A Long Article You Can’t Afford to Miss: The Hard Truth About Writing for NewsBreak — With Examples

I thought it pertinent to share my 3+ years of experience with the most volatile platform I’ve encountered in my career

IMPORTANT NOTE: Before we begin I have to preface this with the fact that I know this is a long article, but if you are personally driven to become a legitimate and respected professional writer on NewsBreak — who also gets paid like a professional writer — I sincerely suggest you read every word of it, maybe more than once, and that you bookmark it so you can return and re-consult it often. You’ll see why soon enough if you read on.

Because of a recent resurgence of many of my Medium friends deciding to dust off their long-stagnant NewsBreak writer profiles and begin publishing there again, I felt it necessary to make sure that the people who use Medium and are considering this, understand the differences between the two platforms, what issues they can expect to encounter, and yes, how much they can reasonably expect to earn.

Before we even begin to compare and contrast the two, we have to understand what NewsBreak is and how it differs from Medium and other social blog sites like it.

That’s right, Medium is classified as a social media blogging site because ultimately, each of us has sole editorial control over our work. Sure, if you choose to submit your work to some publications they might impose some slight editorial restrictions, but for the most part, just like a personal blog, Medium allows us to write anything we want about whatever we want, whenever we want and that is the truest definition of a blog.

NewsBreak does not function that way at all — not even a little bit.

First, we have to understand that NewsBreak is just that — a news site. They are 100% not interested in receiving stories about your cat, your poetry, your feelings on philosophy, or how to make a few extra bucks through a new side hustle.

What they are interested in is (mostly) locally themed newsworthy content that, under the right conditions, can be considered journalism. I say mostly local because, as you will see below when I share screenshots of my article performance over the past 18 months or so, you’ll see I rarely write locally themed articles on NewsBreak.

For many, writing those locally themed bake sale-type pieces is great for them and even generates a couple hundred bucks a month in pocket money, too. (Yes, almost anyone can and will make more money on NewsBreak than you ever will on Medium) — this is a cold hard fact, not an opinion.

There are several important reasons why that is but that’s the focus of another article of mine that you can also read as I’ll be publishing it at the same time as this one.

For the purposes of this article, I will explain that unlike Medium and its wonky algorithms and distribution nonsense, at NewsBreak, circulation is done 100% automatically to its 45 Million+ readers. Because of that, even the most banal, locally generated newsworthy articles will generate a few thousand impressions and several hundred to a couple of thousand views (which is what you get paid on). NewsBreak will then pay you on average about $7-$8 per 1,000 views — sometimes more, sometimes less depending on a lot of variables.

Put simply, if you write 1 article every day on NewsBreak and each earned you an average of $15.00:

30 articles X 15 bucks per = $450 per month and I’m willing to bet you don’t make anywhere near that much on Medium.

I’m here to tell you, however, that only those banal, local articles earn low amounts like that. Most quality NewsBreak articles end up paying well over $100.00 each, and many pay substantially more than that — but more on that later.

That’s right, none of what I’ve written here so far is that typical Medium writer BS, that is a hard fact. But like most good things, there is a catch — several actually — if you want to be able to become monetized on NewsBreak.

The most daunting of these catches for most people is that you’re going to have to learn how to write like a journalist. You’re also going to have to learn how to select stories to write that have a truly journalistic angle to them.

This alone is a deal-breaker for a lot of people who have grown complacent on Medium just writing whatever the hell they like, whenever the hell they like to, and however the hell they like to write it.

On Medium, very few people care if you understand the concept of prepositional phrases, hanging modifiers, verb agreements, or fillers. On NewsBreak, every article you submit will be scanned electronically for errors, and while it might initially be published for a few hours, or even a day or so, it will eventually get flagged as needing improvements and taken down off the site’s electronic distribution conveyor.

Once an article is flagged on NewsBreak, it goes to a live editor who will pick it to pieces for any flaws that might have triggered the automated flag.

The point I’m trying to make here is that the technical aspects and quality of your writing count much more toward your success on NewsBreak than it does on Medium, where we have thousands, and possibly tens of thousands of people who don't even submit articles written in American English. Just so you know, any article written in British English or with any sort of internationally flavored grammar will be rejected outright on NewsBreak. It is a 100% American English platform.

