The Accurate Information About News Break’s Creators Program and My Personal Experience
By: Natalie Frank
Tags: Writing, Professional Development, Success, Writing Tips, Income

News Break Creator Program

The Accurate Information About News Break’s Creators Program and My Personal Experience

You can earn a lot of money, especially for the first three months if you get accepted as one of their creators.

Source: Metiza

I have seen several articles about News Break that include some inaccurate information that I wanted to correct. I have just joined a little over a week ago and have been in contact quite a bit with the platform staff and New Break Social Media groups with members who have been creators since the program first began on October 15th. So the information I am presenting here is from a variety of sources and includes links to help you learn more about the program and navigate the site a little easier.

A Bit About the Site and Company

Looking into the company, I learned that the site and popular app had been founded in 2015 by Jerry Yang, a billionaire computer programmer, internet entrepreneur, and venture capitalist and co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc. and Jeff Zheng, another tech billionaire who was the head of Yahoo Labs in Beijing. Not too shabby.

News Break is a website and popular app for iPhone and Android that aggregates local news based on the location of the user. News can also be selected in a lot of different categories such as culture, politics, education, entertainment, science, health, World News, and society to name a few. According to their about page “We surface the most impactful, most relevant news & information, wherever you live and work.”

They boast 45 million monthly active users across iOS, Android, and web, claiming that “creators can expect their content to reach an incredibly diverse reader base on News Break that extends far beyond what some other platforms can deliver.” This means that similar to Medium, there is already an audience for the content published there. Another plus.

My Motivation to Join

I have read a lot of posts that express writers' general dissatisfaction with different areas of Medium. Likely the biggest area is earnings as there seem to be changes happening to the algorithm more frequently and some have questioned whether Medium is more in it to establish their own brand while ignoring the desires and wellbeing of its writers.

I don’t know any more than anyone else what has been going on, only that my earnings have started again to plummet and for the first time in over two years it looks like I may drop below $200 this month. Yet even though financially I need to find a better way to earn money which I’ve come to doubt will ever be satisfied by Medium, I still have a love for Medium, both the platform and the writers here.

In a perfect world, if I am not going to earn much more than pocket change here, I’d like to find another platform that might offset my financial needs so I can still enjoy interacting, writing, and publishing on Medium without feeling the pressure to just get things out in the hopes something might “hit”. So, when I received the email inviting me to apply to a brand-new platform called News Break, I thought I’d take a look.

First Impressions

I wasn’t exactly sure what to think about the News Break site when I first explored it. It seemed like it was just a news aggregator for stories written by major news brands so I wasn’t certain why I’d been invited to apply. NBC, CBS, Reuters, LA Times, Newsweek, the Associated Press, Forbes, New York Post, msn.com, and other mainstream publications from the U.S. and all over the world have content on the site.

What I couldn’t figure out was where individual creators fit in or what types of stories we could write. I asked the team about how to find individual creators vs. content from large news sites and was told there is no one location where individual creator content lives and to search for areas I’m interested in and any creators would show in the results. I searched for half an hour and never found anything other than large brands. This left me confused and I wasted a few days since I wasn’t sure how or if there was real potential there for us.

After being in contact with several team members and members of site-related groups, I learned that the reason it’s tough to find individual publishers unless you have a name is that since the program is so new, there aren’t that many compared to the major news brands. We are there however, it just takes a bit of time to build your network, like anywhere else.

What You Can Publish

I wasn’t certain at first what to write since it’s branded as a local news site so I initially assumed you could only write news stories. The content policy didn’t help as it also seemed to indicate that this was the case, having a statement about your sources and making sure the news you report isn’t over 30 days old. I wasn’t sure what I could write that might get views over similar articles from major news outlets.

My first article was about Trump changing the citizenship test as yet another way to make it harder for people to immigrate to the states. I incorporated information about some of his other efforts to limit immigration and tied it into the topic. I made sure I had links throughout that went to reputable sources when I made a statement that might be fact-checked. While my leftist leanings showed, I tried to keep out overt opinion statements in keeping more with a news report. It was reviewed and accepted in a couple of hours which was the same for my other articles. It did okay, getting a couple of hundred views within the first 24 hours.

Since I couldn’t find individual content creators, I had no examples to look at for what others were writing on the site. I searched for others on social media and through other types of publishing groups to see if I could locate any others who wrote on the site. I found several on other platforms I publish on, a couple of social media groups that were really useful in terms of helping “newbies” learn the ropes, and a few others on sites where content writers hang out.

I learned that they are trying to expand the site past just journalistic news reports and want it to become more than just a news aggregator. It seems like they are attempting to become a competitor to Medium and from the looks of it, with the pay incentives I’ll describe in a minute, they have a good chance of taking a lot of writers and membership dollars away from Medium if it doesn’t change.

