Monthly metrics:
-Merchants Guild saw a modest growth from 107 members to start August to 122 members to begin September
-Weekly and monthly contest submissions have over doubled from last month, from average of 10 submissions to 22 this month
-We are posting on content 4-5 times a week now (2-3 weekly merchants analysis/updates, 1 community highlights, 1 fundamental analysis)
-Worked with META pool team to promote launch and host pre-party launch Q&A
Challenges:
Merchants medium account was suspended for not following crypto guidelines. Medium is much stricter on crypto mediums that post about price analysis and trading, for good reason. I have created an email domain with google for @merchantsofnear.com and am working with support to re-instate the account; if not I will create another account and look for other content sites to join as well
I deliberately tried to limit the amount of shitposting and memes in the telegram, as there are too many groups for pumping and memes. I have been handling a large amount of PM’s, which is not an issue; but there is a lack of community engagement mid week.
Moving forward:
-I want to promote Merchants more to drive up community engagement and follower base. Planning on working with other guilds to cross promote and using resources such as reddit, sandbox, ect
-Continuing with weekly and monthly contests as this is been very successful. The quality of analysis has been consistently high and very accurate this last month (given it is much easier to predict price action in bullish markets). Despite the rise in NEAR price, the rewards payout will remain consistent NEAR amount. Will try to even out the rewards scale so it is not as top heavy.
-Goal is to launch a merchants educational program which will entail meetings with our two merchants to discuss improvements on TA, more educational content on how to do your own TA (we have an article on candlesticks, Bollinger bands is soon to follow), how to read TA. Goal here is to allow others to be able to learn how to do their own TA.
-Fundamental Analysis on projects launching such as META Pool and Skyward. Was hard to quantify their impact but after their launch there should be good metrics to write about and analyze.
For the August funding, I am proposing Merchants Guild to move to the next funding level of 1,500 NEAR per month.
Thanks for your suggestion, we post our analysis in the telegram group, on twitter and on medium right now and can add in Trading View as many people use that platform.
For budget allocation, we are allocating roughly 300 NEAR a month to weekly and monthly contests. This generates community interest and TA submissions of high quality. 350 NEAR for two Merchant Analysts who are providing the weekly technical analysis and working on the Merchants educational program. The rest I am taking home as the guild leader: accounts for things like website/email server hosting, community engagement, some fundamental analysis.
As for personal trading I would shy away from day trading and using margin unless you have some experience. Even though we run weekly contests, the best strategy, especially with crypto as its a long term play, is to hodl and dollar cost average. There are several benefits to hodling vrs day trading: you can stake and earn additional rewards, long term capital gains taxes are lower, less stress and effort.
I would recommend you check out what we are doing if you are interested in more analysis side.
I am glad they are helpful. Honestly have been pleasantly surprised with the quality and accuracy of analysis from the community and our analysts. Obviously its much easier to predict in a bull market but nonetheless impressive.