The next point that I made for you is that NewsBreak is not a blog site and only accepts newsworthy articles. That means that all of the stories found on NewsBreak and accepted by NewsBreak’s Contributor Platform have to be genuine news stories.

Whether that looks like local Mayoral races, City Council Meeting coverage, local high school and college sports coverage, new traffic cameras being installed, new church openings or closings, new restaurant openings, and closings, etc… the content of any NewsBreak articles you submit are going to need to be articles centered around a newsy event, and not your feelings on relationships, how to make a million on the internet, or any such claptrap blog-style content.

When you do submit articles that are not newsworthy, a couple of different things can happen depending on the exact nature of the piece. If it’s just a simple article about your cat or something similar, it just won't get any circulation on the platform — literally — none. If the piece in some way violated NewsBreak policies, you’ll be issued a strike — more on that later too.

The screenshot you see above is the actual performance panel for an article I published on NewsBreak back in September. The article was utterly disregarded on NB leading me to republish it here on Medium where it made exactly 86 cents more than the zero cents it made on NewsBreak. This brings up a really important point to make as well — skunk articles like this one happen to all of us occasionally. They’re called skunks because…well…they stink!

It doesn’t necessarily mean the article sucks or that it was poorly written. It may be both of those things, but it also could be that the general public just isn’t that interested in reading about copyright infringement.

The first category on the left side of the performance panel above — the one that says ‘Impressions,’ represents the number of people who had access to the article when they opened the NewsBreak site on their computers or the app on their phones or tablets.

Out of that number of impressions, the next category ‘views,’ represents the number of people who actually clicked on it. Meanwhile, the third category ‘ in-app views’ tells you how many clicked on it through a mobile device. The difference between that number and the ‘views’ number represents the amount of people who read your story on a desktop or laptop computer. The final three categories are pretty self-explanatory.

The above screenshot is an obvious example of an article that completely tanked. However, the ability to truly go viral on NewsBreak far surpasses anything you could ever hope to achieve on Medium.

Yes, there are a ton of articles on Medium about ‘what constitutes going viral’ or what is ‘viral to me.’

On NewsBreak, when an article you wrote goes viral, there is no ambiguity. As I’m about to demonstrate in the next series of screenshots when NewsBreak articles go viral, there is not only any doubt, but they also generate a lot of money.

That’s because, unlike on Medium, all views on NewsBreak are paid, and at the typical rates I explained earlier, of between $7-$8 per 1,000 views, you will be able to do the math for yourselves to understand the fundamental differences between how Medium pays vs. how NewsBreak does.

If you remember, a little earlier, I mentioned that NewsBreak puts a heavy emphasis on its creators supplying local, newsworthy content. That statement is undeniably true, and NewsBreak itself will remind you of this no less than 3 or 4 times during the registration and signup process. But what I’m about to tell you is also just as true, and is the absolute key to you making virtually limitless amounts of money on NewsBreak throughout your career on that platform.

To solidify my position and prove my point, I’m now going to show you a whole bunch of screenshots. Like before, they’re screenshots of performance panels of several articles I’ve written over the past 18 months — however, these didn’t tank.

The screenshots you’re about to see will not only demonstrate what is achievable on NewsBreak if you exercise the right formula, but they’ll also show you what it really means to ‘go viral.’ I also need to note here that I currently have 6 actively monetized accounts on NewsBreak and that these screenshots represent only a very small percentage of the viral articles I’ve published to NB over the past 3+ years that I’ve been a monetized contributor.

Let me start by apologizing if you think that 18 screenshots were a bit of overkill. Honestly, I originally thought so too, and in my first draft of this article, I only had attached three. However, when I went back and proofread that first draft, I realized that readers who didn't know better might think that after writing for NB for over three years, those three vial articles I included were the only ‘fluke’ viral articles I had managed to create.

I couldn’t let anyone mistakenly think that.

So I debated with myself for some time about how many might be a good number to include. I had already determined that three was too small a number, but what would be too large?

Without any blustering or embellishment, and across all of my NB accounts, to date, I have published a total of 492 articles that have accumulated at least 35,000 views.

