Newsbreak Removed Ridiculous ‘Strike’ & Now I Have 1 Cent Stories
Update on My Progress
I received an email from Newsbreak recently:
Your appeal regarding “When Classic Art is Deemed ‘Pornography’! Principal forced out of her job over naked statue farce” was successful and your strike has been removed from your account.
That’s great. I’m no longer in the dog house, or under threat of being suspended. But the problem is, the story is no longer news. They are supposed to review strike appeals within 7 days, but they didn’t.
The story in question was this one, which they initially said breached their nudity rules. How ridiculous. Of course, it’s now such old news, that no one cares, except possibly, the poor woman who got kicked out of her job.
The story, now published on Newsbreak, is also dated two weeks ago (when I submitted it), which I think means the algorithm treats it as old news and doesn’t bother to distribute it. Basically, their strike system is shit. And their appeal system is also shit.
30 days to get monetised turned into 40 days
Newsbreak is also supposed to process users’ applications to be monetised within 30 days of reaching the criteria, but in my case, they didn’t. It took about 40 days for me to be monetised, which means I’ve been missing out on earnings.
Users have to post ten stories to get monetised and some of those first stories did exceptionally well, but I’ve not benefited financially from them! I reached 100 registered followers within 48 hours, so I benefited in terms of followers, but most of those followers aren’t reading my other stories.
Performance of my first Newsbreak stories
I was surprised by how well those first stories did on Newsbreak. Not all of them took off, but some performed well…
- I got 12,000 views on a story about Putin’s health.
- There were 9,143 views on a story about toxic air pollution in Ohio.
- I got 6,165 views on a story about a new type of vaccine under development.
- And 1,269 views on a story about coffee making you spend more.
Those views were achieved in less than a week, so I was excited about the potential of the platform and keen to get monetised quickly. Waiting 40 days was frustrating!
However, since monetisation, I’ve not had the same number of views. It’s disappointing. Other people say they’ve experienced the same thing. It appears that the algorithm may be promoting unmonetised accounts more than monetised ones. Charming. A kick in the teeth to writers.
Delays and frustrations
Of course, that situation has not been helped by the delays, which basically means they’ve been receiving advertising revenue for reads on my stories for 40 days — a period of time that was not supposed to exceed 30 days.
Nonetheless, the success of some stories gave me an inkling of what might do well on the platform, so it was quite exciting getting started. A few of my stories have done OK since I was monetised, but I’ve had a number of stories that earned 1 cent, and some that haven’t earned anything at all!
One Cent stories
Soon after I got monetised my views went through the floor. I posted a few old Medium stories up there, and someone complained that I’d posted an old story — telling me it was old news — and threatened to block me.
My feeling on this is that when Newsbreak pays 1 cent for a story, that’s what you get! 1 cent isn’t worth my time writing new material!
When you post anything on Newsbreak, you are giving them the rights to sub-licence your story and your photographs elsewhere. So I actually feel that putting up old stories is extremely generous — on my part, not theirs. Because they can still sub-licence my work for a lot more money than they are paying me. Fortunately, things have ticked up a little in the last week. Some stories are doing better. Others are still wallowing in a ditch.
I don’t know whether the offended user has since blocked me, but I’m trying to post more recent stuff on there in case it does better. So far, it hasn’t.
Strangely, the one story he complained about is now my best performing story since I got monetised. It seems other people were interested in the ‘old news’, even if he wasn’t. It’s a US version of this story: Russia’s Satan 2 Nuke Could Wipe Out the UK in Seconds
Local news
One of the things about Newsbreak is that it’s a site focused on local news in the USA. People who post local news will earn more money. I’m British, so it’s not easy for me to do local news for US states. It’s not on my radar. Bottom line — they prefer US contributors. They deliberately make it hard for the rest of the world to join.
Nonetheless, my first month’s earnings on Newsbreak still look better than my first month’s earnings on Medium. So assuming I don’t have any difficulty actually withdrawing my earnings when we get to that stage, I will continue to write there, but I will be careful about what I put up there, because the sub-licencing clause is not something I’m very happy about. I like to be in control of where my work is published.
If you want to find out how a Brit managed to join Newsbreak, read this…
If you want to read about those sub-licencing terms and how my stories did compared to Medium, read this…
© Susie Kearley 2023. All Rights Reserved.
More from me…
- My First Newsbreak *Strike* For a Story about a Naked Italian Statue
- NewsBreak’s Reach is Phenomenal, But Their Terms Might Make You Think
- If You’re Considering Writing on Newsbreak, Read This…
- I Finally Got Onto Newsbreak!
- Newsbreak Hates Me
- Join Medium and read unlimited stories, using my referral link
