Newsletter Team: Season 8 Proposal

Grants/Funding Season 8 Proposals
1

Newsletter Team: Season 8 Proposal

Project Team:

Weekly Rollup Content Manager(s): HiroKennelly, Trewkat
State of the DAOs Content Manager(s): siddhearta, HiroKennelly
DeFi Download Content Manager(s): Jake and Stake, AustinFoss
Treasurer: AustinFoss
Lead Staff Editor: HiroKennelly

Project Summary:

The Newsletter Team currently has three newsletters that require ongoing resources and funding:

  1. Weekly Rollup (internal)
  2. State of the DAOs (external)
  3. DeFi Download (external)

The Newsletter Team manages the weekly operations, organizes and moderates weekly meetings, and ships content at regularly scheduled intervals. Each of these newsletters require formal roles and compensation in order to ensure quality, accountability, and timely execution.

Newsletter Team Multi-sig:

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TL;DR

  • Requesting 1,653,000 BANK for Season 8
  • Maintain current role salaries and bounty compensation
  • Requesting 90% of sponsorship revenue for Newsletter Team multi-sig
    • Remaining 10% to DAO treasury
    • Additional 10% may go to other guilds/ members for referrals
  • Partnership with DAOstewards to offer meta-governance in State of the DAOs
  • Roles and bounties created:
    • 5 salaried roles
    • Over 100 writer bounties
    • 78 editor bounties
    • 26 designer bounties

Project KPIs:

Season 7 Goals:
Subscriber count:

  • Season 6 Goal: +20%
  • Start of Season 7: 19,000
  • Goal End of Season: 22,800
  • Current Subscribers: 19,415 (+2%)
    Open rate: average >36%
    Projected Revenue (End of Season Goal): $8,000
    Actual Revenue: $8,000 + OP grant to be determined
    Total Expenses: 1,541,000 BANK/ 13 week Season

Season 8 Goals:
Subscriber Count:

  • Season 8 Goal: +10%
  • Start of Season 8:
  • Goal End of Season:
    Open rate: average >40%
    Projected Revenue (End of Season Goal): $8,000
    Total Expenses: 1,653,000 BANK/ 15 week Season

Revenue-Generating Activities:

Direct revenue (sponsorships):

  • Each newsletter base rate: $8,000/ season or $3,000/month allocated in 90/10 split (Newsletter/DAO)
    Indirect revenue:
  • Driving sales for other DAO initiatives and partnerships.
    Partnership with more DAOs and organizations, preserving:
  • BanklessDAO ethos
  • Serve BanklessDAO interest to attract more members and revenues
  • Distribution with BanklessDAO Newsletters

Budget Summary

Total Budget Request: 1,653,000 BANK
Salaried Roles: Total 605,000 BANK
Newsletter Bounty Compensation: 1,048,000 BANK

Project Team:

The newsletter project team consists of various roles, including project coordinator, newsletter leads, authors, and editors responsible for consistently delivering high-quality content, efficient operations, management, and distribution. Multiple roles may be held by a single person. We propose the following roles be funded through both salaried positions and bounties.

Detailed Budget Spec

Salaried Roles

Role Weekly Salary Bounty Bucket Season Total (15wk)
Weekly Rollup Newsletter Lead 10,000 BANK 10,000 BANK 160,000 BANK
State of the DAOs Newsletter Lead 10,000 BANK 5,000 BANK 155,000 BANK
DeFi Download Newsletter Lead 10,000 BANK 5,000 BANK 155,000 BANK
Lead Staff Editor 6,000 BANK 90,000 BANK
Treasurer 3,000 BANK 45,000 BANK
Total 605,000 BANK

Writer and Editor Bounties

Weekly Rollup (ships weekly):

  • Content Curation- responsible for Community Highlights, What’s New, Get Involved, Action Items, and Proposals
    • 12,000 BANK/week
  • Headline piece author- responsible for weekly featured editorial
    • 6,000 BANK/week
  • Copy Editor
    • 3,000 BANK/week
  • Editorial Developmental Review
    • 6,000 BANK (3,000 x 2 editors)
  • Design (Header)
    • 5,000 BANK/week
  • TOTAL 32,000 BANK/ week = 480,000 BANK/Season (15 weeks)

DAO Newsletter (biweekly):

  • Content creation- responsible for DAO summaries and spotlight
    • 12,000 BANK/publication
  • Headline piece- responsible for weekly featured editorial
    • 6,000 BANK
  • Editor
    • 3,000 BANK/publication
  • Editorial Developmental Review
    • 6,000 BANK (3000 x 2 editors)
  • Design (Header)
    • 5,000 BANK/week
  • TOTAL 32,000 BANK/ publication = 256,000 BANK/Season (8 publications/15 weeks)

DeFi Newsletter (monthly):

  • Author- responsible for curating DAO content (project releases, chirping birds, security scares)
    • 12,000 BANK/publication
  • Headline pieces- responsible for featured editorials
    • 12,000 BANK
  • Editor
    • 4,000 BANK/publication
  • Editorial Developmental Review
    • 6,000 BANK (3,000 x 2 editors)
  • Design (Header)
    • 5,000 BANK/week
  • TOTAL 39,000 BANK/ publication = 312,000 BANK/Season (8 publications/15 weeks)

TOTAL BOUNTY BUDGET: 1,048,000 BANK/Season

TOTAL NEWSLETTER PROJECT BUDGET: 1,653,000 BANK/ 15 week Season

Newsletter Team Governance

Project funds will be custodied by a (3 of 5) Gnosis Safe multi-sig wallet with seasonally nominated members according to the Newsletter Team Governance. Gnosis Safe positions must be held by Newsletter Team Project Roles OR L1/L2 Newsletter Team members if there are not enough Role holders to fill the five positions.

