Is Bubblews a Scam

Name: Bubblews
Website: www.bubblews.com
Price: FREE Membership
Owners: Arvind Dixit & Jason Zuccari
Overall Rank: 55 out of 100

Have you heard of Bubblews, the social network that pays you to post? Though it is a new concept you may be asking yourself, is Bubblews a scam? Can I really get paid for just posting my thoughts? How is that possible? Can I make a living off of this? When did Bubblews start? – Well I will answer all of those questions and more in my review of Bubblews below.

My Bubblews Review 2014

I had heard about Bubblews back in late August 2014 but I did not join until mid-September. I always do research into anything that I intend to join, even if it is free. I do not want to join if it will be a waste of my time. Even a free service that is a waste of time is still a waste of precious time. Fortunately I found out that their claim of paying you to post is true. You may have heard the saying, a penny for your thoughts? Well this is somewhat true of what Bubblews is all about.

But first let me clarify that Bubblews is a young company and with all companies first starting out, there will be many problems, updates, and changes as the company moves forward. Though the company started and went live in its Beta stage in late 2012, it did not really go live in its ready for Prime-Time stage until July 16, 2014. Within that time prior, Bubblews was basically in a test phase to see if it was a viable business model, and based on the overwhelming world-wide acceptance, the business model was sound. However as I will mention below, the current business model of 1 cent per interaction, when the company started was NOT sustainable.

Who are the Owners of Bubblews?

Like many of the highly successful online tech companies whether it be the tech giant Google or the highly successful online business training community of Wealthy Affiliate, Bubblews was also created by two guys who met up in college and had an idea to create something revolutionary for its members.

The Co-Founders of Bubblews, as seen in the picture above, are Arvind Dixit the CEO (left) and Jason Zuccari the President (right). Both of them met up while they were attending West Virginia University. Back then they created a website known as Volunteer Us, a type of volunteer-based website that would record nonprofit community service hours.

But then they had a fantastic out of the box idea. They wanted to change the way social media did business with its members. This is when Bubblews was born. The name is a combination of “bubble” and “news.” Bubblews was going to be a social network platform that provided its members from all over the world, a place where they would be encouraged to share their thoughts, stories, and passions in a minimum of 400 characters, along with a photo.

How is Bubblews different?

All of the other social media networks allow their users to post their thoughts for free in exchange for being seen, and in some cases being seen as an authority in their respective niche. But other than getting noticed for what they post with likes and comments, there really is not much of anything else they get. Perhaps if they are promoting their business they could get customers, but they still do not get anything more than just exposure.

This is where Bubblews is different. When you post and share your thoughts with the world-wide community, Bubblews will share its profits that it makes from advertisement revenue with its members. You create posts, also known as “bubbles,” follow other members, like their posts, and comment on them. Members are then paid about .01 cent for every like, comment and unique view that a post receives. NOTE: This rate varies depending on the advertisement revenue amount of the country where the interaction is occurring and being received. See explanation below.

How can I make money at Bubblews?

Bubblews claims to split the ad revenue evenly with its members who are creating content. The amount of this revenue is determined by where the interaction is occurring. If  the person viewing, liking, and/or commenting on your post is from a country that pays a higher amount for advertisement, you will get about .01 cent for each action. If the interaction is coming from a country who does not pay much for advertisement, you will get less than .01 cent for each action.

This money that you collect gets added to your Bubblews Bank and once your total reaches $50, you will be able to cash out and be paid via PayPal. NOTE: You can only cash out once every 30 days. This is actually quite nice because it spaces out your redemption giving you more time to reach you cash out goal.

Your redemption payment will be deposited into your PayPal account via an e-Check within 30 to 90 days, depending on where in the world you reside. Being that both Bubblews and PayPal are U.S. companies, members in the U.S. and Canada, and I also believe the UK, will get their payments sooner (40 to 60 days) than those who live elsewhere overseas (up to 90 days) so that Bubblews will have more time to check posts for plagiarism which is one of the problems with the network. Can you make a living off of Bubblews? No, but $50 and more per month is better than $0.

How to best use your Minimum $50 Redemption

To make more money with your writing, become a member of Wealthy Affiliate University and learn many forms of internet marketing. Just click the banner above and to the right. It is free to join! The monthly Bubblews payment of $50 will more than pay for the monthly payment at WAU for advanced training. This is what I am using my Bubblews monthly payment for, to further my education in internet marketing, Keyword Research, SEO, and WordPress website design. Learning all of this for only $49 per month and having the Bubblews $50 pay for it, is a Win – Win scenario!

 

What are the Rules for posting on Bubblews?

As with any social media network there are rules you must follow in order to have a continued enjoyable experience. If you break the rules of any social media network, you can have your posts deleted and your accounts deactivated. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and others all state this in their Terms of Use agreements. Bubblews is no different.

