Are Your Hopes And Dreams For NewsBreak Dashed?
You may wonder if it is worth your time.
You are probably writing for more than just enjoyment.
Even if you are in a position to write for the pure enjoyment of sharing your ideas and you don’t need any extra money, chances are pretty good that you want to earn some money for your efforts. Being rewarded is always nice.
Did you join NewsBreak with high hopes and think it was going to be a great opportunity to find success? Did it seem like a better chance to earn money than Medium? It may have sounded like it at first, but the rules have changed.
Lots of people write about their experiences of using the Medium platform to earn money. Some people are extremely successful, but we know that most are not. The fact that possibly only seven percent of the Medium writers earn at least $100 per month indicates that there are many thousands who are earning next to nothing.
Some are working extremely hard and putting in lots of hours for very little return on investment. Others are writing much less and earning enough to pay some of their bills. Some are making LOTS of money through their writing on Medium and have shared their experiences.
There have also been a number of people writing on Medium about QUORA, NewsBreak, and other writing opportunities.
It did look for a while like NewsBreak was a better option than Medium or a good addition to it. Those who were fortunate enough to get into NewsBreak in the early stages had a guaranteed amount of money that they would earn for a minimum level of writing. They were the lucky ones. It was like they had found a four leaf clover.
Someone wrote about how NewsBreak was changing their pay structure. He said that where he was earning $1,500 a month, he is now making just a few dollars. It’s a business after all, and they are looking out for their bottom line.
It seemed that NewsBreak was not allowing anyone to join for a period of time. Some people wrote about having applied and receiving no answer after the initial form reply which said that the application had been received.
Then NewsBreak sent out emails inviting people to join. It must have brought in a large number of respondents because they were taking longer to approve people for monetization after the minimum requirements were met.
With the old system of payment, it was easy to see what stories would earn. They had something called CV which was a rating they gave to each story. Depending on the number, the writer would be paid $25 or $60 for the stories published with NewsBreak. People who were new signups and were not getting paid could calculate how much they would have earned if they had been monetized.
In figuring two months of writing on NewsBreak before monetization was received and when the CV system was in place, it was estimated that I would have earned the maximum of $1,500 for each of the two months. However, they took longer than usual to approve the monetization, and the pay calculation method was changed in the meantime.
They also made it more difficult to write stories which were likely to be accepted because they changed those rules also. You could not rewrite news stories as had been accepted in the past. It became more difficult to write stories that would find many readers. People seem interested in crime and murder, but those stories are generally covered on NewsBreak already by the regular news media.
I was fortunate to receive 200 followers in two weeks after joining so I applied for monetization. It took 45 days. After finally being accepted for monetization and the rules having been revised, I checked on one story. It quite likely would have received $60 under the old method. In two days, the story had 114K impressions, 6,228 page views, and 91 shares. I don’t know what all that means, but the earnings listed for 4,888 page views (presumably one day) totaled to a whopping 49 cents. After two days, the earnings were up to 75 cents.
NewsBreak stories generally have a very short shelf life. They get impressions and views (reads) mostly immediately after they are published for a few days. Then they go cold. That means that the large share of the earnings will be in the first week or possibly two. The stories also seem to only be able to earn money for the month they are published. The returns are minimal with the new program.
After this article was written, there was a story on Medium about NewsBreak. It was by Bebe Nicholson and told about how she had made money on NewsBreak but that she was happy that the base pay ended because she could now pursue other interests. NewsBreak does no longer seem viable for her.
She was one of the fortunate people who got into NewsBreak and made money before they changed so many rules.
It may not be worth your time to try to write for NewsBreak. Pennies a day does not sound like a good deal after the potential of the early days.
For those of us who got into NewsBreak late, it might be TOO LATE to see any kind of success with them. We will have to wait and see. If we are willing to keep writing for them, we may find out.
Thank you for reading and good luck to you.