There You Go Again, myLot: Can You Ever Just Stop Being Mean to Members?

It pains me to continually have to write bad press about myLot, a social interaction community that pays its members to interact with each other. At the same time, there is an old saying about staying out of "the news."

If you don't want to be in the news, don't create the story.

I like myLot, and I want to be very clear about that. I would not have stuck around with the site as long as I have if that were not the case. And generally speaking, my experience there is mostly fun and rewarding, especially since it is a rather tightknit community of people who reside there. They almost become like family and friends, even if it is rather unlikely you will ever meet anyone there in person.

However, admin, and I would say even the ownership, is another story, and it wasn't always this way. But it has been this way over the past three or more years, and maybe a bit longer actually. Not good.

The way admin conducts themself, and I should point out that it has been different people during this time, is rude, condescending and quite disrespectful toward members, and blatantly so. And this has been true of at least the last three of them.

I often question why this is. Because as I have stated many times before, the members of myLot are the heart of the site. They are the only reason it even exists. What exactly is the point of driving a wedge between the people who moderate the site and the members who interact within it?

Most who have no ill intentions, mind you, who are operating within the site.

Sites such as myLot, as well as other social media platforms, all have rules, and there's no rocket science behind understanding why they are there, and even why they are important. It's the glue that keeps everything working smoothly so that everyone participating on the site can have a good experience and be free from certain people who may not have the best interests of the site or the community at hand.

And by the way, admin should have the capacity to know who those people are, and who those people aren't. You should also afford any good member at least some leeway when it comes to enforcing the rules since while we are all aware of them, we're not necessarily going to remember every single detail about them.

It happens. We're human. It's not to say that the rules are as complex as say, the tax code. But you're still not bound to remember every little detail. 

Granted, and I have said this many times before about myLot, I will admit some of the rules are a bit weird. But I'm not here to critique that, other than to simply say some of the rules are weird. It's my opinion. The site owners are well within their rights to disagree with me about that.

My issue is more about the manner in which admin interacts with the community and the lack of concern, it seems, from the owners regarding how members feel about that. I have expressed concerns in the past directly to them, and never received a response.

That is, by the way, a response. They simply don't care. Even if they don't say the words, the non-response speaks for itself.

What leads me to this current rant, if you want to call it that, was a post that was deleted by admin that was discussing a lapse in earnings updates at HubPages, a site where writers write articles or blogs and publish them.

There is no rule against writing about other earning platforms on myLot. But they do have a rule about adding a link to the site you are talking about. I am aware of the rule. However, I had simply forgotten about it. So, the reason the post was deleted was not because of the content, but rather because it did not link back to HubPages.

A very minor infraction, mind you. And not one that should, in any case, illicit a holier than thou response from admin.

As is my personal rule, I contacted admin to learn why the post was deleted and based on former interactions with admin that I have had before, I gave a response to it. I will grant, one might suggest my response could be construed as rather immediately "combative" in nature. But if you understand the full back story, the response to my post being deleted, and the reason I worded it the way I did, actually makes sense.

It's not like, when it comes to admin, that it has ever been unclear that I will not challenge them whenever I feel it is necessary. So, is it just to antagonize me in some way? They seem to dislike any member who doesn't bend to their power. And of course, I am not one of them.

I said, "If you decide to delete a post of mine, I do expect an advance notice and an explanation. It's called courtesy. Just letting you know."

Many members have posts deleted often with no explanation, and while it is clear that admin is not required to offer one, I am often perplexed what purpose it serves not to? Especially when most members are not out to break rules intentionally or are otherwise engaged in "nefarious" activities.

If the only problem with the post that was deleted was that it needed to have a link added, there is an edit function for our posts. Admin could have easily sent a friendly reminder for me to simply add a link, and all would have been good.

But instead of taking a practical approach, admin chooses to continually assert some form of "authority" over members that I think, serves no purpose other than to stroke the egos of a person who has been put in a position to be in charge of something that goes right to their head—and let's face it. The people the owners choose to do this are not necessarily at the top of the food chain. Hey, let's be real. It's myLot where, believe it or not, some people earn $5-$10 a month and refer to myLot as a job! 

The former admin was an elderly pot smoking dude who lived with his dad, living on the government teat.