I have read other reviews of Bubblews prior to joining, slamming the network for scamming its members and not paying them. As a current member who has been successfully paid two times so far, I read many comments and posts of still current members waiting for lost payments. Check out my PROBLEMS section below for more up-to-date information on this. But what I noticed was that the majority of these negative reviews were from former members of Bubblews who had their accounts deactivated, more than likely for breaking the following rules.

BUBBLEWS RULES:
• Do Not Plagiarize: Your posts must consist of original content. Do not post content that you did not write yourself. You also cannot copy content from the internet and rewrite it.
• Do Not Abuse Tags: When you tag your posts, the tags must be relevant to the post.
• Accepted Content Language: All content written in posts and comments must be in English.
• Use of Images: You can only use images that you own, have permission to use, or source from the Bubblews built-in search engine of Pixabay.
• Do Not Re-post Deleted Content: If you have any content that was deleted by Bubblews it was deleted because it violated the rules in some way. Re-posting of deleted content is a violation.
• Do Not Spam Comments: No posting Spam Comments like the following – Generic Responses, Outbound Links, Asking members to like your posts or to connect with you, Thanking members for their comments, and Tagging irrelevant members or topics.
• No Affiliate or Commercial Links: You are not allowed to post Affiliate or Commercial Links (those that promote a product or a service) in your posts, comments or profile.
• No Manipulation of Interactions: If you generate non-authentic likes, views and comments from any type of human and bot actions, it is a violation of these rules.
• No Inappropriate Content: You cannot post inappropriate or immoral content such as pornographic, racist, or defamatory.

NOTE: Make sure to read the Bubblews website for more on the Rules as the network continues to evolve.

The Pros & Cons & Problems

PROS:
• You get PAID for your posts
• You get to meet and become friends with others from all over the world
• It is fun to read other member posts and interact with them
• You can post multiple YouTube videos on your posts
• It is a much better alternative than Facebook & Twitter for sharing written content
• You can share your posts on social media and get paid for all unique views from those networks
• Addictive use of your time because no matter what, you will get paid for whatever you post
• There are more great features set to be released in the near future

CONS
• The network can be painfully slow at times
• Still several network and system errors – Though they have been getting better
• The network will go down when maintenance is being done
• There are still some code bugs in the system that can temporarily cause problems with revenue
• Currently only one picture per post, though I am sure that will change in future updates
• No real timely customer service and tech support feedback
• Your payments can be denied without any explanation as to why (Posting Rules were violated)
• Though I have not experienced this, some have not received their payments
• Bubblews is a young company, still in its early growing phase, many problems are to be expected

PROBLEMS

Like I mentioned above, Bubblews has some problems. For those that have had Bubblews not paying them, they are claiming that it is a Bubblews scam. They say that Bubblews is stealing their money. Actually, what was just reported by Arvind Dixit (CEO) in a post to the community of members, he and Jason Zuccari (President) misjudged how the business model was going to work under the current payment structure that the company started and launched with.

In the beginning members were making a lot of money which was equal to what Bubblews was bringing in. However Bubblews grew too fast and was paying out more than it was bringing in. This was not only because of fast growth but because of people scamming the system by posting plagiarized content and garnering a lot of paying interactions. This made the Bubblews redemption process unsustainable and members had payments gone missing. The new payment structure as described above, is sustainable for the company moving forward into 2015, according to Arvind Dixit.

My Final Verdict

If you can follow all of the Rules and Regulations of Bubblews then you should have no problem posting, getting paid for those posts, and receiving your redemption e-Checks. Though the network is still very young and growing, with site updates and upgrades happening often, one must remember that they will continue to have some operational problems but will fix them going forward. Though they have had to make some tough financial changes that have angered members, the changes are meant to keep the company running and not close down altogether.

Because they are a small company operating on a global stage, many of the services listed under the CONS above, are currently what contribute to the majority of the complaints. Just because Bubblews has been live since late 2012 in its Beta stage, it really cannot be considered more than a year old until July 17th, 2015. So to totally fault Bubblews for their problems is not really fair. Though they do shoulder at least 50% of the blame, they have only just officially started in July of 2014 and have been victimized by plagiarists and scammers.

So is Bubblews a scam? My answer is no, they are not a scam but rather a social network that shares its ad revenue with its members for their posts. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, and others that collect your data and do not give you anything substantial in return, Bubblews gives its members the ability to earn a little bit of money for their posts. I do not know about you, but I would rather spend my time posting my thoughts and passions on a social network that will pay me for them, instead of using them to make money all for themselves. If you have any comments or questions, please post them in the comments section below and I will get back to you with a reply.