From Newsbreak to “News broke”: How I made $7,000 one month and $1 the next

The day the music stopped, along with any earnings as a writer on the platform

It was almost too good to be true.

After I made over $1,000 on one article, it was like a fuse was lit. I was ready for more.

The fireworks were about to begin.

Little did I know that the fuse led to a stick of dynamite that would blow up my writing future on this newfound writing platform called Newsbreak.

I started writing on Newsbreak during the spring of 2023.

Since I was already writing about my travel adventures and exploits, it was easy to do the same on this writing platform that allowed me such leeway.

At first, the earnings were nothing earth shattering.

I made a few hundred dollars a month, and that gave me enough motivation to keep adding more great content for my readers to follow.

What I didn’t know at the time was that the “followers” on the mobile app didn’t live up to the name.

In other words, readers could click the follow button, but it meant nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

After my own personal doomsday on NB (the great drop of distribution), I realized that none of my 15,000 followers were actually seeing my articles.

In fact, some articles would see a grand total of 10 views.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It started with $1,000 and then took off

Once I saw that travel article earn me over $1,000, it was time to dig deeper.

I spent the following month as an avid creator of content. But I didn’t want to just crank out meaningless drivel.

After all, I had a hungry group of “followers” who obviously had fantastic taste. They deserved only the best.

I spent 6–8 hours a day writing 3–4 articles on Newsbreak. Sometimes they were travel tips. Other times they were news stories about travel.

Once in a while an article would be a dud. But even my duds would get 5,000 views on the low end.

My RPMs (revenue for every 1,000 views) was around $3.25 — $3.80.

I quickly set a goal of making $100 every day. That’s around $3,000 a month. Not bad for a side hustle.

This meant a minimum of 30,000 views on a daily basis. Some days I would make more, and some days I would make less.

Following the days I didn’t get 30k views, I would analyze what I had done and dig in deeper to write more engaging content. I studied my titles, my first sentences, my “hero image”, and every aspect of how a reader would interact with my article.

After I earned $3,611 in one month, I knew my goal was achievable.

The launch to $7,000

I remember telling my wife that I didn’t know how long this would last but that I was going to keep making hay while the sun was still shining.

I’m not sure where the farmer reference came from, but it seemed fitting at the time.

The month after I hit my $3k goal, it really started to roll in. I had some articles on Newsbreak with well over 1,000 shares.

The most I ever made on one article was a whopping $2,000 and some change.

It was a story about credit card fraud that a couple got caught in while traveling abroad. That one article had amassed 650,000 views with over 4,000 shares and 1,600 comments (most of which were unreadable — but still).

By the end of that month my grand total was $7,690.

OK, so that was it. I was going to make writing on Newsbreak my full time focus and full time job.

After all, I loved writing on the platform, and even replying to the nonsensical comments was becoming a form of entertainment for me.

Distribution went to zero

Riding the highs of the previous month, I went into April as optimistic as ever.

But shortly into the month, something weird happened.

After publishing a story, I refreshed the page a few times over the next few minutes.

Often I could tell within the first 20 minutes if an article was going to take off or not based on the impressions and views.

This time though, even after refreshing the page dozens of times over the course of the day, the stats were still showing 0 impressions and 0 views.

Well that doesn’t make sense. It must be a reporting issue. After all, at least some of my followers surely would have seen my article by now.

But by the end of the day, my numbers were still stuck on zero.

I wrote a couple more articles, thinking it was nothing more than a server issue with the company’s reporting.

The next day I saw that my articles only had 10–20 impressions. I had never seen these kinds of numbers before.

I was writing the same content that got me to where I was, so I didn’t think that could be the issue.

Reality set in

Days later, after continuing to write articles — with a little less passion and a lot more anxiety — I saw that this pattern was repeating itself.

Articles were simply not being seen. Some articles had only one view, and that view was me, making sure the article was even showing up in the app.

I kept writing, thinking it was a temporary blip on the radar, but the same dreary results kept staring me in the face.

On a few articles I was able to get up to 100 views, so that was a few pennies in my account at least.

Reaching out to support and the writer community

The email support team told me the same thing that other writers were told.

They basically said, “You just need to write local, original articles as that is what we recommend.”

Even though I was a travel writer who wrote on happenings abroad, I thought, “Well, if this is the only way I can start earning a living again, then I guess that’s what I have to do.”

Other writers in Circle, the online app used by NB, said they received the same message from support. But most of them were already writing on local news, so it didn’t make sense.

I spent the next few weeks only writing local, original news stories about my state and county. And it was good stuff too. I actually enjoyed it.

But as I kept an eye on my stats, I saw that the results were no different than before. Almost zero distribution.

For the month, I made barely over $1.

It was like Newsbreak shut off the valve at will. Even after writing almost 20 local news stories, I didn’t earn enough to buy a cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts, never mind Starbucks.

The drop from $7k to $1 was like a slap in the face. I was working just as hard as before. In fact I was working harder — just earning less. Way less.

The writing community for NB was told it would take a few weeks to hear what was happening with traffic being so low on contributor’s articles.

It was finally acknowledged that something was wrong.

“This is a step in the right direction,” I thought. I mean, the first step is to admit you have a problem, right?

But then those weeks slipped by. Nothing but crickets. Nothing but articles with fewer views.

It’s difficult to even find contributor stories in the app now.

The way forward

I’m not really sure what the future holds for writers on Newsbreak. I will say that right now it looks bleak.

Writers are not happy, and their content is not being seen.

You can’t expect writers to keep putting time and effort into a platform that does not seem to value their time and talent. And a bigger issue is just the lack of transparency.

As for me, this journey has led me to Medium. I’m an optimistic person. Perhaps this whole ordeal is a blessing in disguise.

But this time, I’m not looking to earn a living on the platform. I’d rather just earn the trust of readers and help contribute to a place that has a high regard for quality content.

My journey from $7,000 to $1 was filled with peaks and valleys.

Right now, I just like the thought of an open plain.

Give me your thoughts

Are you a writer on Newsbreak? Have you faced a similar situation with distribution drying up? Or maybe you’re one of the few that is still crushing it on there.

Either way, I’d love to hear from you and know your story. I think a lot of people who had their earnings crushed on NB have been afraid to speak up about it.

Whatever your story, I’d be glad to be a listening ear.