As for what you can publish, it’s very similar to what you can publish on Medium except for fiction and poetry. While the content guidelines are a bit confusing as they seem to suggest you can only publish news, this is not the case. You can also publish personal essays, opinions, personal stories and can write from any perspective, including first-person, that you choose. You aren’t allowed to publish gratuitous sexual content, violence, hate speech, and the like. They seem to be a bit more limiting on sexual content in particular from what I’ve heard.

You can also publish stories we have on other sites (though I recommend being careful about doing this without first changing them some since otherwise, they may cannibalize each other hurting your overall views.) I also write on Hubpages and they’ve made some changes that made me less than happy about the performance of a group of articles I have there. I’ve begun updating and improving these, with the intention of transferring a few to News Break to see how they do. I’m planning on removing some of the articles from Medium to publish on News Break as well. They ask that you refrain from using any false, spam, misleading, discriminatory, defamatory, or otherwise derogatory language.

Here is News Breaks content policy.

Applying for the Program

This is one mistake I’ve seen in most articles. You can’t just sign up for the program, you have to apply, be vetted, and approved after which they offer you a contract. The application doesn’t take long, only about ten minutes or so. You complete some basic information and attach the links to some of your writing samples. A plus for Medium writers is that you can give them the link to your profile so they can choose which of your articles to look at.

I can’t say for certain whether that had anything to do with it, but my application was vetted and approved in about 12 hours which I thought might have been influenced by presenting them with close to 1000 articles I’ve written on Medium. The instructions state that it typically takes 5–7 business days though several people I’ve spoken to were approved in a couple of days.

After I signed the contract, it was just a matter of setting up my profile, completing my tax forms, and deciding on the payment method I preferred.

Payment Options

There are four options, each of which had different fees associated with it. These are:

Direct deposit USD $1

Wire transfer USD $15

Check USD $3.00 1.9% to 3% FX fee may apply

Paypal 2% of the amount + USD $2.00, maximum USD 3.00. FX fee: 1.9% to 3%

Earnings Potential

Earnings Potential

This is where I’ve seen other articles get things wrong and what people are the most interested in. It’s a little confusing in terms of the wording in the contracts and subsequent offers that are being made so I’ve again gone to the team members to get it straight.

In general, from what is listed in various social media and other News Break related groups there is a guaranteed payment of $1000 every month you meet their criteria. The criteria consist of writing a certain number of articles a week (as of now it is three for a total of twelve a month) of 1000 words or more that are approved and that remain on the site, having a certain number of followers by the end of the month (currently set at 500) and averaging a specific number of views per article by the end of the month (for now it is 500 views per article).

There is also the possibility of a rev share model for income that comes for advertising, and extra earnings for achieving more impressions and followers than required. Reader referrals and creator referrals may also provide bonus awards and there is mention of possible prize money for unique challenges and promotional periods throughout the year. Since the program is new, and they’d like to attract as many quality writers as they can as quickly as possible, they are offering an additional bonus for some of those who are accepted into the program early on.

The bottom line is if you are interested in joining this site, it will benefit you to join it as early as possible since they aren’t saying how long different offers will be made. It’s possible that once they have signed enough quality writers, they could start dialing back some of the packages and perks they are including in their current offers.

My Impressions

While it took a bit of figuring out that was a bit frustrating at first, once I found contacts inside and outside the company to go to, things began to fall into place. Since they just opened the program up to individual content writers on October 15th, there are still some kinks and navigational issues to work out. They are also working on a clearer set of guidelines for those in the Content Creator program.

There are many potential perks to the program, especially if you apply and are accepted early. With 45M active users and 1.5B page views, they have already built up an audience similar to the way Medium has. However, their payment schedule isn’t based on how many paid memberships there are, so it isn’t limited each month to an exact amount. There are also a lot of bonuses and extras by way of earnings and opportunities.

Since we are not allowed to provide any specifics about what is in each person’s contracts or what we know about how the program works since it breaches their confidentiality rules, the best way to learn about it is to go directly to the team. There is a contact button, and it sends you to a page with several options for asking questions and getting feedback. You can download the app or apply without paying anything to do so. Once you are accepted into the program you will receive a contract explaining the specifics of your deal to you.

It’s still early in the game and the first paychecks haven’t gone out to know for sure how this program will work for independent publishers. I’ll keep you updated as I learn more about it.

Full Disclosure: This is my referral link for fellow writers. If you would like to sign up for the program, I’d really appreciate it if you would use it.

If you would just like to download the app to read what is on the site without necessarily contributing to the content, you can do so here.

If you prefer not to use my links it’s no problem. My only intention in writing this article was to share this opportunity with other Medium writers who, like me, maybe looking for other writing income streams where earnings are generated by a different method than Medium. I hope this information proves useful for many of you and that it helps you reach your writing goals.

Happy Writing!