Not exactly the cream of the crop, as you might say. It was often quite the ponderance, to try to figure out how many tokes of the bong he took before getting really nasty with some members, running myLot like a prison camp. "Do as I say or else!"

The response I got from admin was exactly of the sort I am always used to, and so it was no surprise. Nasty, rude, condescending, as well as demeaning. "I will refer you to the Terms you agreed to when joining which state I am not required to tell you when or why something gets deleted. However, if you want to know why, I will tell you. There is a 4-year old discussion by a previous Admin stating you must add a link to a site when discussing other earning sites. Yours was the third such discussion I have deleted in the past week for not adding links (all from members who should know better), and now I believe I am simply no longer going to allow discussions about other earning sites."

Besides the response being poorly written, it belittles members and is quite accusatory. But again, why is there so much animosity dealt toward members of the community, which seems constantly apparent when dealing with admin? I mean, I simply forgot to add a link. This requires swift and decisive action delivered with a commanding blow?

It's myLot remember, for crying out loud. A place where we talk about what we did that day and what we had for dinner. Sometimes there are deeper discussions. But that's pretty much the bulk of them. Menial and rather trivial things that even most people outside the site, if the posts came up in search, wouldn't even remotely be interested in reading about.

So, these are largely inside discussions. The site doesn't seem to care much if organic traffic waddles in. It makes its money by the ads members see. No one else. And I think the owners are realistic when it comes to knowing myLot will never be a multi-million-dollar enterprise. It's just a tiny site that lives on the Internet with a handful of people playing around on it that the owners might be able to make a car payment with.

I'll grant you, even my own response should be, it's just myLot. Who cares? A post got deleted. It wasn't important. It's not important. I might have lost two cents if I am lucky. But it's, of course, the principle of it. And I am big on principle.

I did write to the owners of the site on this one, simply asking the question, "I am curious why you continue to put admin in place that is rude and disrespectful, as well as rather condescending toward members here?"

I will await their response, but if past history is any indication of future results, I am pretty sure my concerns have once again fallen on deaf ears and admin will go about his or her business as usual, waving their iron fists over member's heads. 

I would very much like to give the owners an opportunity to share their thoughts on the issue. But I have no expectation that they will do that.

Either way, I have a platform outside of myLot to talk about it. And of course, that's exactly what I will do. That is exactly what I did here. myLot hates bad press enough that they don't allow any negative commentary regarding myLot within their walls. Yet, they always forget that some of us who are on that site have bigger audiences outside of it, and the commentary that gets put out here will be far more scathing than anything that might get put inside of it.

But hey, just in case Blogspot happens to have its own internal Gestapo lurking around the edges waiting to pounce on me, I'll be sure to leave a link below to myLot that you are welcome to peruse at your leisure.

Like the way I write or the things I write about? Follow me on my Facebook page to keep up with the latest writings wherever I may write them. Want to check out myLot, you can click the link here to learn more.

© 2024 Jim Bauer

myLot Is Run By Weird People

I want to be clear here, a site called myLot, which is a social media site where people talk about their everyday lives, what they ate for dinner, or just pretty much anything at all, is a pretty fun site. I am not going to dismiss that aspect of it. And it is certainly worth a look if you want to talk about anything and nothing and also make a few bucks while you do it.

But what makes the site fun and interesting are the people who are part of the community. Not the owners of the site. And not the admin.

Honestly, they are quite weird. And I have talked about this aspect of the site many times. And like this time, from time to time I feel the need to remind people of the abnormality that exists as part of myLot's existence.

You know, anywhere on the Internet, anywhere in social media, on the very platforms I am using, I can say whatever I want about those platforms. I can air my opinions freely. Those platforms may not like what I have to say. But they at least acknowledge it is not my job to say good things about them.

It is their job to encourage me to say nice things about them through what they do to make me happy about using their site.

I could, for example, write a blog, right here on Blogspot, saying things about Blogspot that won't put Blogspot into a good light. So be it. And that would be perfectly acceptable.

But myLot? They're different. You can't say a single negative thing about the site. It's against their rules. And well, it's a public site just like any other site on the Internet and anyone can find the posts that are written there. 

It's all front and center, searchable, and the posts will and do come up in searches. 

