My First Week on News Break
By: Joel Eisenberg
Tags: Newsbreak, Writing, Content Writing, Content Marketing, Freelancing

My First Week on News Break

Week One is in the books. These are my results …

News Break logo

Last month, I read of a stir in the ointment for content writers. News Break, the well-publicized news site that began operations in 2019, was now accepting freelancers.

As I write full-time for a living, and during the early stages of the pandemic I began a blogging business on the side, I figured I would apply.

Oft-compared to Medium in terms of freelance opportunities, I had heard of the page in passing but noticed several Medium members I know were now writing for it.

I applied, and was accepted. Today represents the end of my first full week writing on the platform.

News Break, however, differs from Medium in several regards:

While Medium accepts any writer, to become a writer for News Break requires an application process. They will review blogs you send them, and if they believe you are a fit, you will be sent an agreement.

As there seems to be some inconsistencies in prior Medium articles about specific contracts, I will state only state here that writers earn $1000 monthly if they hit certain thresholds, another $1000 monthly is possible as well with other thresholds, and they pay $250 per approved writer (“creator”) — via an affiliate link. Mine is here:

Once you become an approved writer, you will receive an affiliate link of your own.

For my results, I have to substantially market my Medium articles online to hopefully attract paying members of the site to read them. This is how we all make money. For News Break, I only posted one share of a single article today, and on a News Break dedicated Facebook page. These below numbers have happened based on the site’s readership; I did veritably nothing save for writing the articles to attain them:

Everyone receives a home page such as what is linked below. Click and follow if you are so inclined.

Readership numbers per article tends to be updated every hour. Here is a random selection:

I have been sharing Medium articles to the News Break site. In fact, the above three stories were originally published on Medium. At this time, as I had taken my first week on the platform to experiment, 70% of my articles there appeared on Medium first. I will from here forward be writing more original content for them.

What has historically worked for me on Medium, in terms of article reads, does not work for me on News Break. On Medium, my stories on writing, pop-culture, and politics have earned me a readership. These topics have not done well for me on News Break, however, my articles on mental health — that have tended to perform poorly on Medium — are off to a very strong start there.

I do notice that the percentage of views to clicks are considerably lower on News Break than they are on Medium. I’m curious if anyone else has experienced the same. They do, though, certainly add up, as do shares of the articles.

I will wait for my first check to make a firm judgement, but if I’m particularly impressed with anything at all to this point regarding News Break, it’s that the numbers my stories are receiving are happening organically, with little to no effort on my part.

I’m looking forward to some serious marketing to increase them further.

We’ll see how long the initial climb lasts. In the meantime, apply to become a creator on the platform by clicking directly on my above referral link, or by downloading the app and going through the process.

Let me know how it goes, regardless.

You have nothing to lose.

Thank you for reading.