Get Paid for Social Blogging at Bubblews

Update: The Bubblews site has shut down due to not being able to sustain their business model.

Bubblews is a social blogging site where members get paid when their posts are viewed, "liked", shared on social media and commented on. The site has gained enormously in popularity, so, of course, there's always a new crowd of people whose curiosity is piqued concerning Bubblews. Is Bubblews a scam? Is Bubblews worth it? Does Bubblews really pay and can you really make money writing for Bubblews?

These are the kinds of questions that certainly have arisen due to this piqued interest in the site. Obviously this means Bubblews is on many people's minds, especially among those wanting to earn money online. Internet writers have flocked to the site to give it a try, eager to earn money from their work in a comparatively quicker and more immediately rewarding way than is customary on the Internet. Many Internet writers are accustomed to the "long haul" and the ups and downs of their online writing endeavors and the appeal of Bubblews is the pay is more immediate. I will get more into that later.

Point is, Bubblews is a very appealing site for many people, and certainly not just those who might make their living writing online. If you've spent any time on the site you'll know that the site has a great diversity of people from many walks of life and from across the globe: Students, workers of all kinds, retirees, young and old and professional writers. I guess it runs the gamut.

So, here I'd like to specifically give you my personal experience writing at Bubblews. I want to express what I think the site is all about and how, indeed, you can make money on the site.

It was more than a year ago that I joined Bubblews; specifically, I joined in April of 2013; so this month I celebrated my one-year anniversary on the site.

So, some time before April 2013, I was seeing multiple forum threads in which people were commenting about Bubblews. There were opposing sides on the subject. Some people didn't like Bubblews, others thought the site was all that and a bag of chips. The side that was for Bubblews presented some very enticing arguments: The main one being that they had been, indeed, getting paid by the site.

I did do some investigation of the site. I'd read interviews with Founder and CEO of Bubblews, Arvind Dixit and I truly appreciated his philosophy. He'd said he started Bubblews because he felt it was unfair that social media sites were making money off of the information, content and activity of users and yet didn't pay these members. Sites thrived because of the activity and content of members, yet these members shared none of the financial benefits. I certainly agreed with and related to Arvind's viewpoint on the issue.

So, eventually, I made the decision to join Bubblews. The sign up is quick and easy. From there I certainly became very active on the site.

I started off on the site posting about whatever I felt like posting about. I wrote a movie review here, wrote about my day out at a job interview there and would delve into some intensely personal issues too. I truly took the tagline of Speak Freely and Write Your World seriously.

At first there were few views, few "likes" and few comments. But that's to be expected. However, the more that your posts are noticed, the more that people connect with you and start viewing, liking and commenting and even sharing your posts.

I believe it took me about 3 weeks before I reached the $25 payment threshold (the threshold has recently been raised to $50).

What I found is that more and more people connected to me and that some of my posts, also, ended up in search engine results. This means that I was getting traffic from outside of Bubblews and, so, was getting some passive income eventually. I think it took 2 or 3 months before this started occurring.

Anyway, I hit the payment threshold after those first few weeks and so went to the Bank page and hit the green Redeem button; then I chose what method I wanted for payment.

Eventually I started getting enough traffic and interactions (likes and comments) on my posts that I was able to cash out every 2 weeks; then every week; and, sometimes, especially when organic traffic kicked in, every few days. So, you get the point. Progressively, the payments came quicker.

Typically, after redeeming, it takes a few days to get a message via email from admin that the payment will be going out and then it takes a few more days for Paypal to process it. So, you're looking at a typical waiting period of 6 days, more or less.

So, I have remained active on Bubblews, but, certainly, I was more intensely active my first several months. Next, I'd like to explore how I approached writing and activity on Bubblews and what worked and does work for me.

Here in August 2014, it currently takes a longer amount of time to receive your redemption payments. It can take 3 weeks to a month to receive them. I am uncertain at this time if this is temporary due to a backlog, because it is said they still manually process payments, or if this is a permanent situation.

Back in July (2014) when the site underwent a major upgrade, they changed their policy on payments; currently, you can only be paid through PayPal, though admin says they might have more options in the future.

To put it in very simple terms, I treat Bubblews like a Facebook where I get paid. Meaning, when I have a thought, I post about it. When I read an article I find interesting, I write about it on Bubblews. If I just went out and had lunch, I take a few pictures and then write about it on Bubblews, complete with photos. You get the idea.

Of course, one of the differences between Bubblews and other social media sites is that you have to write text and the text has to be your original work. You must write at least 400 characters. Which is easy. That's about 100 or 150 words, about 4 lines of text. I mean, I've done that regularly on Facebook status updates. You can post links that are not affiliate links. Meaning, you can post a link to an article you wrote about, but you can't post a link to some site where you make money just to drive traffic there.

So, my main point here, too, is that I followed the rules. But I had no intent of ever doing the things that are against the rules. I enjoy writing my own original work. I can easily write 150 words. The rules against bots that mimick traffic and likes and what-not is way off my radar; I don't know about those things and I'm not interested in them. I like to write. So, Bubblews was well-suited to me.

For many months, I wrote on Bubblews often. I posted the maximum 10 posts a day, everyday. I would post early in the morning (like between 3:30am to 6am -- yes, folks, I was actually just up that early) and found that was a time when people from Asia (mostly from the Philippines and India) were on the site so I was able to gain their traffic and interactions. In the early afternoon, I could catch people from Europe. Of course, this all has to do with time zones; I'm in the western US, so when I posted in the early morning, it was actually a little after dinner time in Asia. Early afternoon here was evening in Europe.

I kept that up for a long time. As stated, I began cashing out often after only a few days. It was typical for me to cash out within a week.

