NewsBreak Has Policies Just As Confusing As Medium’s

Summary

The article discusses the complexities and potential inadequacies of NewsBreak's and Medium's earnings policies for writers, suggesting that success and financial return on these platforms may be uncertain and confusing.

Abstract

The article titled "NewsBreak Has Policies Just As Confusing As Medium’s" delves into the challenges writers face with earnings on content platforms. It highlights that despite significant views and reads, the financial returns on Medium can be surprisingly low, with examples showing a wide disparity in earnings for seemingly similar content engagement. Similarly, NewsBreak's system of impressions and page views is also described as perplexing, with a broad range of impressions not necessarily translating into proportional page views or earnings. The recent changes in NewsBreak's payment plan have further complicated matters, leading to lower earnings for writers and raising questions about the platform's long-term viability as a source of income. The article suggests that while some writers may be initially excited by the high number of impressions on NewsBreak compared to Medium views, the actual returns may not justify the excitement. The unpredictability of earnings on both platforms has left many writers uncertain about their future on NewsBreak, with some already abandoning the platform.

Opinions

The author implies that Medium's earnings model is not transparent, as a story with high views and reads can earn less than one with significantly lower engagement metrics.
There is a perception that external views might influence earnings on Medium, but the exact impact is unclear.
The article conveys that NewsBreak's impressions metric is not well understood, with a wide variance in the number of impressions across different stories, and a seemingly low conversion rate to page views.
The author expresses skepticism about the value of high impressions on NewsBreak, as they do not necessarily lead to higher earnings.
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Some people dislike seeing stories about Medium and NewsBreak. Here is another one about earnings.

This is an excerpt from an article about Medium earnings:

Why would a story with 11.2K views and 5K reads which was curated end up only earning $3.57? A story with 161 views and 95 reads which was not curated made more. Read time could be a factor, but the discrepancy is too large for that to be the explanation.

External views may also play into the equation.

Some people have written about NewsBreak considering their impressions to be comparable to the views on Medium with the page views on NewsBreak being the equivalent of reads on Medium. It is confusing how impressions are given since there is such a wide range of impressions. They may go from less than 1,000 to over 100K impressions. The page views are nowhere near half of the impressions as they seem to be on Medium.

Here are some examples:

996 impressions and 40 page views

4,251 impressions and 138 page views

20K impressions and 302 page views

83K impressions and 1,100 page views

91K impressions and 5,337 page views

117K impressions and 6,410 page views

There have been stories about how the impressions are figured. They may be from when the story shows up on someone’s feed. Why some would show up with just hundreds of impressions and others with over 100K is not clear. The people reading apparently click on the story for the page views.

Some writers on NewsBreak get all excited seeing big numbers of impressions compared to views on Medium, but the returns are not necessarily there.

Since NewsBreak changed their payment plan, it is quite likely to earn only a few dollars for a story which previously would have made $25 or $60. That makes a huge difference so that it may be difficult to achieve even that $100 a month mark which a small percentage make on Medium. The NewsBreak method of assigning an RPM number which will be times the number of page views is also unclear. That number could range between .1 to 10.0.

Whether NewsBreak will be a viable source of income for writers after their changes to the payment plan is debatable. We will just have to wait and see if we are willing to stick with it. Hopefully, they will make it better for the writers. Many have already left the platform.