EPA Season 3 Budget Proposal
Program Champions
Frank America#0610, SamanthaJ#8487, Ap0llo#5781, hirokennelly.eth 
#0001
Program Name:
The Writers Guild Editorial and Publishing Arm (EPA) & Client Services (CS)
Multisig Address:
0xD26b6De62363Ce83d4fA6362Da283594d0DF4EcC
Program Justification:
The EPA successfully applied for and received a grant during Season 2. That proposal can be viewed here. This is a grant proposal for Season 3, which aims to discuss the value provided by this project and outline a roadmap for complete self-sustainability by Season 6. The Editing and Publishing Arm (EPA) of the Writers Guild has grown and gelled during Season 2. This proposal discusses where the project is today and what it’s doing to achieve self-preservation tomorrow.
The EPA delivers value to the BanklessDAO in three primary ways:
- Onboarding new writing and editing talent to the Writers Guild.
- Up-skilling authors and editors to generate cross-guild and multi-genre content.
- Publishing BanklessDAO voices who deliver educational Web3-oriented value currently through channels such as Medium, Mirror, and Twitter.
In Season 2, the EPA onboarded 18 new editors, published 17 EPA-funded articles as of this posting, and decentralized its workflow with a custom designed editing assignment bot.
The EPA, with support of the Writers Guild Talent Scout, administered numerous writing and editing tests, which are clearance hurdles for Newsletter and Client Services. In S3, these writing and editing tests will require original unpublished work tailored specifically for their project destination, e.g., a news-style piece or a CS-style piece, respectively.
The EPA enjoys serving as a talent funnel for both Newsletter and Client Services, both of which are revenue-generating entities, and hopes to continue to serve the Writers Guild by fostering a deep pool of talent. The EPA is to the Writers Guild as the Balancer liquidity pool is to BANK—our “liquidity” of writers and editors grows every week.
As far as our publishing platforms, there are no clearance hurdles for authors (whether guests, L1s, or L2s) to submit to the EPA for publication, and we aim to work with and support a variety of writing so long as it maintains a Web3 oriented perspective. Five published pieces that demonstrate a range of voice and topic are Tokenomics 101: Terra Ecosystem, Life Imitates Art: Future Applications of NFTs, How To Set Up A Meta-Mask Wallet, Crypto Interest on Rise in Nigeria, and 7 Take Aways After 1 Month of Contributing to a DAO.
While the EPA has been focused on editing and publishing Web3-oriented voices, a separate project, Client Services, has been authoring and collaborating with external entities, bringing in profit to the DAO. The EPA is effectively an integral not-for-profit educational platform for the BanklessDAO. Client Services is a blue-chip article-publishing machine that only works with Web3-steeped, forward-thinking brands that pay well. We believe these two operations within the Writers Guild umbrella could collaborate well together. As a test run in Season 3, the EPA will supply additional bandwidth to expand Client Services’ operations, and in return Client Services will delegate a percentage of profits to the EPA multi-sig rather than the Writers Guild multi-sig, where funds were directed in Season 2.
A close approximation of funds earned by Client Services in S2 and the splits.
New Horizons
Season 3 for the EPA will be centered around growth-strategy (new Client Services partnership, increasing Mirror NFT publications, heightening visual/image-based relevance, and shipping twice-weekly), quality-control (mentoring authors and offering up-skilling resources, providing robust assistance and an increased demand for quality editing), and talent-acquisition (collaboration with the Writers Guild Talent Scout Office to bring in fresh talent, as well as outreach via creative writing contests and inter-guild collaborations, such as with the Design and Marketing guilds).
Growth Strategy: Client Services Integration with the EPA
Client Services is a Writing and Editing Services project developed and managed by Frank America. The CS writers and editors are pulled primarily from the EPA’s pool, and they delivered numerous articles to high-profile crypto-native clients. Of that income, 10% cycled back into the BanklessDAO Treasury, 10% to the Writers Guild Multi-Sig, and 10% to Frank America for quarterbacking projects and building the brand. Flagship clients during that time included Ledger via BanklessHQ (Ultimate Ledger Guide), Perpetual Protocol, and MakerDAO.
