Earn Income on News Break

How to Raise Your News Break Content Value Scores to Increase Your Earnings in Just Minutes

Use these simple and quick strategies to increase your story rankings to earn the maximum income.

Now that New Break has changed its monetization model, writers are once again trying to determine how to earn the most money on the platform. Previously, there were criteria that made earnings possible including the number of followers and number of average page views across stories.

Now the model is based on new article ratings. Articles are ranked from 1 to 10 based on a number of criteria. Articles with scores of 4 and below earn one price while those with scores of 5 or greater earn a higher price. The amount that you earn for page views is also dependent on the article’s score.

From the beginning of the Creator Program, News Break was clear that they were hoping the program would increase local earnings. Even before the new monetization model was put into place it was evident that this was their focus since local articles were more widely distributed compared to other articles which sometimes were not distributed at all.

So, with the new model, creators are attempting to focus more on local content understanding that it helps with the scores. However, even when doing so, many of us were having difficulty honing in on the formula to consistently get score of 5 or greater. I admit, I was very frustrated with my scores since other than one article I couldn’t seem to get any of them to score high enough to earn the top price. After some experimentation based on feedback from other Newsbreak writers in different groups, I have found that there are a few very quick and simple things that can be done to immediately increase your scores.

A Word About How Articles Are Reviewed

I think one of the most important things to understand about News Break is that it is heavily AI powered both in terms of assigning tags as well as distribution to interest channels and their subscribers. When they announced the new model, I was encouraged as I believed this would have to mean that real live editors were reading and evaluating the stories.

So initially, when my scores were low, I was annoyed. It seemed like it was possible that they were low balling scores to not have to pay out as much money. My articles were tight and well written and while I never claimed they should be getting 10’s I did think they were at a quality level to at least get a 5.

As I’ve altered certain aspects of my articles to find what works for getting higher scores, I’ve come to realize that article evaluation also must also be AI driven. This means that it’s not enough to write quality articles, you need to be thinking in terms of the things that typically get articles ranked on Google. At the same time, as long as you integrate a few things into your content, you don’t have to worry quite as much about SEO to earn high ratings on News Break.

Quick and Easy Ways to Increase Your Scores and Earn 5’s and Higher For Every Article

The first thing to do is to read the information that the company provides detailing what factors are important for Content Value (CV) scores.. You will quickly see that while quality is important it’s not enough.

Reading other people’s articles about how to increase CV scores helped me to determine what aspects to test and to ultimately come to the realization that it’s easy to increase low scores with just one or two additions that can be completed in minutes. For new articles, once you understand this, it doesn’t take any more time to include these aspects. While several of the other articles on this topic had checklists of items with numerous features, I personally haven’t found all of this is necessary to achieve at least a 5 on my articles. Here are the factors that have made it possible to increase all of my scores to 5 or greater in minutes. For me, it has come down to two things.

1) Write Local Articles

As previously mentioned, News Break developed the Creator Program in order to

generate local content. This is what they are willing to pay the most for. This doesn’t mean that you have to only write about where you live. If you can write about any specific city, this counts as local content. I learned it is important to in include a city name, not just the name of a state to get high scores. Include the city and state name in the title, subtitle and at least two more times in the body of the article. I had several articles that this was all I needed to get my score above a 4, and both went from a 3 to an 8 just by including the name of a city.

That’s not to say you can’t increase the scores on your other articles that are focused on non-local topics, but it’s harder and typically I’ve found they don’t go up as much. So, if your non-local articles have a score of 4, you can probably raise them to a 5. But lower than that and it may not be possible or if it is it may be more time consuming, requiring several edits.

My recommendation for non-local content is to only worry about articles that have a score of 4. Then you need to add at least two new elements. If you add another photo this is good but isn’t in and of itself likely to cause your CV to increase. Instead, I recommend starting with a video, then adding a graph, table or chart will help. Also, don’t forget to put in hyperlinks to reference the sources of your articles as these count as external links and help your article score better.

2) Add a Video

For my local articles that already included mentions of a city and state, I found that simpy adding a video was enough to raise my CV scores above a 4. This resulted in scores increasing by at least 3 points and sometimes as many as 6 points. Try to focus on local content that is likely to have videos made about it. Since the site is focusing on local news, with breaking news being the easiest to rank high on, it may be difficult to find a video that discusses the topic. Consider what local topics seem to be “hot” and are trending that you can put a twist on making yours original. You should find it easy to locate an applicable video. Then just embed it.

When trying to increase my scores I began by trying to throw the kitchen sink in. I looked for graphs, tables, and charts but quickly saw that this was too time consuming to make it worthwhile. First, it wasn’t easy to locate appropriate such resources. When I did mange to do so, I found that they were often very academic in nature and readers would have to have statistical knowledge to understand them. Second, there was a problem with copyright since even if an article is in the public domain, that doesn’t meant the tables, charts etc. are as well. In fact, I was never able to locate a single such resource that wasn’t part of a copyrighted work and therefore not legal to publish in my articles. But luckily I found these features weren’t necessary to raise the scores for my local content.

Take Away

You don’t have to spend a lot of time including everything listed in News Breaks CV document for your articles to score at least a 5. The most important thing to accomplish this is to write quality local content and include the name of the city and state throughout the article.

Add a quality (and legal) photo at the top under your subtitle and a related video somewhere in the body and that should be enough. If you do try to find other features such as charts, tables and graphs, make sure they are not coming from a copyrighted publication and that there is a clear indication of what license the article is under so you don’t risk getting sued for plagiarizing someone else’s material.

News Break is accepting applications from new writers. Don’t be put off if they’ve turned you down before. There are several Medium writers who have succesfully applied after first being turned down. (For example, See Tim Denning’s articles about this). If you would like to earn extra income by becoming a writer for News Break or know someone who might, you can use this link to submit your application. Full Disclosure: This is my referral link for fellow writers. If you would like to sign up for the program, I’d really appreciate it if you would use it.

If you are just interested in reading articles on the site, you can download the app without applying to be a writer with this link.

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You can find links to my other work on Medium and follow me here. Thanks for reading and for supporting Mental Gecko!