My fellow Hivians? Herein I am going to save all of you the pain and the agony of ever getting involved with the Blasting News platform. Yesterday I joined that platform after one of my colleagues from the HubPages platform told me that he had earned $5,000 by writing articles for it. I don't know what parallel universe he's from, because my experience on that platform was an absolute nightmare. I was also more furious than I had ever gotten with any writing platform in dealing with all its kinks and technical glitches.
First of all, their YouTube embedment feature does not work. You click on the icon for it and you get a dialog box in the middle of your computer screen; but after you enter in the URL for the YouTube video you want to embed in your article and click "save," nothing happens. After trying to embed a YouTube video in my article so many times, I kept getting the same infuriating results.
Second of all, I tried to get a hold of a customer service representative from the Blasting News platform. That platform only seems to have a chat option as a means to communicate with their customer service department, but that chat option never seems to be online. When you do leave a message in their chat option, you never hear back from anyone. I've never had any problem getting a response to a question or concern whenever I've contacted the customer service team on HubPages. Both the Hive platform and the Steem platform give you ways of contacting people on both platforms who can walk you through any difficult situation.
I tried to embed a picture in my avatar on my Blasting News channel, but I had no luck in doing so. You can do everything absolutely by the book, and you still won't get your picture embedded in your avatar there. Anyone who has succeeded in doing so must be banging one of the editors on that platform.
Virtually nothing on that writing platform makes sense. If you want to link a word or two in your article to another article, it must be to an article that has been posted or published on the Blasting News platform. Yes! Seriously! HubPages, the Hive platform, and the Steem platform allow you to link any text in your articles to anything inside or outside those three platforms. However, the Blasting News platform limits you only to link any text in your article to another article on that same writing platform.
The frustration does not end there. It appears that the Blasting News writing platform has no search feature. Okay. I get it. It's a little tricky to find the search feature here on the Hive platform, but at least the Hive platform has a search feature. Whenever you search for a particular article on the Blasting News writing platform, you must rely on the Google search engine.
Oh, by the way, whenever you go into your profile on your Blasting News channel, you get trapped there. In other words, you have to close down the tab and open a new one, and then you have to type in the URL for the dashboard of your Blasting News channel to get back into your dashboard. That's no fun.
I already submitted an article to that platform after only being a member of it for one day, and here is what these idiots told me:
Thank you for submitting your article to Blasting News US, unfortunately, there are some issues that preclude us from being able to publish at this time without further changes. It is helpful to review the Blasting News guide for more information on the formatting and requirements which may be found here: http://static.blastingnews.com/media/pdf/Guide_Blaster_US.pdf
In their response, they also told me:
You need to provide two verifiable sources and have at least one internally embedded BN US link, and only BN US links are allowed to be embedded. Please also ensure the images used are cited and copyright free.
Okay. If there is nobody in their customer service department who is available to walk me through any difficulties in submitting this article of mine for publication, how am I going to keep myself from running into walls with their so-called guidelines? Sheesh! They need guidelines for themselves.
The Blasting News platform is not at all user-friendly. I've only been a member of it for one day, and I'm already hating it. I cannot imagine anyone earning more money from it than from HubPages, the Hive platform or the Steem platform. HubPages, the Hive platform and the Steem platform all three give their writers much more artistic freedom than the Blasting News platform does. The Blasting News platform absolutely loves censorship.
Blasting News is a sinking ship, and I'm feeling more and more encouraged to abandon it. I've had my fair share of difficulties with any writing platform I have ever joined, but I have never experienced anything to the horrendous magnitude that I have with the Blasting News platform. I've read some of their articles, and they are no better than any articles I have read on HubPages, the Hive platform or the Steem platform. In fact, I have read much more professional articles on HubPages, the Hive platform and the Steem platform than what I have read on the Blasting News platform. Therefore, who is paying my above-aforementioned colleague from HubPages or anyone $5,000 to post an article on their writing platform?
I know that life is supposed to be a learning experience, especially on the Internet. Many of us do not write and post only for the money. However, whenever a writing platform promises you the moon and the stars and their performance does not even bring you remotely close to that goal, it's time to jump ship. The Blasting News platform is an awful experience, and I warn everyone reading my article here to avoid them at all costs. You will only find yourself getting angry at them whenever you try to post anything on their writing platform if you are as unfortunate as I am to sign up for their platform. I can assure you from experience that they do not care about your literary talent, and they are not going to make you rich. Life is too short, and time is too precious.
The Blasting News writing platform has been in business since 2013. You would think that they would have gotten everything right on their platform by now, but they don't seem to care about doing so. Their whole establishment is a train wreck, and they don't care about their writers.
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