For two years Bubblews was probably the hottest writing site around. Some people were making hundreds of dollars every month without ever having to write quality content. All that was required was to write a few 400 character posts every day, then spend the rest of your time socialising with other members of the site. It all seemed so easy, but in the end the money ran out and thousands of members were forced to accept that Bubblews couldn't pay all they owed them. Finally in November 2015 Bubblews closed down with no warning.
This story brings back memories of my first venture into the world of online writing.
Themestream was an early forerunner of Bubblews, dating back to around the year 2000. The concept was similar but formatting your articles was a lot more work. As far as I recall it was necessary to upload articles using some form of HTML and I have vague memories of the special software necessary to prepare my work for publication.
Like Bubblews, Themestream paid per view, though there was nothing for comments and I'm not sure the like system had even been invented then. I believe that Themestream started out offering a massive ten cents per view and some people were earning a lot of money there. Sadly I was a late arrival and rates had already fallen by then, but I was still able to accumulate about $30 in my account before Themestream went broke and announced that they would be closing the site within days. I never saw a cent of my "earnings".
The bug had bitten though and I tried a couple of other sites after Themestream closed. The results were the same, with both folding before I got any money for my efforts.
Shortly after that I bought my first digital camera and I drifted away from writing into the world of photography. It was about a decade before I tried writing for money again. Fortunately my luck was a bit better this time. Bubblews was the first writing site that actually paid me, but I still lost out on a few payments in the end.
You can read more about my Bubblews experience in an article I published at HubPages in early 2015.
No comments:
Post a Comment