35k is the benchmark I use to determine if an article I’ve written has reached as much of my audience as I had intended when I wrote it. It is also important to note that across all of those accounts, I have authored a total of 744 articles, meaning that well over 50% of the articles I write exceed that 35k view benchmark, and about 18% go on to accumulate views into the hundreds of thousands, a few have even generated over a million views.

It pains me to share those numbers because it’s very possible some of you reading this will believe I’m trying to enact some level of writing superiority over others — this couldn’t be further from the truth.

There are only 2 reasons I’m sharing all this data with you.

1. It’s important to demonstrate fully that I have actually attained the success I claim to have achieved.
2. It’s equally as important to demonstrate through the number of viral articles and over a substantial period, that the successes I’m demonstrating are the result of a proven and repeatable formulaic process that, when followed, allows me to repeat that virality often.

Now that I’ve hopefully established that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to NewsBreak, how it operates, and how to succeed on the platform, it’s time to get to the meat of this story — how can all of my knowledge, expertise, and success help you?

After watching several of my associates try to comprehend the workings of NewsBreak the same way they try to comprehend the workings of Medium (and fail miserably at both), I decided the best way for me to help would be to follow in the footsteps of all the Medium gurus who came before me — but with one small modification.

I decided that I too would create a course that would help people — literally anyone — who wanted to achieve the kind of NB success I’ve achieved. However, I refused to do it unless and until I could be certain my course would be different from theirs in several fundamental ways:

1. My course will be affordable. Yes, I could price gouge my students, and probably even do it with a clear conscience because I know that once you understand my methods and employ them, you will make enough off of NewsBreak in your first month to more than recover the cost of the course, even if I charged thousands for it — I could — but I won’t.
2. My course actually works. This course will absolutely put you on the path to achieving all your financial writing goals without the need to establish, monitor, and tweak 20+ different monthly side hustles and revenue streams in order to make ends meet.
3. My course includes ongoing one-on-one tutoring from me personally, not some lackey claiming to have taken my course and succeeded. My students will always have my ear. Anyone who subscribes will receive a very special email address that is ONLY given to my students, so I never have to weed through spam and clutter to find or see your questions, comments, or concerns. Responses will be specific, comprehensive, and personal — I guarantee it.
4. Each of my students receives a 30-minute personal telephone call with me — from anywhere in the world as part of the mentorship. During that call, we can discuss whatever you like, but I expect most will want to spend at least some of that time delving into the idiosyncracies of becoming an actual American English journalist.
5. My course includes guest appearances on my successful global podcasts to help you promote your projects — but only if you want that benefit. Many of the people that I see on here and around the internet who attempt to sell tutorials or lessons, have actually only created a series of emails that they send to you in a specific order after you pay for their course. Many of them never take even 15 minutes out of their lives to talk or mentor their subscribers on a one-on-one basis. That will never happen to my students. I run this business like a business and any legitimate and successful business centers around outstanding customer service.
6. My course includes free email updates and refinements on the course for life. If I modify or refine the program in any way going forward, each of my students will receive those upgrades, modifications, or refinements absolutely free — and for life — as long as they keep an updated and working email address on file with me.
7. Each of my students who purchase this course will receive 25% off of any other course(s) I produce. There is no limit to the number of times this discount can be used and can even be applied to family and friends if you wish. Soon, I will be releasing courses on: Creative Writing, Podcasting, Forensic Psychology, True Crime Reporting, Publishing, Book Writing, and Ghostwriting.
8. My students get direct and personal insights on the topics that are hot and trending on NB right now. As you saw in the screenshots, many of my most viral articles are political ones, but this isn’t the only topic that I have had, and continue to have viral success with, it’s just one of them. part of the program is showing how to be controversial and newsworthy at the same time — a formula that equates to a lot of money writing for NewsBreak.

A while back, I mentioned that certain types of articles that you submit to NB can result in your creator account being issued strikes.

Just like in baseball vernacular, on NewsBreak, it’s 3 strikes and you’re out!

