Goodbye Bubblews & my Bubblews payment!
It is quite sad that I must say Goodbye Bubblews! It was good while it lasted but sadly the site just isn’t going to work out for me any longer.
Bubblews is a website that used to pay you 1 cent per like, comment and unique view on your posts. The post limit was 10 posts and they had to be a minimum of 400 characters. I used to write much more than this, as I like to ramble away, and was enjoying catching up with people from Dooyoo and the MoneySavingExpert website. It was nice to learn more about the people that I have seen on forums over the years and was quite nice to have somewhere to chat late at night, if I couldn’t sleep or if my husband was in bed or at work.
Unfortunately all of that has changed and I have had to say Goodbye Bubblews today and goodbye to my Bubblews payment! The remuneration amounts kept changing, as they supposedly realised that they were not earning the revenue that they expected from the on site adverts. This was understandable, and I figured it was better for the site to earn money than to shut down with a deficit and leave us with nowhere to socialise and get paid for it. Sadly the rates kept getting cut and cut, with no published details on what the new rates were. Yesterday was the final nail in the coffin, for my usage of the website at least. There was a post published, by member support, at around 11:30pm UK time that stated any redemptions made from prior to the 11th of November 2014 would not be paid, due to high levels of fraud. As it took around 60 days to get a payment (a timeframe that kept slipping further and further back) this meant that the payments had not been made and would not be made. I personally lost $180, which I cashed out on the 8th of November, and I know of people that lost $500. In addition to this my next cashout, requested on the 8th of December, was reduced from around $100 to just $21. This means a total loss of $260 ish, which is around £150-£160.
It is fair to say that this is enough to make me leave the website. I could have dealt with lower remunerations, if it ensured the security of the future of the website, but to take money from everyone, because of the fraud of others, is frankly disgusting. This, coupled with all of the previous changes that were also retroactively applied, has left me unable to continue writing on the website. I know of many people that will be following suit. On the plus side at least I had several thousands dollars from the site in the last 6-7 months.
This website serves as a stark reminder to people never to rely on earnings from online websites until they arrive. Personally I track my earnings, to chase any that don’t arrive, and only decide what they will be spent on once they are safely in my own UK bank account.