Relying on subscribers
Established in 2018, vocus.cc is a reincarnation of SOSreader, which was committed to serving journalists and facilitating the publication of in-depth reports. While vocus had to invite literary celebrities to write for it at first, many renowned writers have since come on board on their own initiative, and the number of writers who use their services is growing steadily. Now vocus is the largest online writing platform in the Chinese-speaking world. It’s surprising that cofounder David Weng is only 32 years old.
Just like blog hosting platforms, which used to enjoy immense popularity in Taiwan, vocus provides services for writers. Both types of creative platforms host vast quantities of text produced by writers across the world. The difference is that blog hosts derive their incomes from advertising, while vocus, which asks readers to pay for some of its content, operates a “no ads” policy.
This policy originates in the importance Weng attaches to the quality of published text, but it also reflects the specific reasons why vocus was founded. “Our first company, SOSreader, was a venture in new media. But we soon noticed a challenge often faced by the media—that is, the content of your journalism can run counter to the beliefs and opinions of those who place ads on your website.”
If your website attracts large amounts of traffic, you can indeed make money from advertising, but this will impose many limitations on what you can publish. Unwilling to compromise his principles for the sake of profit, Weng sought to establish a different kind of platform for content creators by studying successful international cases, including the US-based Patreon, which is one of the world’s largest membership platforms, and Medium, an online publishing platform specializing in journalistic writing.
More than just providing an online platform for writers, vocus.cc has diversified into various agency services. For example, it has fostered links between its writer–illustrators and Taipei-based type foundry justfont.com to produce a series of “Writers’ Fonts.”