Client Services delivers value to the BanklessDAO in four primary ways:
- Interfacing with external brands as ambassadors for the BanklessDAO.
- Compensating authors well to strengthen the stickiness of DAO participation.
- Recycling revenue back into the BanklessDAO Treasury and the Writer’s Guild.
- Brand-building for the DAO as a whole when the Bankless name is paired with big players like Maker and Ledger.
In the spirit of economic expansion and deepening collaboration, and influenced in part from the talent pool and publishing platforms of the EPA that are leveraged to achieve Client Services’ goals, CS proposes to redirect the 10% allocation, previously assigned to Writers Guild Treasury in Season 2, to the EPA Treasury in Season 3.
This is the beginning of a collaboration that will assist the EPA towards self-sustainability. However, the EPA as a tool that assists new voices and onboards members is an invaluable asset that cannot be understated, and doesn’t directly correlate with profitability. The EPA will aim for increased profitability season over season, with a goal to be self-sustaining by Season 6, but we need runway to do so.
Client Services will continue to maintain its own Kanban board, publishing flow, onboarding style, talent assignment, and client discretion. The EPA will continue to focus on publishing a range of voices, onboarding talent, and up-skilling authors and editors. However, both will coordinate in S3 to increase revenue in new ways, improve BanklessDAO brand recognition, and deliver content in an educationally profitable way.
Growth Strategy: Historical Mirror Publications & On-Brand Outreach
Slated for Season 3 is an initiative to tell the BanklessDAO’s history through our Mirror page. This chronicle of the history of the birth of a-synchronous decentralized organizations, minted as limited edition NFTs on Mirror, will serve as a growing independent revenue stream which we will use to partially remunerate writers and editors in Season 4.
We’re also on a mission to get our writers published in “big name” publications, like CoinDesk, Telegraph, and Decrypt. Further growth targets include pitching publications that non-crypto-natives read—everything from Wall Street Journal to New York Times to The New Yorker. We know that, with our work ethic, talent pool, and strong brand name, we can turn the EPA into more than just a voice of the DAO—it will become a voice throughout DAOs, across the crypto-community, and beyond. We will reach people just finding their way into Web3, thus furthering the DAO’s mission. Bridging the gap between crypto readers and non-crypto-native readers is a primary target as we hone focus and harness growth.
Growth Strategy: Improve Visual Identity and Cross-Guild Collaboration
In partnership with the Design Guild, we’ve increased the visual integrity of our publications. Custom-dialing visual assets such as cover designs and in-article graphics will only expand the relevance of our written material. In both Season 2, and even more so in Season 3, we have budgeted for this necessity. The importance of plugging into the visual side of our articles cannot be understated, so we are committed to scaling our partnership with in-house bDAO designers.
A final component to our growth strategy is to collaborate with the Marketing Guild to get more viewership on our articles. Although we can supply basic social media communications and target influences, we believe empowering another guild to assist in spreading awareness may be a further unlock to the expansion of our brand imprint and educational outreach.
For these reasons, we’ve included in this budget proposal an amount of BANK to pay out both designers and marketers. While Client Services is scaling up and Mirror-minted NFTs are on the horizon, we request funding for the DAO-wide services we provide: Education, Onboarding, and Upleveling.
Although we expect to increase revenue with the support of our EPA writers and editors, it is important that we don’t confuse the difference between writing high quality pay-per-word articles with varying levels of technical prerequisites, and serving as a sounding board and fog horn for the voice of the BanklessDAO. We are committed to providing a platform for all voices and all levels of skill under the umbrella of this mission of going bankless.
Quality Control: Mentoring Authors & Upskilling Opportunities
The EPA aims to increase the quality of its publications, and this begins with enhancing the skillset of our authors and editors. During Season 2, we’ve provided 1-on-1 editing sessions and suggested reading materials. Season 3 will bring more emphasis and focus on good content editing, author-editor collaboration, and upskilling writers who have an on-brand message but perhaps not a developed writing style just yet. We also plan to introduce EPA Coordinator office hours, where writers and editors will get to talk through tough pieces synchronously with our project coordinator. S3 is designed to level-up our squad and the quality of material that gets printed.
