Vocal Creators it's time for Spring cleaning

It's time for Spring cleaning on Vocal

Hello, fellow Vocal creators. With the season changing from Winter to Spring and the recent announcement about changes to the platform, I decided this was the ideal time to get things in order. Perhaps you should consider some Spring cleaning for your own articles.

I have been writing for Vocal for eight years. At one point, I had written over 5,000 stories and had more than 500 pages. I began experiencing issues accessing my Wallet, and for a while, I could not save any story I wrote,

I reached out to support and was told the platform was not set up for so much writing, so I began to delete articles that were not making money or were no longer relevant. I have been at this for about six months. It's tedious, exhausting work, but a job that must be done.

It's time to change

As of today, I am down to just over 1800 articles with 182 pages. "Whew." I used to write soap opera spoilers and updates. I was amazed at how many of these were no longer relevant or the characters were not on the shows any longer. They were taking up space and no longer being read.

I read what Jeremy Fromer wrote in A More Human Vocal. I re-read it five times to understand what the platform is looking for. I have now added to my Spring cleaning list any articles that could be considered divisive.

A fellow Vocal writer, Margaret Minnicks, suggested I update my pinned articles because they were outdated and that has been done. She even suggested an older Haiku I had forgotten about be entered into a challenge. I had so many articles that I could nto easily recall if any previously written might qualify for challenges.

Even if you have not been writing for Vocal as long as I have, you still may have articles that are not making money, are divisive, outdated, and no longer relevant.

Be mindful of the rules

I suggest taking time to clean house and make certain that you are complying with what Vocal is expecting. Clickbait and spammy articles are being flagged by other contributors so write them at your own risk.

To the contributors who don't have Stripe and cannot afford Vocal Plus, I feel you. NewsBreak no longer accepts articles from self-publishing sites like Vocal, Medium, and Substack.

Thousands of writers, including myself, who don't have sample work from what they consider "verified sources", lost the ability to write on that platform. Hubpages is shutting down at the end of this month, leaving many more contributors without somewhere to place their content. 

These things are unfortunate and may seem unfair, but there are scams, plus AI and Bots which have affected the landscape for all writers. Choices have to be made for platforms to survive, and unfortuately some writers are left behind. 

Moving forward

For those who are Vocal Plus members, verified through Stripe, congratulations as we take this journey together. A word of caution: If you begin seeing the nested error message, that's a sign that you might need to begin Spring cleaning and delete articles that are no longer relevant.

Go through your articles carefully during your Spring clean because some may only need updating rather than being deleted. I'm going to cleanup with every season change so I don't bog down the platform.

Re-read the message from Jeremy and the comments from creators in case you have questions that have already been answered. I'm keeping in mind that articles should bring everyone together rather than cause division. Best of luck everyone and keep writing.