As such, they are scared of any bad publicity, even if it isn't direct, but simply implied. It is them saying, under no uncertain terms, "You will not say bad things about us that others might see outside of the site."

I mean, it's a thing with them. They are scared of it, and I just find it to be rather peculiar. I said it's weird. And that's exactly what I meant. It's weird. They are weird for it.

Take a post I wrote there earlier today. It really was a benign post. It was not making fun of myLot. It was not being disparaging of myLot. It was not scolding myLot, or even complaining about myLot. It was simply a tongue in cheek post about activity being a bit slow in myLot for the day.

That's a no-no, you see. Because God forbid someone out there, the five or so people who might see it, see that post and think there might be something wrong with myLot.

That's why they took it down. Because in their eyes it potentially communicates something about their site they may have reason to be embarrassed about. Why? Who the hell knows? But it's why they took down my post.

The problem there is this; some of us are writers outside of myLot with bigger platforms and louder voices than others. People like me who happen to have a very large audience and the potential for many more eyes to see what I will say here than they might ever have found on their actual site.

And worse, the words I post here are far less tongue in cheek, far less careful, far less friendly, far more scathing, much more critical, and perhaps in some ways, more dangerous to their reputation than anything I might post within the confines of their iron fists.

Like I said, myLot is still a site that can be fun and earn some money. But just know that when you step within their doors, you're locked inside, and they will command you to behave their way or else. Make sure you praise them to the High Heavens. They like praise. They can't handle scorn. They can't handle ridicule. And frankly they fear the truth. 

Like the way I write or the things I write about? Follow me on my Facebook page. If you want to check out myLot as a place to write about anything and get paid without having to be a writer? You can find them at mylot.com. You can find me there as well. My name is Porwest. If you sign up and write an introductory post, let them know Porwest sent you there from The Springboard. 

Bubblews May Have Been A Scam From Day One

The one thing I always found a bit confusing about Bubblews was that whenever the question came up as to whether or not Bubblews paid its members, the answer largely depended on who you asked. Some members reported that they were paid consistently, and others reported that they were paid some of the time, or had several missing payments.

After the now infamous New Year's post posted by the CEO, Arvind Dixit, which told members that redemptions before a certain date would be erased, and any pending payments after that date would have a new pay structure applied retroactively, thereby dramatically slashing payments due, it became clear that the pay structure Bubblews was using was flawed.

Bubblews never had the ability to pay its members one penny per like, one penny per view, and one penny per comment from day one.

Instead of changing their pay structure, the owners of the site, I think, simply made active decisions about who would get paid. The fact was that the owners of the site were getting some media attention, and their site was booming with new signups every day. It is my opinion that the owners of the site believed that the money would eventually work itself out.

In some ways what Bubblews was doing was closely related to a Ponzi scheme. The difference was that they were not relying on new members to supply money, per se, but content.

So who got paid? Members who provided richer content, and who were relatively active on the site,


Arvind Dixit, CEO of Bubblews

and who potentially would draw in more ad revenue. Those members were put at the front of the line to keep them paid and keep them providing content that would draw in the most ad revenue. Others who were less active, or who provided less rich content were sent to the back of the line, and were either paid late, or not paid at all.

What happened to the money?

Just like in a Ponzi scheme where new money pays old investors, the money that was not paid to less contributive members was funneled into the accounts of those who provided richer content and who were more active. Again, to keep them writing and keep them onboard.

I was one of those members, having been paid every single redemption I ever made, aside from the final payment which had been slashed due to the retroactive pay structure being applied to it. In fact, if you go back and review many of the posts by members during times when there were severe complaints about payments you begin to notice a trend.

Those who were saying they were missing payments had less rich content. Those who wrote posts saying they could not understand the complaints, and who said they were being paid, and defended the site were typically those who had richer content.

It helps to confirm for me what was going on. It helps to make it clear that the owners of the site were actively deciding who got paid and who did not based on what they felt was "best for the site," and I think overall, "best for their bottom line."

What is sums up for me is that Bubblews was never truly able to manage itself, and was a scam from day one. Only it wasn't apparent to everyone since probably half the members were getting paid. To me there really is no other explanation as to why there was so much inconsistency in how redemptions worked for some, and not for others.