Talent Acquisition: Collaboration with Talent Scout & Writing Contests
The EPA will continue to assist with onboarding talent both for publication, and for fulfilling authorial roles in Client Services and Newsletter. Custom original content will be required to pass the Writing Test (used to evaluate writers for Client Services) given by the Talent Scout of the Writers Guild. The Talent Scout will then collaborate with the EPA to help place and educate writers and editors. Furthermore, Creative Writing Contests and campaigns to get BanklessDAO materials into other significant publications will continue to provide onramps for the writers of Web3 to join BanklessDAO.
Program Terms
In order to successfully fulfill the tasks of this program, we’ll need funds to compensate editors and writers for their efforts with articles, as well as five roles to facilitate this overall process: Coordination (Samanthaj), Accounting (ap0llo), Scheduling and Publishing (Frank America and hirokennelly.eth), and Client Services management (Frank America).
The responsibilities of these roles will be:
- Creating, building, and maintaining collaborative and productive relationships between editors, writers, and designers
- Gauging submissions for alignment with the mission, vision, and values of BanklessDAO
- Reviewing submissions to ensure quality and consistency of content and facilitating edits or rewrites if necessary
- Selecting articles for publication and deciding which platform (Medium, Mirror)
- Updating and maintaining the content publishing calendar and the Editing Work spreadsheet
- Scheduling articles for publication in a timely manner from completion date
- Working with designers to generate covers for articles to improve branding and increase reach of content
- Working closely with the Marketing Guild to provide exposure for publications on social media
- Collaborating with the WG Talent Scout Office to onboard new editors and writers by administering an editing or writing test, which evaluates the skill set of each new contributor
- Starting a Mirror bDAO history initiative with incredibly high quality articles that rely heavily on visual information
- Providing remuneration to editors, writers, and designers at regular intervals
- Providing regular budget analyses and updates to ensure seamless payments to editors, writers, and designers
Workflow
This is the current workflow for publishing an article:
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A writer submits an article via the BanklessDAO Submission form or adds it manually to our spreadsheet.
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Our new Editing Work spreadsheet has automated a significant number of the project management tasks, which previously required an entire role within the EPA. Now, articles move along our workflow without intervention from a third party.
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Content Editors, in Stage 1, determine if the article is fit to be published to BanklessDAO channels. If so, the article moves on to Stage 2. If not, the editor returns the article to the author.
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In Stage 2, the Content Editor takes a deep dive into editing the article, working through 1. the Editing Framework established at the inception of the Writers Guild. Any changes that need to be made to the Framework are made as suggestions within the weekly Editors meeting and ratified by the editing team at large.
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Upon completion of Stage 2, the editor returns the article to the author for review. If the author accepts and implements the edits, the editor moves the article to Stage 4. If the author does not, the editor removes the article from the queue altogether.
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In Stage 4, a Copy Editor reviews the article, making sure the writer implemented the original edits, and makes a final review for quality control.
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Once the Copy Editor approves the article for publishing, the team determines the appropriate channel for publication and places it on the content calendar for that channel.
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Prep article for publication and schedule.
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Authors and editors get paid the first week of the following month.
Compensation
To accomplish all the terms of the program, we recommend the following payouts for each individual:
Writing
2 BANK per word, with a cap of 3000 BANK per published author.
*EPA reserves the right to not publish articles if they do not fit brand standards as mentioned above or do not progress according to satisfaction if in development. Kill fee of 250 BANK applies for Primary Editors who work on pieces that do not make it past Stage 1, so that no work goes unremunerated.
Primary Editors:
2000 BANK for heavy edits.
1500 BANK for moderate editing.
1000 BANK for minor editing.
The editor determines the level of difficulty in processing articles. This system may be revised in the future if we become aware of abuse.
