My NewsBreak Earnings Were 20x My Medium Earnings in June

Writing is fun, and earning from your writing is fun, too

Photo by Carolien van Oijen on Unsplash

This picture of some cows running is a lot like my NewsBreak earnings from June — unexpected and fun.

I like writing here at Medium because you can write about any topic and find some readers. You can earn some money, too.

But my Medium experience has been that the connections and community far exceed the monthly payouts. Which means writing here is fun, but the financial rewards take a lot of time.

By contrast, I’ve earned decent money on NewsBreak almost since my first month there.

On the other hand, there’s really not much community there — and the comments on your writing can be brutal. I read them for laughs sometimes, but if I took them seriously I’d be constantly in a state of confusion and rage.

I write about local politics (Tennessee), education policy, and consumer issues at NewsBreak.

There’s a decent (and built-in) audience for those topics — and many more — on NewsBreak.

The app has 45 million users — that’s a lot of potential readers.

I still struggle to determine which articles are going to be hits, but each month, I have 2–3 that turn out to do fairly well (low- to mid-triple digit earnings).

Combining that with the other articles means my monthly take there is decent, which makes me happy — and frees up time to work on Medium pieces, Substack, and a book proposal.

Here’s the story that earned the most for me on NewsBreak in June:

Tennessee Pastors Express Outrage Over Supreme Court Rulings | Advocate Andy | NewsBreak Original

This story was published on the last day of the month — and is still earning into July.

Three things factor in to why it is earning (at least in my view):

1. It’s news — it’s pretty much a straight news piece reporting “just the facts.” NewsBreak likes straight news.