A NewsBreak Experiment for Finding the Nexus of What You Want to Write and What Will Earn You Some Money
5 steps to a successful routine on NewsBreak
After a few months of experimenting on NewsBreak, I’ve found a system that allows me to earn a little money by consistently publishing on that platform.
And it could work for you, too.
On NewsBreak, I’ve published stories about everything from marijuana legalization to Festivus. I adapted to NewsBreak’s editorial changes. And I tracked my story’s metrics along the way.
Now, I’m regularly publishing stories, growing a following, and making a few bucks from NewsBreak.
Here’s what works for me.
It Started with a Test
First, let me be clear: I’m not earning anything close to a full-time income through NewsBreak.
As I’ve written about before, online writing platforms aren’t going to make most of us rich. But by publishing on platforms such as NewsBreak, we can earn some extra income and have some fun while doing it.
And that’s where I focused when first writing on NewsBreak: What did I enjoy writing that NewsBreak users enjoyed reading?
After all, you have to accumulate at least 100 registered NewsBreak users as followers before you qualify to earn money on the platform. So, I experimented with writing stories on different topics to see which ones produced the most followers.
I wrote about real estate, the economy, content marketing, books, and more. Some stories were for a broad audience, and some were for where I live, Washington, D.C.
I created a spreadsheet to track the number of followers each NewsBreak article generated. And I categorized the articles by topic.
Doing so allowed me to see how many new followers I gained, on average, by topic.
For example, I published ten articles specific to Washington, D.C., real estate. Those articles netted me 23 new followers. So, my average follower growth when writing D.C. real estate stories was 2.3 followers.
I ran this test, publishing articles on different topics and tracking my follower growth from Oct.-Dec. 2021. Halfway through December, here were the results:
As you can see, my NewsBreak following grew the most when writing about content marketing. Stories about real estate generated the second most followers.
Does that mean I started writing about only content marketing or real estate on NewsBreak? Nope.
Money vs. Enjoyment
Online writing platforms have insatiable appetites. You’re not going to make much money on them if you only publish a few stories and stop.
Instead, you have to post new content consistently. Doing so builds a following, which increases your stories’ views and satisfies the platform’s algorithm that surfaces stories to readers.
Maybe you can regularly show up to do something you don’t enjoy just to make a buck, but I can’t. It’s a big reason why I became a self-employed freelance writer.
So, when I looked at the results of my NewsBreak experiment, I realized something.
There seemed to be an appetite among NewsBreak readers for content marketing stories. The problem is, I didn’t have fun writing those articles.
The same goes for real estate content, which generated the second most NewsBreak followers. But, unfortunately, covering real estate wasn’t that enjoyable to me.
Of the topics I wrote about on NewsBreak, the one I liked the most came in third for growing my following: books.
Often, a writer’s primary goal is to find the overlap between what they want to write and what others want to read.
Then, if you want to get paid for what you write, you look for the overlap between what you want to write that others are willing to pay to read. Or, as is the case with online writing platforms, pay you to write.
Analyzing the results of my NewsBreak experiment, I realized I needed to write about books.
While publishing book-related stories on the platform didn’t grow my following the most, I earned a respectable number of followers. And I enjoyed writing those stories, so I was more likely to keep at it over the long term.
Finding every writer’s dream
After accepting the outcome of my experiment, I changed my NewsBreak profile to read, “Books reporter for NewsBreak. Follow for updates on new books, publishing news, and more.”
This update lets NewsBreak readers know what I write about on the platform. Plus, referring to myself as a “books reporter for NewsBreak” makes me sound more professional.
Since this change in December, I’ve maintained a publishing schedule of one to three NewsBreak articles a week. And I’m now making money by posting stories I like writing.
On NewsBreak, I’ve found the nexus of what I want to write about that people want to read, which will earn me a few dollars.
If you’re writing on NewsBreak or thinking about giving it a shot, I suggest:
- First, publish stories on different topics.
- Next, pick a primary metric to measure (new followers, views, impressions, etc.).
- Track your articles’ results, categorized by topic.
- After publishing 20 or 30 stories, see which topics produce the best results for your primary metric.
- Then, decide which topic generated the best results that you enjoy writing the most.
You probably won’t get rich writing on NewsBreak.
But by following these steps, you can become a consistent Newsbreak contributor who gets paid to write what you have fun writing. And isn’t that most writers’ dream?
Keep your writing topical and current with the 2022 Content Marketing Calendar. Now available!