The smart members, the ones who were the rich content providers, mostly left the site after the New Year's post. And the site is now basically a shell without a body. Can Bubblews recover? I have a hard time believing that it will since the Internet is such an easy place for people to talk about their experiences there, and share their opinions about the site, which when it comes to the smart members, is all bad press. The bad press always outweighed the good press, and these days the bad press has grown to a point that it buries any good press there could have been. Bubblews is dead.

A New Writing Site In Revenue Sharing

Revenue sharing is not over and done with just yet. In fact, there seems to be more and more of these types of sites cropping up all the time. From the old days of sites like HubPages, to WebAnswers, and the slowly dying Bubblews, revenue sharing, and more particularly revenue sharing in what is essentially not content driven anymore, but social media driven, is still a huge draw.

Part of the reason is that in these types of circles, one does not need to be a writer per se. One can easily share what they are doing for their day, share personal experiences, or just interact in similar ways that we find ourselves doing on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The big difference, and bigger draw is that you can get paid while doing it.

One such revenue sharing site which is relatively new to the scene, but drawing lots of attention, especially from former writers at Bubblews, is Elitevisitors. The concept is simple, and slightly different than Bubblews, but essentially the same.

You write, you read, you like, you comment, you get paid.

If this sort of thing is your thing, checking out Elitevisitors may be well worth your time. It's too early to tell exactly what the future of Elitevisitors may be. But so far I like it, and think it can stuixck around for a while so long as people enjoy spending time there, and so long as the site administrators don't screw it up.

Visit Elitevistors to see what all the hype is about.

Bubblews Payment Issues

The worst press that Bubblews gets happens to be around payment issues. Pull up a search on Bubblews on Google or Bing and what you get on the first pages of results is nothing but bad press. Words like liars, cheaters, crooks, scammers, illegitimate, and not worth the time are in all of the titles and summaries. It is harder to find good press on Bubblews than bad press on Bubblews.

I like Bubblews, and I spend a lot of time there. That is without a doubt. I will also say that in the past I have never experienced any issues with getting paid by the site. In fact, my last redemption only took 28 days after a change in redemption time was announced to be around 30 days to get paid.

That all changed with a redemption I made on July 23rd for $53.10 which is, as of this writing, still missing. That puts that redemption at 43 days without having been paid.

In the Bubblews Learning Center the site says that payments may take up to 30 days. Where I come from up to means perhaps less than, but not more than. So 43 days is certainly outside the parameters of what they are claiming is the time it takes to process a payment once a member redeems.

I have two other pending redemptions; one made on the 7th of August, and another made on the 25th of August. I am set to redeem right now with over $60 in the bank. All said, the Bubblews website now owes me to the tune of $231. Not a lot of money by any stretch of the imagination. But certainly an amount worthy of my wanting to receive, and pay attention to.

The troubling part for me is that the CEO and president of the site regularly post articles. The CEO tends to do this more frequently than the president. They like to write about new features, and other developments for Bubblews members to enjoy. They write about inspiration, vision, and what Bubblews wants to be. But they never speak about missing payments, or on the fact that right now there are hundreds, if not thousands of members who have redemptions outstanding for well more than 30 days. Some have claimed to be waiting for nearly two months with no communication whatsoever from Bubblews about where their payments are. Or if they will be paid at all.

A site like Bubblews, which wants to change the face of social media, and have any prospect for a strong future need to be extremely engaged in the one thing that truly separates them from the competition.

That they pay their members.

When they do not, or when they do not pay in a timely fashion, and do not pay in accordance with their own parameters set by them in the Learning Center of their own site, this erases their niche. It makes their claim moot.

Worse, it causes members like me to speculate about where payments are. It causes members to make potentially false accusations. It causes members to write outside of Bubblews, and add to the throngs of negative press that overload any information someone might pull up on Bubblews while surfing the Internet. It causes members to question the integrity and legitimacy of the Bubblews website. It causes members to speculate on the integrity of the president and CEO of Bubblews, and it simply makes Bubblews look bad.

Whether the perceptions are true or not, Bubblews cannot escape the speculation if they continue to contribute to it directly.

HubPages Makes a Breakfastpop Pop Out

Don't get me wrong when I say that HubPages over the past couple of years has taken on far too much editorial control at their site, and it has irked more than just a few writers. I was one of them a while back as I wrote my farewell hub to my faithful readers, Goodbye HubPages sometime back in October of 2011.

