UPDATE NOVEMBER 2016 – Yup BubbleWS is long gone- the only good thing is that I have copies of most of the content I wrote there so I can reuse it. If you are still using 3rd party sites- PLEASE make sure you keep copies of content!
Yes – I know it’s been a while – life got busy – to great advantage of my bank account, not so much my blogs. Long story short, I got some lucrative freelancing opportunities, which were fun and paid well. Plus I found a brand new online distraction.
Friends on Facebook talked about it, and talked, and talked.
I ignored them, for weeks. They said it was more fun than Hubpages in the early days.
I ignored them, Hubpages made me my first $1 online, and broke my heart later when their business model went bad. I was well over third-party writing sites. I was focussed elsewhere.
And still they went on about it. After a 12 hour day, I took a peak.
They said it was a Facebook killer – that sounded good to me – Facebook is annoying me more and more with their intrusive ads, and my inability to contact my own followers without paying $5.
The new site was interesting – I went for a minute, I stayed for an hour.
I signed up – and posted something short about the earthquake we’d just had – earthquakes, even ones that cause no damage make it quite hard to concentrate.
I checked my stats – I’d made a $1.
I was hooked. Not for the $1 – but for the fact the site is fun. It is quite like Facebook – it’s not just another site to write SEO articles. In fact that might be worst thing you can do. Real people looking to socially connect with you probably won’t click through to an article titles “25 Ways To Attract Women” – they are far more likely to click on “Why my love life sucks”.
BubbleWS For Writers
What I do think BubbleWS is good for is that it’s fun for writers. If you have never written online- it’s the easiest way I’ve ever seen to get an audience. Plus you get paid for every view, every comment, every “like” you get.
Plus it’s bloody addictive – because most of the people there are real people. So they will give you real feedback – want to write humour or fiction – no problem. There are almost no restrictions.
It’s a great way to improve your writing – by practice. You will learn how much difference a compelling headline makes. You’ll see what works and what doesn’t almost in real-time. That’s an education you can’t buy.
BubbleWS For Cynics
I’ve seen plenty written about how this will fail, it’s not sustainable, and anyway they can’t be making any money. They probably aren’t making money (neither is twitter, tumblr, or facebook until very recently). They have investors, they have traffic, they have raving fans. That’s a bloody good start for a site which is only a year old.
They are getting ad revenue based on impressions not on clicks. 90% of their traffic is NOT from search. Though Google likes the site and seems to index my bubbles quickly.
That said, not every $25 (the minimum redeem level) is paid. Most non-payments are probably due to people breaking the rules. The rules are pretty simple:
- don’t steal – words or photos
- don’t use exchange groups to artificially increase your views
- don’t use traffic exchanges, proxies etc etc
- no porn
- minimum of 400 characters (NOT words)
- no pictures only
- use English
- no referral links to other sites.
Note I’ve played it VERY conservatively – all images are either copy-free, free to share with attribution, or mine. I’ve done very few external links. I’ve just asked for my first $25 redemption – should take 72 hours – we’ll see.
Why Use BubbleWS?
I still get emails people desperate to make money, any money online. If you can’t make money on BubbleWS then you probably can’t make it anywhere. Seriously, I’ve never seen an easier site to earn small amounts of cash. You need a Paypal account, the ability to follow the rules, and a lot of effort. I’ve seen people make money there that have tried for years. If this is you, give it a go.
But try it NOW, most of these sites get less generous as they mature – now may well be the sweet spot for revenue at BubbleWS.
If you need writing practice – the place is perfect. If you need to figure out what will engage an audience and what won’t – BubbleWS is your place.
Next Steps:
Signup – yes of course that’s my evil affiliate link. It’s not worth it for affiliate sales though 20c one time. What I really want is for you to connect to me.
I’ll connect back – my current theory is that the single biggest thing (given that you can vaguely write) that drives income on BubbleWS is the number of connections that you have.
Remember you and I don’t control the site – it may disappear tomorrow. It does go down quite often because of over-loading – I strongly suggest that you write offline and keep a copy – I use Evernote for this and other reasons.
Well this is my New Year’s post – we had a great holiday and no I didn’t run out of things to do or find any stunningly cheap internet – so no work got done. Time to take stock: the back story 
