story begin with their specific prompt. In this instance, the story must begin with,"Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say." The rules clearly state your story must begin with this sentence, anything after is up to you. There were some good submissions, with over 1400 in total I believe. First prize was $10,000, 2nd prize was $2,500, with 25 runner ups getting $50. I had no illusions I would win, but the dream was nice. One of the runner up posts was a new twist on little red riding hood, called, "Red Moon." The problem was, this story was published on the site 2 years ago! Nowhere in the first paragraph, or whole story for that matter, was the specific prompt sentence. I'm not sure how these are judged or if they're random lottery as someone has suggested. I doubt I will continue my subscription.

I recently ordered and received two personalize logo Harley-Davidson baseball Jersey shirts. On the very same day when I wore them, the buttons started coming off! when I started checking the remaining buttons… SEVERAL of them we’re already on the verge of also falling off due to them not being properly secured to the fabric. These baseball Jerseys were VERY POORLY MADE and not worth the money that I paid for them!!

I’ve been on Vocal for a year now and, at first, I was very excited about the challenges. I love writing short stories and having a prompt (for a contest) is motivating to me. Now, I don’t mean to be pompous but, after every contest winner is announced, I am shocked. As a long time writer in the craft, I can confidently say that the “winners” wouldn’t even get a B in composition class. The most recent “winner” had misspelled words in their story. The second place “winner” had an entire paragraph without any punctuation. Not a single period. How on Earth can that be the winner? No hook, no pacing, mostly telling and not showing, and overall too boring to finish reading. It seems they choose their winners at random. I submitted my recent story/entree to several critique FaceBook Groups (who are often very forthcoming with their negative feedback) and only received high praise for my work. I ran the piece by beta readers and an editor. I am confident it was a solid piece. Now, I would feel differently if the winner’s story was actually well-written and intriguing. I’d be disappointed but say, “okay, that’s fair. It’s really good and deserves the win!!” The fact that the winners are often (if not always) amateur writers (and many reviewers on here agree) makes me lose faith in the platform. Another notable strange thing about Vocal is that there is no messaging or public “reads” displayed. So, we have no way of verifying if the winners are real people or even to complain about the poor writing. I don’t think Vocal is a scam in the sense that they will steal your money, but something is off. How can a writing platform not know how to choose well-written contest winners?

I signed up for Vocal+ about six months ago to enter a poem in one of their competitions. After signing up, I started getting charged $9.99 a month to continue my membership. I didn’t agree to this, but decided to continue paying to keep entering the competition prompts they posted monthly. I haven’t won anything, but I did eventually get one of my stories featured as a “Top Story”. The odds are not in your favor with this site. I earned $5 after publishing my fifth story on Vocal+, then $10 after publishing my tenth. I earned $20 for publishing my top story. Being a Vocal+ member for six months has cost me $60, and my Vocal wallet still only has just over $32 in it. The extra $2 is accumulated from the cents I earn from readers who view my stories I post. They say you can make up to $6k a month as a member, but you don’t profit at all. On top of that, Stripe, the cash withdrawing app Vocal+ is connected to, is a scam. It’s the only app Vocal offers to withdraw the money out of your Vocal wallet. I have tried to download it multiple times and each time I’ve tried to, I just get a bunch of questions asking me personal questions (what is my SSN, what is the passcode to my iPhone, my license number, etc) and tons of pop up ads. There’s no option to use a safer connection like PayPal or Venmo. I entered two last contests this month and I’m waiting for the results, but after this I’m going to finally delete my account.

The contests are most likely scams. Look at the winners. The writing is pretty terrible. Could it really be that all the submissions were that mediocre? There is no way, in my opinion, that they are able to read and vet all submissions in less than two weeks, and the quality of the winning submissions attests to this. Don't waste your money on this if you are in it for the contests.

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...