HubPages is not a bad site to write for. It's just not as easy as it used to be to write content that you want without a lot of added scrutiny by the site moderators.

A couple of things that stood out for me were simple references that I made to the Boston Beer Company as I was simply saying that it was the last real American company left to brew beer. That hub it turned out was cited as promoting drinking. Another hub was simply an anecdote about the prospects of winning the lottery, and was primarily meant to be somewhat humurous in nature. This hub was cited as promoting gambling.

Neither of which were true in the context of my hubs. I eventually reposted the latter hub here on the Springboard, Winning the Lottery: The Dream of the Big Win.

If the moderators would have actually read the hubs, the fact that neither were really promoting anything would have been all too clear. Even after I wrote them citing my concerns, it was clear that they did not bother to read a word of what I'd posted. Worst of all I got a nasty bit of a response back from them which I talked about in a follow-up hub titled, On HubPages—October 21, 2011, wherein they said, "Like most websites, there are many topics which are protected under free speech that are not permitted on websites like HubPages. Please feel free to publish any content that violates HubPages Terms of Use elsewhere. Let us know if you have any questions."

That was the real stab, and those words hung on me like weighted chains hooked to my nipples. Please feel free to publish any content that violates HubPages Terms of Use elsewhere. Thanks for nothing, guys. Really?

To date my hubs have received over 72,000 views, and these figures do not count any hubs I deleted which became irrelevant due to time decay of the material. It doesn't make me the Stephen King of HubPages, but I am sure my 72,000 plus views certainly helped the site to make a few bucks over the years.

Which brings me to Breakfastpop who is, for all intents and purposes, a conservative blogger at HubPages. To date she has written around 913 hubs, and has earned the following of somewhere around 762 other hubbers, and who also gets read by many people outside the site who are not even members. Her blogs, as I would classify them, always get quite a few comments, and I would think her total views would blow mine clear out of the water.

And despite that, she recently announced she will be reducing her activity on the site citing mainly that HubPages has "institued changes that seem to be anti-writer." And she is spot on when she makes this comment. When I wrote Goodbye HubPages I said, "If we are to truly call ourselves writers then no writer I have ever spoken to has ever been for censorship in any form. This is censorship if you ask me." Breakfastpop went on to say, "This site is no longer a haven for writers who wish to express themselves freely and creatively."

This becomes especially true when one takes into consideration that the site touts itself as a site for writers, and is essentially a means to self publish your work. I understand why any site of this nature would want to be careful about some of its content simply because any content that might be negative could impact their entire site overall. But there is a big difference between inappropriate content and simple creative and free thinking by writers who provide it. And again, if the site wants to run itself more like a magazine and filter some of the content, then they must take the time to actually read the content that is deemed to be objectionable, substandard, or the quality of the content simply be determined by "word requirements, graphs, charts and polls" as Breakfastpop also rightly pointed out.

It is also true that many quality writers have left the site for the very reasons that I stated, along with Breakfastpop's statements as to her reasoning for slowing down her activity. What will they have left if the good writer's go is the question I have posed more than once? When you drive away those who actually make a positive contribution to the site, what is left? What's more, many times HubPages has said that they are simply going along with the TOS of Google Adsense. Yet not once have I ever had any notices of violating Adsense's TOS, even when I have published exactly the same material which was deemed a violation of HubPages TOS on one of my blogs, all of which are directly owned by Google.

One thing I have long said in looking into the actions of the moderators and owners of what is supposed to be a site for writers, is that none of these moderators or owners have a clue about the importance of freedom of speech that is inherent in anyone who actually considers themselves to be a writer, and as being a former editor involved in the publishing of an online monthly fiction horror magazine, editor of a horror fiction anthology, and having associations with other editors and writers like Mort Castle, Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance, T.M. Wright, Peter Straub, Michael Laimo (who recently had one of his books turned into a movie on Chiller), and former Dorchester Publishing Leisure Horror books editor Don D'Auria, I know what it means to have editorial control over content. Nothing was published, nor rejected, without first reading the material. That's how you deal with writers. No programming algorithm can ever replace that, and non writers/editors should not have a thing to do with editorial control. Instead this task should be delegated to those who know what they are doing.