I would like to say that it is totally up to the Bubblews member what kind of posts they write. It is a social blogging site, so I always say that expecting the site to have web articles is like expecting Facebook users to write like Hemingway. Some sites are for web articles. Some sites are for social blogging. It's pretty simple.

I personally do both at Bubblews: Sometimes I write a post that is a web article. Sometimes I write about personal issues. Sometimes I write a humor piece. You are pretty free to do what you want there, as long as you write your own posts and don't copy and paste them from someone else.

So, that is my basic approach to writing at Bubblews. I keep it casual and spontaneous; when the thought strikes me, I write about it. When I thought the show I watched on TV was good, I'll write about it on Bubblews. It's about as basic as it gets.

The pros of Bubblews I've alluded to. You can write what you want, you get paid, it's easy.

I'd also add that the site is comparatively user-friendly. It's pretty easy to post an article. You click submit at the top of the screen, fill in a title, write the body of the text, fill out the Captcha and hit submit. A con related to this is that, since the site is growing rapidly, there are times when you will get error messages and it becomes difficult to submit posts. I usually copy and paste my post into WordPad before I hit submit. Also, if it looks like the article is not going to post, I'll open a new tab and check to see if it posted. Sometimes it actually posted when it looks like it hadn't. Bubblews is always upgrading and there will be further upgrades soon, so I think they will do things to manage the heavy traffic on the site.

The other con that I can think of is that it can be time-consuming being on the site. It is addictive but also if you get hung up on making money you can end up spending a lot of time posting and interacting. I personally don't do this. I post in a casual and spontaneous way, not because I feel I have to. I do try to get to my connections' posts and like and comment on them if I, in fact, want to; but you can easily get into traps of "shoulds" and "have to's". That ends up making the experience much less enjoyable so I don't do it. I think it's polite to interact with connections and it is also enjoyable to read writers that I genuinely like. Try not to stress is all I'm saying. Keep it natural.

The big pro about Bubblews is that it's free. You can write what you want. If you want to know what you cannot do on there, visit the Bank page it's all laid out there. It's pretty basic: Don't copy other people's work, don't use bots to get traffic and likes, don't use traffic exchange groups, don't post porn, write in English, write at least 400 characters a post and only post 10 times a day. These rules are partly for battling spammers: The minimum character count and limit on posts, for instance.

I consider the pay good at Bubblews, considering what we do there. It's a casual, social blogging site where you write whatever is on your mind at the moment or a full-fledged web article if you want. The freedom of that approach and the fact that you can get paid for those posts in a relatively short amount of time makes the site an enjoyable place to write and socialize.

In July 2014, the site underwent a major upgrade and now has a whole new look, new rules and new features. The site looks great and there are some great new and useful features. There have been great improvements. However, there have been glitches that will hopefully be ironed out. Sometimes people are unable to "like" posts. Some people are unable to get on the site or stay on it or post. Generally, you can get on there, in my experience, but I've had some problems posting and using some of the new features. I use an older computer so it's harder and slower for me to post. I've also noticed that I get fewer views internally, and,so, lesser "likes".

I wanted to update you on where to find the rules on the site. Of course, you can read the site's Terms of Service/Use, but a good summary of the rules for the site can be found in the section of the site called the "Learning Center". The rules are no longer found on the Bank Page. On the Bank Page, there is a nice breakdown of earnings and how much more is needed to cash out. Many new features on the site and the site is steadily improving. I think it will just keep getting better.

Bank Page: Where you submit a request for a payment. Also where you can see your stats: views, comments, likes and how much you've earned. You can also see a list of the rules there.

Connections: Similar to a 'friend' on Facebook or a 'follower' on Twitter. You get notifications of your connections' posts.

Like: A person can like your post like you do on Facebook; they click a like button by your post and it registers that you have another like. You get paid a penny for each like on your post.

Redeem: This is what you do when you request a payment once you hit the $50 threshold. There is a green button on the Bank Page that appropriately says Redeem. You hit that button after you've reached $50 in your bank (shown on Bank Page) and you are taken to a screen where you fill out a simple form with some ID info and how you want to get paid.

Social Media Share: People can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google Plus and Linked-In. You get paid a penny for each share.

View: This is when someone visits your post; you get paid a penny for the first visit of a particular visitor. You get paid for new visitors to a post, not for subsequent visits from someone who already visited.

Comment: This is when someone writes in the comment box under your posts. You get paid a penny for each first comment from a commenter.

On April 29th, I hit that redeem button. This time around, I got a message that it could take 7 days before I'd be contacted about my payment. It used to be 72 hours wait before they contacted you about payment.

Today, May 13th, I received a message via email that my payment was sent to PayPal; of course, it takes about 3 days for it to clear PayPal after that.

So, the wait time is a bit longer now than I'd previously mentioned; it used to take 3 days for them to contact you after you hit the redeem button, then the 3 days it takes to clear PayPal, a total of 6 days to get the payment after you redeem. This time around, it took 10 working days, or 2 weeks.

Bubblews is still working out the kinks and working on a backlog (from what I understand) of payments. Also the site is growing quickly. They are planning an upgrade in July, maybe this longer waiting period for payment is temporary.

It was announced, via CEO Bubble, that Bubblews would pay users less and they would have to wait longer to get paid. Looks like views, likes and comments are paid according to what country the viewer comes from, which means we'll be getting paid less. Also, they've taken away stats that we formerly could view on the bank page.

There were a lot of unhappy Bubblers when the announcement broke. I know what it means: Less money, less often. This is the Internet writing world, we know it happens this way. Everyone was wondering how long Bubblews could pay people a cent for each view, comment, like and share; advertisers don't pay that much for them to keep up that payment model.

So, the inevitable has occurred.