This is part of the downside of NewsBreak. The reality is, that virtually anything they don’t like or take exception with can be made out to be a big enough violation to warrant your article receiving a strike. When you’re issued a strike, you have the opportunity to appeal it — though you’re only given a 255-character window to make as compelling of an argument as you can about why the strike was improperly levied against you. Most of the time, they are very vague in explaining why they issued a strike against you, making that 255 characters even more frustrating.

To be sure, sometimes these appeals are won, and sometimes they are not. If you win the appeal, the strike is removed and can never be held against you again. However, if you lose your appeal, the strike will remain on your account for at least 90 days, provided you don’t receive additional strikes within those 90 days.

There is no actual penalty for your first strike, it’s only considered a warning. However, if you receive a second strike within 90 days of the first, your account is suspended for 1 week. Again, you can appeal it (best of luck).

While waiting for the result of the appeal, during that week, the articles you have already published (except for the one that received the strike), will continue to earn money for you per 1,000 views, however, you will not be able to publish any new content or edit any of your existing content during that week-long suspension.

If you lose the appeal on your second strike, the 90-day probationary period for both of your strikes now resets to 90 days from the date of the most recent strike. If for any reason you receive a third strike before that new 90-day window expires, your account will be terminated, you will lose all access to it and the articles you published on it, and your monetization will be immediately revoked, meaning any money that they owe you that has yet to be paid, will never be paid.

However, at any point after receiving strike 1 or strike 2, you go a complete 90 days without getting another strike, the strike(s) will fall off and your account will return to a no-strike status. Any strike received after that will be considered your first.

Another aspect of being one of my students is that I have experienced these strike disputes with NewsBreak dozens of times throughout my tenure with the platform.

I have to admit, if you write long enough on NewsBreak, you can guarantee that you will receive strikes — there is no getting around it.

What you do and how you react when it happens has a lot to do with how financially devastating or inconsequential those strikes may be and certainly will determine how quickly they are removed.

Make no mistake, I can't remove your strikes once you get them, but I absolutely can help you minimize the possibility beforehand, help control how you react to them, and change your publishing habits on the platform in such a way as to seriously limit the possibility of you getting a second one before the first one falls off. After all, the main goal is to survive to produce more high-paying viral articles.

This brings me to the last of the important elements of writing for NewsBreak — getting monetized and topic selection.

To get monetized on NewsBreak, you will need to attain 100 registered followers. You will also need to have published a minimum of 10 articles that do not violate any of their rules.

Unlike Medium, accumulating 100 registered followers on NewsBreak is so easy it’s inconsequential. I can’t even imagine anyone publishing 10 stories on the platform that doesn't accumulate far more than 100 registered followers. In this case, a registered follower is a reader who has registered their name on the app as opposed to just using it as a guest. But NewsBreak tells you all this while you are going through the contributor signup process.

What NewsBreak does NOT tell you — at all ever — is that the kind and type of articles you publish for that first 10 are very vital to whether or not your account will be approved for monetization once you are eligible to apply for it.

That’s right, once you meet that minimum criteria for monetization, and submit your application, NewsBreak can take up to 30 days (and it usually takes most of that time) to evaluate your account for several factors. If, for any reason, they feel you do not fit in their proprietary box for monetization, your application will be denied and you must wait 90 days before re-applying.

To date, the friends I have helped attempt to get monetized have a 100% success rate for being monetized on their first attempt. But the monetization application process isn’t the only pitfall prospective NewsBreak contributors need to worry about when starting out.

At present, only contributor applicants with US telephone numbers are eligible to apply to become writers on the platform — monetized or not. Also, NewsBreak does not accept any articles that are not written in 100% American English. Further, when registering to be paid by Tipalti, NewsBreak’s payment method, you must have all of the required US W-9 tax information to provide — things like a valid US Social Security Number, and a valid address within the US, or be a valid US Corporation in good standing.

As a part of being one of my students, you obtain the ability to register your NewsBreak creator profile under my media company’s corporate EIN (Employer Identification Number) as an intern of the newspaper company I own, instead of using a social security number.

This is 100% legal because as part of the service to our students, all of the articles you publish to NewsBreak will be published on our media websites and social media accounts (with hundreds of thousands of monthly readers). We do this to help drive more traffic to your NewsBreak pieces which pay per click.

