Vocal Reviews 

I am loving this site. I am a long time writer and can't believe I can just put what I write up there and people read it. And they pay me?? What? Nothing short of amazing. The site, the technology, the people. All top notch.

Surprisingly, Vocal has helped me find my voice. I started writing on Vocal when I was in a dark place. I don't make enough money on the site to quit my day job but, I've learned from so many people. I took a risk and wrote fiction for the first time. I jumped back into poetry. I entered Vocal Challenges.

The “editors”/moderators on Vocal shouldn’t even be editing listicals in Buzzfeed. (You know the ones with headlines like this: Here are ten reasons why Vocal+ isn’t worth your money. #6 might surprise you!). They are clearly in out of their depth, and should stick with the kiddy pool. Anyone thinking of paying for a Vocal+ membership because it is required to enter their contests should know it is like drawing the winners out of a hat, some of which don’t even meet the basic criteria of the genre prompt given. Good luck.

I joined Vocal to improve my writing skills. At this point, I’m making more than I’m spending, and the challenges and Facebook support groups are so much fun! I have indeed become a better writer, penning things I never would have considered if I hadn’t joined. Worth every cent!

I love writing on Vocal. The prompts and competitions inspire me to express new things. And the Facebook groups allow me to engage with other passionate writers. All that and they pay me for reads and stories. How cool is that!

If you are starting out or just want a nice website to showcase your work, this is it. Don't go in expecting to make a salary, it is literally to discover yourself and other artists. If you want big money for writing obviously you need to go through an editor, this is fun and freelance

I am a new vocal writer and published elsewhere as well. It is what is and used effectively it can be a boost to a writer or at least an introduction to their work. Yes, many writers on the platform are newer but at least they're published and that matters. If you knew the industry and how challenging it is to get your work read then you could appreciate that. These writing platforms are the future of online media. As a writer you have to do your work which now adays means marketing also. I remember when there used to be magazine stores with hundreds to choose from, same as newspaper outlets. The internet changed all of that long ago. Online reading is not where it's at but that's all there is. Social media being the main way to attract readers is flawed. The vast majority of social media luvers are visual, they like picture posts and short write ups to skim. They are not "readers," in the classic sense. Real readers prefer paper, books, magazine, news, because its a personal sport. At least it's not a thousand people competing for a writing job anymore. Sure, the platform managers make money off the writers to an extent but so did the publishers of old also. For a reader, find the topic you like and a writer to subscribe to. For a writer, find a reader's base and keep at it.

They don't promote your stories on the website. People can't search for them or access them.
They are available only if you directly send a link to people.

Vocal are literally forcing people to advertise their website if they want their stories to be read.

Scummy

Essentially a scam. The quality of your writing doesn't matter to these ultra liberal pink-haired shower dodgers.

I’ve been using Vocal for 3 months now. I originally joined to enter one of their poetry contests. So far I have broken even on the cost because they give bonuses at certain milestones. They also pay 2/3 of a cent for each read. Not very much. You need to do a lot of self promotion and bring your own audience to the table exactly like anyone in the visual arts or music world if you want to make money. My main focus is to become a better writer. The only way to do that is to write and the challenges they offer do inspire writing. Although the judges on the most recent fiction challenges have not been identified, the judges on the corporate sponsor challenges have been clearly named and you can look them up to see what they might be looking for in the contest. Overall I believe Vocal is trying to improve as a writer’s site, and their parent company Creatd. seems to be attempting to develop it further. The jury is out on how they will go forward.

Completely lacking in transparency.

Contests (which come with huge prize money awards) seem to have winners picked at random - the quality of winners is often dreadful, and a recent contest winner was 800 words over the word limit. The judges aren't publicly named, so I suspect they're just random members of Vocal's staff. It's not clear what criteria are used to decide which stories are sent to the judges - it seems to be purely whether or not some low-level moderator likes your story enough to pass it on. No feedback is ever given - not even about the contest winners and the reasons they are chosen.

Getting to be featured as a "top story" seems to have the same problems as well - many are either promoting brands or bigging up Vocal as a website, rather than being stories / articles that are any good. Basic spelling and grammar mistakes are a common sight.

The website is horrendously optimised for search engines, so good luck getting organic traffic to anything you write - I googled my name and the title of several articles I have had "published" on Vocal and got zero results. It's almost impossible to get decent numbers of reads.

Their adverts claim that you can earn up to $6000 a month - I would like to see the evidence for this. Maybe if you somehow win multiple competitions, it is possible, but based off the incredibly low amounts you get paid for people reading your articles, it is virtually impossible.

Once I have finished submitting to the current round of contests I will be cancelling my membership. I do not intend to go back.

I agree that Vocal has a lot to clean up with editing / profile management both on computers and definitely phones, but that doesn't make it a SCAM. They are gradually working things out, and have improved dramatically - even over the month I've been a user. Building websites takes time, especially for startups.

Mechanics aside these reviews sound like a lot of bitter people who want everything to be free. It's a couple Starbucks visits not a month's worth of salary to join Vocal+, and a lot of people seem to be making conjecture about the review process without any direct knowledge just their personal opinion.

I too joined to enter a competition, and I did win - with my first entry. I am proud of my entry and have expanded it since then. I took all my money out after my win but continue to get reads. I'm in my second month and have another $20 in there I can withdraw. I'm waiting for results on the competitions I've entered this month.

If you're joining to get rich quick as a writer, you are in the wrong profession. Just enjoy the process. I really need money too, but that's not my main focus. Vocal is a nice outlet for my creative expression, and the prompts are helping me develop a style. I also take a lot of care in the mechanics of what I present, so acting like every winning story is a pile of garbage filled with grammatical errors is not accurate either. I go back numerous times to re-read and edit my entries prior to competition judging (they have added a quick edit feature)

My second story also received hundreds of views and numerous likes. I've written 8 or 9 at this point and they all have reads and likes even if only a few. For those questioning tips, yes they happen, I've received 4 tips also. I've also received additional money from Vocal for Top Stories.

I may tire of the platform, but for now it's more than paid for itself to me.

It did take some times to get my winnings through Stripe, but I got them. I'd rather have them be careful, and it should go more smoothly now that I am verified. I was hacked right before judging so I was very happy to wait and make sure my money went to the right account.

If you find the right approach and have a little patience Vocal can be a great outlet. I enjoy it more than Medium. Once they grow and develop a little more I think it will be a terrific outlet.

I really don't think they judge the competitions but just pick a winner at random. I thought about entering because the prizes are apparently quite high but before spending the time I looked at some of the previous winners and losers. When you do this it becomes very hard to see the merit in the winners, and I read very many better losers. Conclusion - they can't possible be reading them and it's therefore just a method of harvesting $9 a month. Will save my effort and put it towards competitions run by genuine literary societies. At least then, when I lose, I'll know I was beaten fair and square by better material.

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 have a $9.99 chrge on my debit card and never signed up Don't have a phone or anyting. SCAM!

I wish there was a way to dm Screw you to a whole website lol. Can you believe they have the fucing audacity to charge you to literally just write your own stories, and then they put it in the algorithm that if you dont pay then people won't see your work. Plus the people who are writing to compete usually are trying to get the money bcz they need it (like i was trying to do and spent 1 hr working on a short story to realize I cant even post it) are getting scammed out of the chance to win anyways. Its all BS and it couldn't be more obvious I feel really bad for the people wasting their money on it I hope they get their money back somehow <3

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.