How I Made $150 From The Vocal Fiction Challenge Despite Not Being Good Enough To Even Make The Shortlist

The Vocal Fiction Challenge

While The Vocal Fiction Challenge was running I entered a number of stories. The fact that I am not a published author and I am not on the North American landmass did mean I was unlikely to be considered.

However something did happen while this was going on.

The Vocal Ambassadors Program

I got a lot of sign ups through the Vocal Ambassadors program, at $20 per sign up it is not an amount to be sniffed at, however since the turn of the year, or rather when the Fiction Challenge closed, my sign ups have really stopped.

While the challenge was live I was getting one or two a week but now it seems to have gone.

I was just assuming that I was getting people to actually sign up for Vocal who wanted to write for Vocal.I signed up for Vocal believing I had a chance at a challenge, but soon realised that was a very unlikely event.

Making Pin Money On Vocal

Having said that because I am prolific at writing and have built up an excellent small audience, the reads on my stories pay for my monthly subscription, and bonuses and tips get me coffee if I should wish to avail myself of such things.

The money from the Vocal Ambassadors has made up nearly 40% of the money I have made since joining Vocal. Below is my guide to the program if you wish to know more or to take part in it.

Ah But The Vocal Fiction Challenge

There were a thousand stories on the Vocal Fiction Shortlist and there were a lot of stories from our friends in the Vocal Social Society and other Facebook groups, and everyone of those believed they had a chance of winning one of the 25 five thousand dollar prizes.

But here came the hammer blow, no one we knew were in the final 25 winners (please correct me if I am wrong), and on investigation many of them were established writers who were new to Vocal with only two or three Vocal stories that they have submitted.

The implication is that Vocal do not value their many long term contributors but want to reward the one they see as a more sparkly addition to Vocal. The thing is these people will not stay with Vocal but look for more potentially lucrative options.

Feeling Like A Spiv

The thing is I feel a bit awful about this, like a World War II spiv making profits out of people's misery because they can’t get the things they need. The fact that so many fly by nights were chosen as winners has really hurt people because their hopes were raised by Vocal and then dashed by Vocal. If they do this again they really need to look at the people who really support Vocal.

We see this in smaller things where Top Creators are set who have not written anything for years, we see it where people seem to be omitted from searches and the response is “Improve Your SEO” , then story rejections because the “don’t meet standards” without explaining what the problem is, even rejections for plagiarism when you quote the source while allowing completely plagiarised stories to remain on Vocal. These are all issues which exasperate and hurt us.

And because of this I do feel I am profiting off the pain of my friends.

Concluding Thoughts On Making Money This Way

I haven’t broken the law, and I will keep doing it because it doesn’t really take much effort but I do still feel I have blood on my hands.