The Productive Writer-Online Content and New Newsletter
The Productive Writer-Online Content and New Newsletter
My blog post on Tuesdays is usually about productive writing related to my books. I usually talk about what I do to produce better quality books. However, recently, my writing production has been more focused on writing online content and less on book writing.
Writing Online Content
For an author, especially Indie Authors, writing the book isn’t the end of the writing process. An author also…
So, I just discovered that Bubblews has decided to shut down. I went there less than a month ago and saw no sign of this. I mean, I knew that their payment model had gone south, which is why I stopped using it to make money, but....I would’ve liked a heads up on knowing they were going to not only stop paying people, but were going to make the entire site inaccessible and trash all of our writing.
Rest in peace memories, because I apparently won’t be getting any of it back.
I’ve just found out that Bubblews, a site where you can write and share your thoughts and opinions, which can earn you a little bit of money, has just been shut down. This is an unexpected surprise but there’s nothing pleasant or good about this. This news came without warning and it's just plain depressing. Here’s why:
No warning
Okay, you know what, I really hate this news about Bubblews for a number of reasons. For one thing, there was absolutely no warning at all about this. It just happened, unexpectedly and all of a sudden.
In fact, I never would have found out about this if I hadn’t seen an article talking about Bubblews shutting down. When I saw it, I thought, wait, what? That can’t be right. Is that true? I haven’t been to the site in a while but, occasionally, sometimes, I still log in there. I still have a lot of articles posted there and my bank page there still has some money.
So I went to the site’s homepage. Instead of seeing the usual page where you can click on the login button, I was greeted with a note, a note explaining that Bubblews was shutting down.
Lost articles and money
Thankfully, I do have links to my Bubblews profile page as well as to all of the articles that I have posted there. So, I went to check them out. I couldn’t access any of these pages. I was greeted with an error 404 page. This was the same with any Bubblews page that I tried to access. The only thing that was available was the homepage with that note.
Needless to say, this really sucks. I mean, who saw this coming? You know the least that the site could have done was to tell us about this, right, so that we could have gotten copies of all of our articles.
But they just shut down the site without warning and didn’t give anyone a chance to get copies of their articles. What if we wanted to publish them elsewhere? What if we wanted to move them?
I’m just glad that I was able to move a number of my articles from that site already. But, like I said, I still have lots of articles there and, now, I can’t access them anymore. I think, I hope, that I still have copies of those articles somewhere in my files.
But what about those that don’t? Some people there have hundreds of articles. What if they were unable to make backup copies of their posts? With the shut down of Bubblews, how can they retrieve their writings?
It’s just really sad, you know? Not to mention depressing. We could have at least been given the chance to make copies of our posts and delete them from the site. Instead, we weren’t warned. They just sprung this on us and so what if we get inconvenienced by this, right? So what if we can’t get our articles anymore? Who cares, right? :-(
What about the money?
One of the reasons why I haven’t been very active in Bubblews lately was because of the low earnings there. A lot of people have taken note of this too and I’ve read enough posts of people who are also having problems with earning some passive income there. But I still kept my articles and my account because I had money in the Bubblews bank page.
I had hoped that they might someday lower the payment threshold but they never did. It was $50 and my bank page was stuck at somewhere around $44. I hoped that I’d be able to reach the threshold someday but, now, well, it’s all gone.
$44+ down the drain, just like that. How much more for people who are closer to the $50 payout than that? And I have to wonder if there’s really nothing that can be done about that now?
I guess it would have been too much to expect them to have at least given us some of our earnings before shutting down the site. Then again, they did just shut everything down without warning.
How many members lost money in their bank pages there? How many had almost $50 in their banks but had been unable to redeem? So, what, I guess the site pocketed all of that then? :-(
What do you think about all this? Does anyone have any more news about this? Is there a way to recover the articles somehow? Some of them are likely still available in Google’s cache but what about the others?
And what about the money? What about people who’ve lost a lot? Can that be recovered? Would trying to complain to the BBB (Better Business Bureau) yield anything this time? What do you think?
A fifteen-year-old girl who is interested in reading classical novels, magazines and newspaper. I try not to let my problems at school carry over into my private life. I curb my enthusiasm!
