Update: Newsbreak is Slowing Down for Me

I’ve been on Newsbreak for a few months now, and it is really a low effort, easy gig. I publish at least once a day as well as tweaking titles and pics for articles that maybe aren’t doing so well. I now have 96 articles published and I wanted to share my experience to date.

Impressions and views have definitely slowed down this month

After having a few days in June that topped 18,000 views in one day, I haven’t been able to repeat this performance in July. In fact, I haven’t had a day over 5,000 views. Not exactly a fail, but it isn’t living up to my expectations for sure.

I've considered that my initial success could have been simply the appeal of something new popping on Newsbreak that aren't necessarily newsworthy. Perhaps the novelty has worn off and my views will continue to tank.

One of the things that I have discovered is that I need to play with my titles. For some reason, the Newsbreak algorithm is picky about your titles. If I have an article that isn’t getting a lot of impressions, I will go in and tweak the title a bit. I have used an SEO title generator for this with good results.

I have also changed up my pictures that I use as well. That doesn’t seem to help as much as tweaking the title, but I have had slightly improved results from doing that.

I am experimenting with my topics

I mostly write about gardening on Newsbreak. Newsbreak likes local stories, but I have had great success with some of my gardening pieces. However, in an effort to improve my numbers, I have been writing about interesting places to visit in my state. What I have found is that those articles don’t get much traction at all. In fact, they don’t perform nearly as well as my gardening articles.

However, I do live in a rural area, so it isn’t unreasonable to believe that a lot of people in my area find value in gardening articles. I had considered starting a new account and writing strictly about local news for comparison, but I’m not sure if Newsbreak allows that.

I'm also going to try to broaden my audience a bit by writing about things that are garden adjacent, like keeping livestock and tips for keeping them healthy and productive. I'm gambling on my audience being interested in those things as well as anything homestead related.

My first payout from Newsbreak saved me this month

Even though I’m experiencing a slowdown this month, the June paycheck saved me from being broke this month. Newsbreak pays out on the 15th for the previous month, so my July check was pretty respectable. Unfortunately, my summers are very slow due to the fact that most of the work I do relies on academics, so I won’t see much money until fall.

Even though Newsbreak hasn’t been a get-rich-quick side hustle, it has allowed me to get through the summers with very little effort. There are still a few days left in July, so I’m hoping lightning will strike twice and I’ll get a few more 10,000 plus days.

I'm going to continue experimenting with topics, formatting, pictures, and wording to see if I can pinpoint exactly what Newsbreak likes to push. Until then, I'm just going to enjoy my low effort side hustle that is helping me survive these lean summers.

Writing for Newsbreak hasn’t been quite as lucrative as I had hoped, but my suspicion is that it takes time to get going. It’s definitely a marathon, not a sprint. However, I'm going to keep going with it and give it at least a year or two.