WRITING FOR NEWSBREAK
My Top Tricks for Getting a 5+ on NewsBreak Articles
You don’t have to do much to repurpose your Medium articles to add local SEO, receive a CV score of 5–10, and get paid $60 or more for it. Here’s what I do.
It only takes a few minutes to repurpose a Medium article into a local piece and make $25, $60, or more for it. I repurposed one the other day and made $87.25 on top of what I had already made from Medium.
Sure, it took me a few minutes to add a locality naturally, a graph, a YouTube video, another image, and a chart, but since it was ranked with a CV score of six and received 2,475 page views so far, I made $27.25 more for a pay-per-view (PPV) bonus.
Two ultra-important factors affect how you get people to your website without paying for ads, those are Page Rank and Page Authority. Where your page ranks on Google or any other search engine results pages (SERP) depend on how bots react to your content and how many other high-authority (HA) websites link to your page.
HA websites, like .edu, .org, and .com pages that have been around a long time have a higher authority, and a link or backlink to your site is like an endorsement. You can get backlinks by writing guest posts for them or adding a comment on their story and hope someone there comments back, which create a link.
I don’t understand why so many are opposed to writing local articles. If your client is from Detroit, Michigan, their website cannot compete with Ford or GM if they use the keyword new cars.
However, if they have a quality product and an excellent writing staff, they can get their website to the first page on Google along with Ford and GM.
BTW, a city and state inside a link might not count — even a link to a News Break story. Plus, if your locale is a twin city like Minneapolis–Saint Paul, MN, you should only shorten it after you have used it at least twice. Once again, this is what I think the AI bots are looking for, though I have tested my theory a few times.
I do not know this for sure, but I would assume that is what NewsBreak is doing. New websites start with a Page Authority (PA) on Google and other SERP a zero or one. Medium’s PA is between 87 and 95, depending on which SERP you check.
Moz, who wrote the book on PA, set it up so that new entries could not compete with established businesses. However, there are specific things you can do to rank higher immediately.
“Page Authority (PA) is a score developed by Moz that predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engine result pages (SERP). Page Authority scores range from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.”
One of those is local SEO. Write about and use town, city, county, region, state, and country names in your article two or three times. Another is to pay a two to five-year subscription for your domain name. That shows that you intend to stick around.
The Difference in Payment Is Astounding
Although, admittedly, I have had some Medium articles do quite well, I have never earned more than $1,500 in one month. Some do it quite often. Just ask Jessica Lynn, who wrote How I Made 5,613.47 on Medium in January.
Some would think her a braggart because she wrote this, but I assure you, if you read her story, you will see she wrote it to help others accomplish the same.
What’s more, there are others on Medium who earn twice that and more.
With two articles, I made more from NewsBreak already this month than I did from Medium last month. Granted, I already made the transition from spending most of my time languishing over Medium articles that made me very little, but still, my most significant month on Medium would not pay my rent.
Although I have not received it yet, I earned $1550 from NewsBreak in February. I did, however, receive an automatic funds transfer for my December earnings in January. Yes, although I made $2.00, I had to pay the transfer fee of $1.00.
The reason that is important is that I know the Automated Clearing House (ACH) is set up correctly, and I know they pay. Although I have seen others who put a screenshot of their earnings on Medium, this is mine, so I can say they do pay without a doubt.
Here’s another writer’s comparison between Medium & NewsBreak.
If you find value in this video, subscribe or “like” it.
Beware, a lot of what Jenn alludes to in the video has already changed. Therefore, if what I say disagrees with something she said, check for yourself. Although mine is newer, it could have changed.
They do not have a guaranteed minimum anymore. Instead, they have a maximum you can earn for writing articles of $1,500, but this doesn’t include bonuses such as referrals and page views.
Something else to keep in mind is that NewsBreak pays an additional $30 per original video. I can see them increasing that amount later.
Likewise, watch the time zone. I added a new article on 1 March where I am, but News Break did not pay me for it because they looked at it as a February article.
Please don’t quote me on any of this because it could change before this gets published.
The Checklist I Use for NewsBreak Articles
I am a bit old school in that I still use a desk calendar for each article or project I need to accomplish each day, a checklist of Facebook Groups I post my links to daily, and now I have added a checklist for my NewsBreak articles.
Whether it is a new article I wrote or a refurbished Medium article I will add to NewsBreak, I use the checklist to ensure I do as much as possible to get a CV score of 5–10.
The Process I Use
I don’t pretend to be a genius, and this is certainly not rocket science, but this is what I do. When I am looking for something new to write an article about for NewsBreak, I check the Bangor Daily News, a hometown paper for which I have a subscription. I read a couple of others online as well.
I always use the title of the article and the paper’s name in my references as that is another opportunity to use the locality name naturally. I typically list two others that I read, like the Portland Press Herald or the Chicago Tribune.
You can see how I do that below under references.
Visual media is a significant factor on NewsBreak. Even though one of the other writers told me she doesn’t use any graphs or charts, she does use additional pictures, I have noticed.
Take a look at the monetization terms they provided, and you will see that it says charts, graphs, images, and videos. She chooses to use more pictures, and you can too. However, I like charts and graphs to visually show rather than state statistics.
Here is the checklist I use:
Although it says 600+ words, I have published some with fewer. Feel free to use this checklist if you believe it will help.
Takeaways
I cannot guarantee if you use my checklist and format for your NewsBreak articles; I have not had any articles that I wrote specifically for NewsBreak and used this checklist that did not get a CV score of 5–10.
Good luck, and if you haven’t signed up to write for NewsBreak yet, you can use my link to apply, and I will receive $50 once you are approved and write one article. When you write 50 articles, I will receive $200 more. Not too shabby, am I right? Plus, you can do the same thing with your creator link.
If you enjoyed this article or found any merit in it, thank Roz Warren for challenging me to write it.
References:
The Moz.com article, Page Authority.
The NewsBreak article, Members of the NYC Bully Gang Arrested in Portland, Maine for Drugs by Stephen Dalton, dated 3 March 2021.
The YouTube video, Medium VS. NewsBreak | NewsBreak Creator Program by Jenn at Millennial Nextdoor dated 2 December 2020.
Stephen Dalton is a retired US Army First Sergeant with a degree in journalism from the University of Maryland and a Certified US English Chicago Manual of Style Editor. Top Writer in Fiction, Transportation, VR, NFL, Design, Creativity, and Short Story.
