The Truth about Bubblews from a long-time Member
I joined Bubblews on December 19, 2012. I’d heard about the site several weeks earlier and toyed with the idea of joining. After reading mixed reviews I was uncertain whether to trust the site, but finally decided to give it a try. You can read more about my early experiences of Bubblews in a hub I wrote at the time: “RedGage versus Bubblews – First Impressions”. In that hub I mentioned my doubts about the sustainability of the site, but for a long time it seemed that I was wrong.
My best ever day at Bubblews came in March 2013. I wrote a short post about a trending topic and it managed to get a good placement on Google. That post earned me over $20 within its first few hours online. I finally felt that Bubblews was a great place to write.
Although I wasn’t as active as some members, by April 2013 I’d successfully cashed out three times and had earned nearly $100 and I felt certain that the site was legitimate. Other people were still complaining about not being paid though, so I wrote my second hub about Bubblews: “Making Money the Bubblews Way”.
Everything went well until June 2013, when I decided to republish an article I’d recently removed from HubPages. I was delighted with its early success and even used it as inspiration for a post about the importance of choosing the right site on which to publish an article. I’ll never know for sure whether it’s coincidence or not, but my next redemption, made that same day, was never paid. Nor were the next five.
As it became clear that my money wasn’t coming I gradually slowed down my activity on the site, but I searched my posts for possible mistakes on my part which had led Bubblews to distrust me. I edited all links out of my posts and removed every stock photo I’d ever used as well as adding a copyright statement for every photo that I’d created myself. Perhaps foolishly, I wrote about my problems getting paid and my attempts to check for unintentional violations.
Eventually I stopped writing altogether.
A turning point of sorts came on the day that Bubblews deleted one of my posts. I was quite surprised when this happened as the post was one in which I had expressed my optimism that my problems would soon be behind me. This was written in response to a post by their CEO, Arvind, in which he indicated that they were going to get the backlog in order soon. This inspired me to make one last ditch effort to get back into Bubblews good books. I went back to my archive and deleted every post in which I’d ever mentioned problems of any nature at Bubblews. The site deducted every cent of the money those posts had earned me, and in one day my Bank dropped by $18.64.
A few weeks later I received a payment of $50 from Bubblews. It wasn’t the full amount they owed me, but it was enough to make me decide to give the site a second chance. I’d seen my friends earning hundreds of dollars in the period I’d been inactive and I wanted a piece of the action too.
It was with some trepidation that I made my next redemption in February 2014, but I was paid promptly. Between then and the end of July I received over $400 from Bubblews and assumed that all was well. Then the payment for my August redemption failed to arrive. By the time I realised it was late, I’d redeemed again, so I thought I’d wait to see what happened to that one. My two September redemptions were paid on time, so I reported the missing one to Bubblews and waited patiently for them to sort out the problem.
During October 2014 Bubblews suddenly removed the view counter from posts and income started dropping. While users from countries like the US, UK and Canada were still earning a decent income, so-called international users were now being paid a pittance, apparently due to lesser advertising revenue from those countries. In addition, Bubblews stopped supporting users from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam altogether due to high levels of fraud from those countries. No doubt the accounts of some honest members were deleted in the process.
On December 18, 2014, the CEO admitted that there were problems when he wrote a post in which he stated that “Bubblews has distributed over $1 million to date, considerably more than our revenues.” (*)
Then came New Year’s Eve, and just when people were celebrating the arrival of 2015 and their hopes for a successful year of online earnings, Bubblews announced that they would not be honouring any unpaid redemptions made before November 11, 2014. Naturally this led to a flurry of posts by disgruntled members who announced that they would be leaving the site immediately.
Conclusion
I don’t believe that Bubblews set out to be a scam site, but rather that the owners bit off more than they could chew. Now, due to the incompetence of their staff, many people have been cheated out of hundreds of dollars. The writing seems to be on the wall and I don’t see much chance of the site recovering.
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(*) as per CEO’s report, which is subject to deletion at any time: “Learning Curve”. I have kept a screen-shot of the relevant section of this report in case my quote is ever questioned.
