It's really heartbreaking with the scenario, a lesson for us to be able to look ahead, forget and leave useless shitcoin.
Think positive for the future and find a quality project with a responsible team.
That's why I only join on Signature Campaign that pays BTC, joining on some campaigns that no guarantee if it become successful or not is worst than riding a roller coaster. you will not now the project has failed until so many months of waiting and when finally you see that they listed on exchanges the cost of thousands of coins in your wallet is only $2.
Never joined bounties during my stay in this forum, I usually like signature campaigns, at least your hard work is getting paid weekly. Unlike bounties wherein it's a gamble and you don't know when the coins are going to be listed and when are bounties gonna pay you.
As OP has put it, 2018 up to present, it's hard to earn big in bounties because you don't know when you are getting paid, and when you are paid, what will be the price of each token once listed. I heard that bounty hunters usually dump the coins once it get listed, so if you are late then you will just be receiving dust amounts for all the months of hard work.