I change my mind quite frequently. I know. I’m working on that.
In the meantime, I had to revisit one of the platforms I use (and almost abandoned) and give it another try.
Here’s what I found.
A Medium competitor?
Well, no.
It’s not a Medium competitor. If anything, it’s a nice Medium companion because most topics don’t overlap. At least for me.
It’s NewsBreak… I know, I know, duh…
Before you run away though, let me tell you why I started using NewsBreak again and differently!
Let’s get the negatives out of the way first
It’s not all peachy on NewsBreak. Far from it.
NewsBreak sucks at:
#1 Editorial
They’re basically flagging, rejecting, or classifying some posts completely incorrectly or, at least, extremely questionably.
My stories have been flagged for impartiality, spam, and other things like 50% of the time. I’m exaggerating a little, but still.
NewsBreak seems to have a real problem with opinions that go along with the stories. Be aware of that!
#2 Comments
My god, the comments on NewsBreak are worrisome. It’s a scary mix of racism, sexism, hate, ignorance, and pure stupidity. Even worse, NewsBreak does NOT filter anything. That’s a shame. 90% of the comments should not have made it live. Any other major site or service has a filter for this, like YouTube, for example.
#3 Pay
Earnings are a lot lower than on Medium. They’re a little higher than on Vocal Media, for example, but not really great.
The positives
What’s left? Are there any positives?
There are a few positives as well:
#1 Views are easy to come by
If you play by the rules (and don’t get accused of spammy or impartial content), views are easy to get. And I mean thousands of views. Not a dozen, or a few hundred. Thousands.
#2 Length
You don’t need to write a lot. The minimum is 250 words and given the pure gold you find in the comment section, most readers don’t seem to have an attention span for more words anyway.
It’s fairly simple to write a few 250-word posts a week on the side.
#3 Topics
Contrary to popular belief (and the actual name), NewsBreak is not only a place for news content. It works better but you can write about a lot of things.
They don’t flag non-news-based content. I’ve even repurposed some Medium posts for NewsBreak. It works.
What I’ve found though, is that original content, written for NewsBreak and in shorter form, drives more views. Again, thousands of views on any given story is not uncommon.
The bottom line
I won’t be ditching NewsBreak anytime soon. I thought I might but I will give it another try.
As I’m starting my entrepreneurial journey, I do have more time to play around with other platforms. And I will make use of that time.
Have you tried NewsBreak?
By the way: You don’t need to be a US citizen to write on NewsBreak as some of you may think. You only need a US phone number. Those are easy to get, for example with the site OpenPhone.
You also need to meet the entry requirements for monetization which are 100 registered followers and 10 published stories. Depending on your output and growth that may or may not take a while.