Secondary Editors:
500 BANK for secondary review
Design, Marketing, and Layout
1,000 BANK bounty per cover design. 1,000 BANK bounty per article for marketing support from the marketing guild. 1,000 BANK for layout, which is our final quality control step that often requires a final edit, interfacing with designers and marketers, and coordinating with the author to publish the piece. This multi-part step includes:
- Procuring custom cover art working closely with over half a dozen designers
- Running final fine-tooth comb edits
- Onboarding author to medium or mirror
- Changing Article titles and crafting detailed SEO friendly subtitles
- Interfacing with author for clarity and approval of changes
- Polishing formatting, and adding consistent layout in relation to other articles
- Request re-writes in the case of vague sections
- Image descriptions for the visually impaired
- Craft and post on twitter and hyperlink to author for credit
- Share and distribute articles in BanklessDAO WG
- Remunerate marketing assistance from the Marketing Guild
Role Definition(s) for Season 3
ROLES (Payouts are nominal and not reflective of total hours worked.)
Coordination - SamanthaJ
Editors’ Circle Organizer
Organizing and facilitating weekly Editors Circle meetings, which includes preparing agenda, sending out notifications, checking in with writers and editors, and managing the distribution of POAPs. Working with WG members to establish the direction of the EPA and coordinate with other WG entities, such as the Newsletter arm and the WG Twitter squad. Developing and shepherding a governance framework that fits the unique needs of the EPA and CS project.
Season 3 Remuneration: This amounts to 13 weeks of work, per a standard season, at 2000 BANK/week for a total of 26,000 BANK.
Accounting/Secretary - Ap0ll0517
EPA secretarial role which involves taking notes at meetings, logging payments, retrieving wallet addresses, and formatting .csv files to execute multi-sig transactions. Managing scope and budget of EPA and offering insight into financial status.
Season 3 Remuneration: This amounts to 13 weeks of work, per a standard season, at 2000 BANK/week for a total of 26,000 BANK.
Scheduling and Publishing - Frank America
Managing content calendar and publishing decisions, considering how pieces fold together and building out a publishing flow to reflect that, managing or implementing final design actions, providing editorial insight to authors and editors on articles. Overall growth strategy, author/editor development, and technical publishing support (mirror NFTs, Web3 publishing, splits, mints, etc.).
Season 3 Remuneration: This role amounts to 13 weeks of work each, per a standard season, at 2000 BANK/week for a total of 26,000 BANK
Design and Marketing - Hirokennelly
Contact authors and editors regarding status of submitted articles to ensure a steady flow of content for publication. Review articles after secondary edits for quality. When ready for publication, commission article covers and work through iterative drafts with designers to hone in the message of the covers to convey the essence of a piece. Collaborate with Marketing Guild to outline and execute a comprehensive strategy that increases the reach and impact of our published content.
Season 3 Remuneration: This role amounts to 13 weeks of work each, per a standard season, at 2000 BANK/week for a total of 26,000 BANK
Client Services Management - Frank America
Frank manages the Client Services arm, which requires interfacing with clients, selecting authors and editors, following up with authors and editors to ensure everyone’s on schedule, and doing editing and writing on an as-needed-basis to keep quality high.
Season 3 Remuneration: This amounts to 13 weeks of work, per a standard season, at 2000 BANK/week for a total of 26,000 BANK.
Projected Compensation:
We expect to publish 30 articles in Season 3, split between Medium and our new Mirror initiative.
3,000 (per author) + 2,000 (per content editor) + 500 (per copy editor) + 1000 (per cover design) + 1,000 (per marketing bounty) + 1,000 (final layout) x 30 = 255,000
250 BANK “kill fee” for editors who work on pieces that do not make it to publication. 20 “kill fees” are built into the Content Editors category. = 5,000 BANK
5 Roles at 26,000 BANK =130,000 BANK
S3 TOTAL:
| Authors | Content Editors | Copy Editors | Cover Design Bounties | Marketing Bounties | Shipping and Handling | EPA Role Holders | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 90,000 | 65,000 | 15,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 | 130,000 | 390,000 |
Conclusion
The EPA had a successful Season 2 and is excited to continue building new talent and finding more revenue streams for the BanklessDAO. We are excited to expand, innovate, and deliver. Thank you for your consideration.
- Yes, fund it
- No, needs edits
0 voters