Simply put, as a student, you also become an unpaid intern of my company, granting you full legal authority to use my corporate EIN to publish on NewsBreak since you’re also promoting the company by doing so.

No, this doesn’t mean I get your money.

You will provide NewsBreak with your bank account information during the monetization application process. All it means is at the end of each year when we get your tax bill for the income you made over $600 for the previous year, you will be responsible for the taxes on your earnings just as you would if you had applied under your social security number — rest assured, this is not a way for you to get out of paying taxes on the money you earn as our unpaid intern publishing on NewsBreak.

To protect all of us, we have a short and succinct unpaid internship contract that all students must sign when they agree to enroll in my program (unpaid means you are not paid by my company and you are not an employee of it either, just a learning intern).

The contract simply states that you understand that you are liable to pay our media company for the taxes we are billed by the IRS for the money you earned during the previous year that exceeded $600 USD.

In short, it’s an acknowledgment that you will owe my company the exact amount of your personal tax liability for the previous year; the exact sum that we are billed for your earnings by the IRS, as a result of your earnings under the umbrella of our EIN.

Those taxes will be charged to the company on income that we will be billed for by the Internal Revenue Service as a result of your earnings and the 1099 independent contractor agreement sent to us by NewsBreak at the end of each year stipulating your accumulated earnings for the period.

This contract, however, is only necessary for students who do not reside in the US. Students who reside within the US will use their own SSNs when applying for monetization and will be responsible for their own taxes. This is just a service we offer that opens the world of NewsBreak to non-US residents.

This brings us to the last benefit I offer to my students.

If you do not write American English well, or for some reason, do not have a good enough grasp of American grammar, I offer an extra, low-cost option of editing all of the stories you write before you submit them to NewsBreak for publication.

As part of that service, I also provide copyright-free images for all of your articles and, in some cases, even video clips that our media company owns and has published on any of our various YouTube channels. Additionally, if you live abroad, we can provide you with local content story ideas for your chosen area to abide by NewsBreak’s push for local American content.

I do not offer this service on Medium simply because 90% of published Medium articles don’t earn their writers enough to warrant the expense. On NewsBreak, however, this is not the case.

My fees for editing, image supply — as NewsBreak articles do not do well using images from companies like Unsplash, Pixel, or WikiCommons — videos and supply of local American content topics vary depending on several variables, but will never exceed $20 per article for the complete bundle of services for any one article.

Overall, I believe it’s a relatively small price to pay if you do not write American English well and could not otherwise submit to NewsBreak without it — this program opens NewsBreak to international writers who could not otherwise benefit from the platform. And even if you’re new to the NB platform, very few articles on NB make less than $35.00. Most make substantially more.

For program pricing, more information, or if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to leave a comment below, or contact me directly on Slack.

My NewsBreak Mentorship Program is now accepting students from all walks of life, and for a limited time, if you are a Medium follower of mine, and are subscribed to receive my infrequent emailed newsletters, you will receive 10% off the cost of the program tuition.

If you are interested in registering an account on NewsBreak as a reader, please follow this link to register for a free reader account.

If you are interested in the NewsBreak Contributor Program as a writer, and you sign up for it through this link, you will receive 25% off of my program.

That’s a total of up to 35% off for a limited time, but ONLY if you register your NewsBreak Creator account through my link, follow me on Medium, and subscribe to receive my emailed newsletters that are rare indeed.

If you have an unquenchable taste for true crime, you should also check out Kurt’s two true crime podcasts — The Veritas 7, and Veritas True Crime which also has a sister publication here on Medium under the same name. The Veritas True Crime Medium Publication is always looking for new writers to write about true crime. Do you have what it takes?

Some other fascinating articles by Kurt Dillon that you might enjoy:

Kurt Dillon is a Medium Top Writer in Psychology, Social Media, and True Crime. He is the CEO of WOMEN — Wild Orchid Media & Entertainment Network, Inc., and is also a long-standing editor for the ILLUMINATION family of Medium publications. Kurt and his wife Crystal rescue abandoned animals and currently lavish love upon 5 abused dogs and 6 rescued cats. Kurt’s social links and personal/professional websites are all available in his Medium bio.