I Went Viral And Got 674 Followers on News Break
By: Ryan Fan
Tags: Freelancing, Nonfiction, Writing, Marketing, Self

I Went Viral And Got 674 Followers on News Break

Playing it safe seems to be the worst thing you can do for News Break

Screenshot from the author

Like many Medium writers, I started posting and publishing my pieces on News Break, relatively later than many writers I know. According to Ash Jurberg, News Break is a tech company that gives writers the opportunity to receive a monthly retainer based on views and referrals. As a reader, I use News Break for local news since it gives me access to local outlets.

As a writer, I haven’t really gotten that into it. I decided to hop onto the News Break bandwagon of other writers on Medium joining News Break. My philosophy going into News Break was to post the pieces that did well on Medium onto News Break. First, I decided to post my piece about the rise and fall of Jared from Subway, which is my highest performing piece on Medium.

I then didn’t look at News Break for a whole day. But I looked back a day later to see 59 comments on it. Hearing about the notorious toxicity of many News Break comments, I decided not to check them. However, I, unfortunately, did decide to check them about an hour later, and I wish I didn’t. Readers just tend to be more crass and blunt, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s definitely a more immature audience than Medium.

I would simply refresh the page to see significantly more comments every single time. I was pretty psyched and got the typical dopamine rush you get from an exploding article. But apparently, stats took a whole day to refresh, so I had no idea how many views or impressions my piece was getting. The stats finally did refresh some time before midnight that night, and that piece about Jared drove most of my traffic below:

Screenshot from the author

What have I learned from my progress so far on Newsbreak? Absolutely nothing. Most of the pieces I’ve posted have over 1,000 views on Medium, but only one has done well on Newsbreak, with over 1 million impressions and over 250,000 views. I don’t know what works well, and what doesn’t, and I don’t claim to.

I post three articles a week since that’s what other Medium writers told me to do. I was later to the game than other writers, but I’ll still re-post occasionally.

But the general rule, which I think my friend Matt Lillywhite can attest to, is to post, publish, hope for the best, then move onto the next one. Matt has published 359 posts and has 2709 followers, and I’ve read most of his pieces on Medium. You don’t know what might do well and what might not. And any degree of certainty you feel will likely be wrong. The rule that I originally thought of “what does well on Medium does well on News Break” is not necessarily true. And I thought it was just a different platform in general, with more newsy pieces performing better since it’s a news platform. That hasn’t entirely been true either. I notice that self-improvement is not the drive on News Break like it is on Medium, and some writers have said relationship-oriented pieces do better.

It seems like I’m a complete one-hit-wonder on Newsbreak, and that’s fine. It’s not my main platform, and I’m glad it’s giving me more exposure for my work. Medium is still my main gig and always will be. As a reader, what I don’t like about News Break is that my publisher account and my reader account are not linked, so every time I like or comment on a Medium writer’s piece on News Break, I am “A user from Baltimore.”

News Break has been different from Medium in that it’s novel and exciting. I don’t know much about the company, and would certainly like to reference Ash’s article about the history of News Break and the ins and outs of the platform. I certainly hope News Break isn’t a fad because it provides the opportunity for Medium writers to syndicate and gain a new audience.

I have been lucky in a lot more ways than not. I was lucky to be accepted as a News Break writer since I’ve heard of other writers on Medium not being accepted. I have been lucky to have my first article be such a big hit, and I’ve been lucky to be one of the first Medium writers to surpass a big benchmark on News Break. I have been lucky in more ways than I can count just relying on zero intentionality and blind faith to do well on the platform.

And it’s because of that luck that I don’t want to convey the message that “I was able to do this and you can too.” But you don’t know until you try it out.

Screenshot from the author

Overall, I encourage any writer on Medium who has the opportunity to seek a new outlet for their previous pieces on News Break. Sure, some people might suggest you ramp up the “clickbaitiness” on your News Break pieces, but it’s still too soon to tell for me. What I will say is it’s a relatively no-risk proposition to simply syndicate your pieces across News Break — I have spent about 10 minutes total putting my pieces from one platform to the other, so it’s not particularly time-consuming and you’ve already put in the work. My strategy is likely not perfect, and I do likely need to post more and revise my headlines, but I’m happy with the start so far.

I initially wanted to play the “wait and see” strategy to see how other people did on News Break before exploring it myself. I will say now that that was a mistake since publishing on News Break tends to be a low effort proposition. There’s a lot of uncertainty about News Break from the Medium writing community, but playing it safe seems to be the worst thing you can do for News Break.