Is Bubblews a Scam? An Honest Review of Bubblews

This was an honest Bubblews Review, looking at: "Is Bubblews a scam, or is Bubblews a good site to write for?" based on my real-life experiences of the last three months, where I have been writing "successfully". You might note that the word successfully is emphasised - and that's because there are many measures of success.

For the purposes of this review, my definition of success is: to be well received, to have many connections and to have a significant income.

UPDATE: Bubblews closed down. I hadn't been active on Bubblews during its final months, once they dropped the payrates it wasn't worth my while. This happens with a lot of sites. I got in early and made some good money right at a time when I needed it.... the waste of time I spent investing in the future of the company and its longevity does bite though.

This was a genuine review of Bubblews and I did get paid a considerable sum from them. Although it was fast/fairly easy cash it was all time-consuming and then they changed the payment rates and the gravy train stopped rolling.

I did get a fast cash injection just when I needed it most though. But Bubblews closed down and is gone.

Bubblews is a site where you are paid for writing. The articles can be very short (just 400 characters long). You can include images and even some links; links must not be referral links.

Bubblews pays you on a revenue share basis for your posts. Payment is made for each view, each "like" and each comment. The rate of pay is approximately $0.01 per event. Just 1000 views therefore yields at least $10.

You can redeem your money once you reach just $25, which many writers are managing every day. I managed to get up to redeeming every 2 days when the number of times Bubblws had not paid me grew too large for me to overlook or ignore.

I know if the site had been fair and managed correctly I could have achieved $25+ per day.

Is Bubblews a scam? No, but that doesn't mean you will be paid.

I first found out about Bubblews here on Hubpages, when somebody was asking about it - so I joined, and wrote up a comparison between Hubpages and Bubblews. You can read that article from the link to your right -->

Having joined and with traffic diminishing here on Hubpages I needed some instant cash so headed off to Bubblews to make that income.

At first the Rules seem easy to understand and apply, but hidden behind these rules are the hidden rules, the unwritten rules and their interpretation of the rules - which are only discovered when people have broken the rules - people are then referred back to the rules of Bubblews, which don't contain the rule that's broken.

Bubblews decide how their Rules are to be interpreted. Their interpretation is not based always on the law, common sense, or the way that other sites and legal bodies might interpret them - and, the final rule is .... they make up the rules, they decide and what they say goes. And when what they say goes, users suddenly find their entire accounts deleted.

Voice your opinion, or post your payment issues and commenters will say maybe you broke the rules. But, if you've not broken the rules then this leaves you more frustrated.

One thing you will notice is that if people complain they haven't been paid, or that their accounts have been deleted, others are telling them they must have broken the rules.l While this can be true for a lot, there are a suspiciously high number of "good writers" whose accounts are simply not paid out and mysteriously are deleted.

Having been deleted, these posters' posts and all their comments, no longer exist, so it's hard to track down "evidence" and instances of these. But there are far too many to ignore.

At the time of writing, my account at Bubblews has not been deleted. It still exists, none of my posts have been deleted.

I have simply not been paid by Bubblews on an unacceptably high number of occasions.

Is Bubblews a scam?

No, but it is a HUGE disappointment, a tyrannical regime, that fails to give members a voice when their legitimate requests for payment go unanswered.

Bubblews is not a scam - but I feel scammed. I've put the work in, I've written, they didn't pay. Bubblews did not pay me and did not say why.

If it feels like a scam ....... treat it like one.

I joined Bubblews knowing that people had payment issues. I thought I understood the Rules and kept to them. I could see "rule breakers" and consider myself a very law-abiding writer. I don't want to break any rules; in my opinion I didn't.

What I've always loved about Hubpages is how they wouldn't delete an account, they'd just unpublish a post and you'd know what you'd done wrong and have the opportunity to fix it. Bubblews simply does not pay you.

I then started uncovering the hidden rules of Bubblews. I then published knowledge of these hidden rules and interpretations of the rules and evidence of the interpretation of the rules.

As it stands, I've been writing for Bubblews for 3 months and have, to date, had 5 payments not made. When Bubblews do not pay you all you get is a silence. You have no idea if there was a system error, if you broke an arbitrary rule, or anything. You simply don't get paid.

Without knowing why you didn't get paid it's tough to work out how to move forward. There are support emails to contact - but when they don't respond either, you're back to square one.