  • Yes, I support this proposal.
  • No, I do not support (leave comment)

0 voters

8 Likes
2

Hi Newsletter team, well done & keep shipping… :100::100:

have you generated any revenue in s7? have you done the 90/10 split.

7 Likes
3

gm gm ser! Thanks for the kind words. We’ve brought in 8,000 USDC so far in Season 8, and yep, sent 10% of that to the DAO.

Besides News and Bankless Publishing, I’m not really aware of any projects that regularly send revenue back to the DAO, are you? I’m sure there must be some, but most projects seem to have gotten away from this practice.

8 Likes
4

Newsletter team, you do a great job each week, thank you for your service :pray:

Looking at the the subscriber count KPI, it appears that uptake is again not what was expected. The second season in a row that this KPI was missed by what looks like a wide margin.

I would suggest that it’s time to rethink a few things with the newsletter:

  • Setting realistic KPIs
  • Length of newsletters
  • Further integration with the weekly video rollup
  • Asking readers for feedback, using data to improve product and content.

I understand that the State of the DAOs and DeFi Download need funding to exist, but is there value in publishing content that is not being consumed?

Are there separate metrics for these publications? With subscription levels being relatively flat for two seasons in a row, are there other metrics that can be used to indicate if published content is being consumed at least? As in likes, link clicks and so on? If so, can they be broken out separately and published so the bDAO family can see which products are being consumed?

Would the State of the DAOs be better purposed as a monthly publication only?

With these publications being bi-weekly and monthly, why are the funding costs the same as the Weekly Rollup?

3 Likes
5
  1. We have metrics on each newsletter. All of our newsletters average 11-13k views per issue, with average 36-40% open rate. The highest views this season were DeFi Download Shanghai edition, and State of the DAOs DAOs as Startups issue.
  2. State of the DAOs was sponsored by Game7 DAO this season.
  3. Newsletter Team was part of the larger Optimism grant that was just awarded last week, due to the educational nature of our content.
  4. Defi Download transitioned to shorter issues this season, and is continuing to evolve to more recent events based issues.
  5. State of the DAOs is having more guest writers to increase our reach and open up new audiences. So far we have had guest writers from Gitcoin and Aragon, and will be having guest posts by Refi DAO, Gitcoin, ImpactDAO Media, and Game7 this season.
  6. State of the DAOs is also hosting DAOstewards meta-governance posts to help drive their mission.
  7. We will be continuing to expand the video series in S8, for both the Rollup and State of the DAOs.
  8. Subscription growth continues to be lower than expected, but given the market conditions that is to be expected. Sure, we can lower our growth target from 20% to 10% per season.
  9. If you want to make suggestions on how we can improve our operations and make the newsletter better, I suggest you attend our weekly meetings and start contributing, because there is a lot of work to do and we are always looking for more writers who are willing to show up and do the work week in and week out.
  10. And the budget break down is clearly stated above, with the Rollup having higher funding costs at 480k bank compared to 256k for DAOs, and 312k for Defi Download.
10 Likes
6

Hi @siddhearta Thanks for this proposal! I have a some questions!

  1. Have you had a chance to see the [project template]?
    (Project Funding Template [DRAFT] - Google Docs)

  1. Is the total Season 8 BANK request for the Newsletter project 2,701,000 ?

  2. The Newsletters multisig currently holds:
    1,509,779 BANK

Using the newsletter Season 7 budgeted amounts of:
TOTAL BOUNTY BUDGET: 997,000 BANK/Season (997,000/13 =76,700 BANK/wk)
TOTAL NEWSLETTER PROJECT BUDGET: 1,541,000 BANK/ 13 week Season (118,500 BANK/wk)
TOTAL BANK/week: 194,700 * 5 weeks remaining in season 7 = 973,500
Assuming that a cushion of a couple weeks is needed, would there still be an excess amount of BANK held in the multisig?

I applaud your efforts at bringing tokens back to the DAO treasury.

800 USDC was sent to the DAO Treasury.
The Newsletter’s multisig banlance is approx. :
33 ETH
17,000 In the value of other tokens.
That is an approx total value of 77,000.

  1. How are the percentages (90, 10 and another possible 10) calculated?

  2. Do you have any thoughts (other than sending funds back to the treasury) on alternative ways that the newsletters could help with adding utility to the BANK token?

  3. Are you working with the Writers Guild, Bankless Publishing, the weekly roll-up, the rug, Decentralized Arts and even other guilds and departments to prevent an overlap in distribution for specific tasks done?

7

gm! Great questions and happy to clarify.

  1. Haven’t seen that new project template but can update for next time. Sections seem to be pretty aligned with this current proposal.
  2. NO! Total requested is stated as 1,653,000 bank, which is further broken down to the salaried roles and bountied roles for clarity.
  3. We did a bank buyback last year of over 400k bank, which accounts for the majority of our ‘excess’ bank in the multisig. That buyback turned out to be a bad use of sponsorship funds since we did the buyback at 0.02 and is now worth 0.007 cents.
  4. News multisig sends 10% of sponsorship revenue to DAO treasury, so of $8k we received this season we sent $800 to DAO. If other guilds refer sponsors we do send an additional 10% to them, so in the case that Marketing Guild sends a sponsor our way they would get $800 as well.
  5. No current thoughts on how to add utility to bank with newsletters but would appreciate feedback.
  6. We work extensively with WG and Bankless Publishing, and have been discussing merging with BP next season to streamline ops.
4 Likes
8

Super For, i love reading everything that you publish :smiley: