7 Tips for How to Be Successful on News Break
By: Tara Blair Ball
Tags: Freelancing, Writing Tips, Blogging Tips, Blogging, Writing

If you’re a frequent writer on Medium, you’ve likely already heard about News Break, the news app which is now catering to content creators.

Their incentives are attractive:

a guaranteed minimum monthly income,

ad revenue share,

referral bonuses for getting readers to download the News Break app and bringing on new content creators,

and other cash awards.

There are, of course, requirements for reaching that guaranteed minimum monthly income.

The number of articles you publish, when you publish those articles, and your page views and follower counts may factor in whether you reach that guaranteed minimum or not.

I can’t share the specific details of my contract (confidentiality agreement), but I can say that once you apply and receive a contract, it’ll be clear what you need to do to reach those minimums.

Screenshot by the author

I reached all of my contract requirements in order to make the guaranteed monthly minimum payment in four days.

Here’s how:

1. Clickbait is your friend.

Unlike Medium, you can go nuts with your titles on News Break. It actually was difficult for me at first to come up with clickbait headlines for articles because I was so used to avoiding them altogether.

While clickbait is often about overpromising and underdelivering, you can get around this by working on the emotional value of your headline. Pack your headlines with power words. Be specific (A list of tips? HOW MANY tips? HOW was that incident life-changing?). Use “This/These.” Make them think, “Whaaa?” so they click click click.

Here are some of my articles that have done well:

“It Was Only a Matter of Time Before I Cheated on My Husband” (91k page views)

“4 Ways to Make a Girl Crazy for You” (37k page views)

“5 Things Science Says Guys Don’t Find Attractive in Girls” (29k page views)

Here are some articles from other writers that have done incredibly well:

“How a Teenage Girl Became the First Survivor of the Deadliest Virus Known to Man”

“What It’s Like to Date As a Demisexual”

“How I Got Proof of Life After Death as My Husband’s Final Gift”

If clickbait headlines are tough for you to come up with, try these helpful generators: Sumo headline generator, Phrase Generator, or Title Generator.

Pro tip: If an article doesn’t do well at first, try changing its title! One writer told me she changed one SIX times before it finally started gaining traction.

2. Add the follow widget to the bottom of all of your articles.

News Break isn’t as intuitive about getting your fans to follow you.

When you are drafting an article to publish, the button on the top right under the Title bar says “widget” when you hover over it and then “follow” when you click it.

Make sure to add that to ALL of your articles, so it’s easy for your fans to click to follow you.

Here’s what it looks like:

Screenshot by the author.

3. Know your audience.

While I’d consider Medium’s audience rather educated, liberal, and worldly, News Break’s readers are American, politically conservative, and primarily male.

I quickly discovered this just by reading the comments on some of the first articles I published. Be aware that the comments can be very unfiltered and…mean. It’s recommended that you don’t read them unless you’re wanting a better sense of your audience.

In my talk with the creators of the platform, it also seems like many live in the American south.

Articles that do well cater to and/or upset that particular audience. This audience particularly responds to emotional hooks and stories.

Therefore, the following article topics do well:

personal essays on a range of topics (family, parenting, friendships, death, etc.)

being for or against masks, President Trump/President Elect Biden, or the Republican/Democratic Party or its platform

relationship/dating advice for men

gender/sexual identities

relationship/dating problems

Tips:

Keep your paragraphs short.

Make your writing easy to skim (lists, subheadings, etc.).

Check your grammar and spelling (using something like Grammarly).

Consider keeping your writing level to a 7th to 8th grade level, which is the reading level that newspapers in the U.S. cater to. You can use this analyzer. Shoot for a Fry Readability Grade Level (shown on the right) of 7 or 8.

4. Pay attention to your keywords.

Unlike Medium where you can tag your own articles, News Break automatically pulls keywords from your article.

Here are the keywords that appear on the bottom of this article:

Screenshot by the author.

Some of these can be very relevant (like “relationship advice” and “infidelity”), but some of these can also be very irrelevant (like “Europe” and “circumstance.”).

If you want an article to appear under a certain tag, make sure you’re using valid and similar keywords. Instead of, for example, using the word “cat” multiple times in an article, also use the words, “feline,” “kitten,” “pet,” etc.

5. Publish.

You’ll never learn if you don’t try, so publish maybe four articles on four different topics.

Pay attention to what does and doesn’t do well.

If none of them do, try another four, or try writing an article that is in the vein of something on the list I mentioned above.

The important thing is not to give up. You may be surprised by what takes off.

Note: Profanity and ANY sexual references are not allowed (even using the word “sex” or “sexy” can get a story flagged, so you’re better off just not using them). It can be annoying (I literally have to ctrl+F each of my stories for naughty words because I’m a potty-mouth), but the more you get used to writing “cleanly,” the better.

6. Stick with the winners.

Like any platform, even one in its early stages like News Break, you have to find the “winners” and learn from them.

Follow as many fellow creators as you can, and pay attention particularly to those that already have over 1k followers and 200k+ views. Those are writers who are doing something right.

You’re welcome to follow me. Also check out the pages of the following even more successful writers:

Shannon Ashley

Matt Lillywhite

Tracey Folly

Kerry Kerr McAvoy

Elle Silver

Joe Donan

When you find a “winner, ” scroll through all of their articles. Since you won’t be able to see how many pages views a particular article has, look for the ones with the highest number of likes/comments.

Read those “winning” articles. Pay attention to their headlines. The topics. How the writer structured or formatted the story. LEARN why it did well, and see if it inspires you to write your own.

7. Learn from your successes, not your failures.

Just like on Medium, an article can totally flop. Even one you think might do really well.

When it does, don’t try publishing another article in that same style/type/subject. Don’t try to repeat your failure.

I published a parenting article, for example, that has so far gotten all of three page views. THREE.

Am I going to publish another 20 parenting articles? God no. I’m going to mess with the title to see if that’ll improve things and then look back at my successful articles and see if there’s another way I can write a post on the same topic, from a different angle, etc.

While News Break is still in its infancy, it’s a great place to try out new things, introduce your work to new readers, and get some extra money too. These tips aren’t guarantees, but these are the tactics I and the other successful writers on the platform have employed. We got followers quickly once we began putting out content News Break’s audience wanted to read.