IF - and that is IF, not when - you break a rule it puts your whole payment in jeopardy. One of my posts took off and made $125 in just 24 hours. It was legitimate, it broke no rules, the traffic was genuine organic search engine traffic and social media traffic..... it's not been paid. That was the first non-payment, at the end of August. I am still waiting for it.

Bubblews Support mechanisms have always been inefficient. Very inefficient.

On 21 October 2013 they created three new email addresses - one of which was to address unpaid amounts; I duly wrote off to the email address, listing my five unpaid Bubblews payments - they emailed back saying to wait 86 hours - after 86 hours I'd heard nothing. It's now 100 hours on.

If you try to create a post saying you haven't been paid, the Rules can be bent as they decide you are defaming or slandering the site - the truth is never defamation or slander.

So you're stuck.

Some posters are quite smug saying "read Support posts every day" - to read both support pages and the profile messages, where some questions are half answered (then soon deleted), it would take a lot of time - PLUS - it doesn't yield any real answers.

Support do not make the rules clear, or which rule people broke - there's nothing to learn from. The language used by support is quite threatening, over-using the word Violation..... it makes you feel violated. And, when I've seen them telling people they violated the Rules, they've never said which rule, or how that was interpreted to cause a violation in their eyes.

A scam is where they set out to deliberately deceive you - so Bubblews is not a scam per se.

However, if the end result is that you feel cheated, robbed and ignored, then certainly you will have the feelings of being scammed. I feel scammed, but Bubblews is not a scam.

They are a badly organised outfit, with inconsistent policies, inadequate support procedures, zero transparency and arbitrary rule changes.

You enter into an agreement with Bubblews that you will write, they will pay. If you write and they don't pay ... and you cannot reach them to find out why, disagree, negotiate, discover which rule they think was broken (so you can edit the post), whether a site is a scam or not it's the same outcome: Unhappy writers, who feel scammed.

Bubblews did pay me at first; my first non payment from Bubblews came after one post was (legitimately) popularI. In total I was actually paid for just over half of my payment requests.

My first payment was mid-August. My first non-payment was the 4th payment two weeks later. I was then paid for the 5th-11th payment requests, but the 12th was a non payment. No payment, no communication, no idea why.

At the time of writing, my payments are:

• TOTAL CLAIMED: $778.43
• TOTAL RECEIVED/CLEARED to date: $438.97
• TOTAL in Clearing: $58.51 (#22, #24) - it takes up to 10 days for payment to complete

So, you can see, I've been paid $438.97 - which is not insignificant. But, the bottom line is I should have been paid more and wasn't.

• 56.4% Paid
• 7.5% Clearing
• 36.1% NOT Paid

It's now some time further on. After the early payments that weren't paid, all subsequent payments from Bubblews have been processed in a timely manner - no chasing required.

I took several months off, during which time I still redeemed about$150 in residual income and, as of September 2014 I've made $2500 on Bubblews.

Some members are still saying that payments are late, or not appearing - the company say they're getting on top of it. Until it's happened to me again, though, I can't pass comment. One thing I would say is that I do cash out just over the (new) $50 minimum payout threshold - some people are leaving the money in there for a full month and cashing out $250-350 a time. I prefer to run a risk each time on smaller payments, than one huge risk on one big payment.

When you join a paid for writing website you have to give some trust to them that they will honour the agreement you believed you entered into.

You put a lot of time and effort into getting established; time you don't want to feel you wasted simply by having been a little impatient. You invest many hours/days/weeks into doing everything you need to do to get a following, learn the best ways to promote your writing, etc.

There is also some delay in the payments process, it can take 10 days between making your payment request and actually receiving the money. During this 10 day period it's possible to have also made another 3-5 payment requests. With so many in the pipeline, you've already invested so much of your time, focus and energy that you see the non-payment and just think "It'll turn up" .....

My first none payment was at the end of August 2013, this had grown to five payments, totalling $250, by mid October. That's when I called a halt to it and started looking for alternatives.

At times in our lives we can't wait for cake next week - we need bread today to live. Bubblews gave me a way to try to earn "instant cash" - and, to be fair, it has provided this. But, the deal's soured when you're not paid 100% for all your work.

There comes a time when "bread sometimes today" isn't the deal you need. If you put the work in, solidly, for 2-3 days, expecting $25-35 .... and it doesn't come ... you have to call a halt.