WHAT: Hi all, I am the author of Monero Observer, a Weekly Recap For All Things Monero (weekly newsletter). Monero Observer is a free weekly news publication released every Tuesday, created in an effort to keep the Monero community up to date on all the latest news and developments related to Monero. I aim to achieve this by aggregating all the relevant information into one convenient location in an easy-to-digest format. I sift through the noise so you don’t have to.

Monero Observer is currently fully operated, maintained, and funded by me. I have already published 4 issues in the last 4 weeks, with the 5th issue coming out in less than 24 hours. I currently have 200+ subscribers signed up, and the latest issue received over 1,000 downloads, which is growing more and more every issue.

The issue I am coming across is how much time is required to operate the weekly newsletter. I was hoping that that the donation system would provide enough of an incentive to keep me working hard for the community. While those who have donated have been extremely generous, I have so far received 8 donations total, totaling 2.5632 XMR. More importantly, I DO NOT want to start selling advertisements on the newsletter, as I want to keep the newsletter pure and focused on the content, so I am coming to the community with a proposal.

I want Monero Observer to be the official / unoffical weekly Monero newsletter funded by the Monero community.

WHO: In the spirit of privacy, I choose not to disclose who I am, but I am happy to share some background information about myself. Like many of you, I am a firm believer in Monero as it is the only cryptocurrency I personally own today. I have a Finance degree from a Business School and I am also a CFA Charterholder. I currently work in the financial services field. As someone with a finance background, what drew me to Monero is that not only is it secure and private, but it is the only cryptocurrency today that is truly fungible. And with the financial markets around the world being propped up by central banks for the last decade, I see the value in a currency such as Monero.

WHY: As Monero gains in popularity I believe it is extremely important for everyone (community members and outsiders looking in) to be able to closely follow along with all the latest news and developments surrounding Monero, whether its the latest community update from the Devs or if Monero was featured in a large media publication. And I believe Monero Observer will help bridge that gap. I believe having a Monero newsletter will be extremely beneficial to the growth and adoption of Monero as it should help spread awareness.

THE PROPOSAL AND MILESTONES: As Monero grows in popularity, it takes more and more time to put together a issue from start to finish. It currently takes me about 10-15 hours of work per issue.

My proposal is simple. I am proposing to publish the Monero Observer for 1 XMR per issue for the remainder of the year (48 issues remaining, 48 XMR total). At the current exchange rate of approximately $100 per XMR, that comes out to an hourly rate of $6.67 to $10 per hour which I believe is fair compensation.

The milestones are also simple, for every 12 issues I publish, 12 XMR is released. This comes out to 4 milestones total.

Milestone 1: Publish issues # 5 through 16 - 12 XMR

Milestone 2: Publish issues # 17 through 28 - 12 XMR

Milestone 3: Publish issues # 29 through 40 - 12 XMR

Milestone 4: Publish issues # 41 through 52 - 12 XMR

The proposal doesn't factor in other costs such as domain, web hosting, subscription services, etc, which I am happy to eat out of my own pocket.

I would also like to note that I will continue working hard on the Monero Observer regardless of whether I receive community funding or not. Thank you for your time. Cheers.

Update #1: Milestone 1 was achieved as issues #5 - #16 were published.