Welcome back to the First Draft Club newsletter!

After publishing here in October and November, I took a couple months off from long-form updates. However, it makes too much not to return to written updates for a writing program.

I'd like to get (back) in the habit of giving monthly public updates on First Draft Club. I’m thinking of these as "investor updates”, as they are an opportunity to explore the larger questions about how the project is going. Each month, I’ll share metrics, discuss experiments and learnings, and dive deeper into how I’m thinking about the next steps for First Draft Club.

I don’t know how many people will actually be interested in reading these, but as with the formation of First Draft Club itself, I’m doing this primarily for myself. Any engagement, feedback, or growth that comes from these letters is secondary to the benefits of thinking out loud.

On that note, I’d like to use this month’s update to talk about the “business model” of First Draft Club.

One of the major “existential” questions I had been grappling with is how to manage the growing balance in the First Draft Club “treasury” (firstdraftclub.eth). When participants don't earn their weekly $5 back, these funds have stayed and accumulated.

To this point, I have never taken funds from the wallet except for what I’ve earned as a participant myself.

I’ve been exploring ways to reinvest that money back into the project, but wanted to find a sustainable solution that I could put on “autopilot” without much oversight or further decision-making.

The solution I decided on is monthly prize pools.

Mark Fishman on Warpcast

Announcing: rolling monthly prize pools for @firstdraftclub 💸 The core mechanic of /firstdraft is staying the same: subscribe for $25/mo, and earn $5 back each week you write. Now, when you don’t write for a week, that $5 goes into the next month’s prize pool. I'm seeding the initial January prize pool with 500 USDC from accumulated funds in the firstdraftclub.eth wallet. Future months may be bigger or smaller – depending on how many people sign up and how often they participate.

Farcaster

When participants share writing for a given week, they still earn $5 back, but now, on weeks they don’t earn, those funds get added to the next month’s prize pool.

Essentially: money goes from those who don’t write to those who do.

Eligibility requirements may vary month to month, but I imagine most times it will be a question of writing consistently throughout the month. (For February, members need to write all four weeks).

The secondary (albeit more obvious) reason for the prize pools is to incentivize more participation.

The most successful period for First Draft Club corresponded with a prize pool: members who wrote every week in the month of October earned a share of 100,000 $higher. Those four weeks of October still hold the record for the highest participation of any weeks since FDC opened its doors for membership. (See the “Metrics” section below.)

The downside of incentives, of course, is potentially attracting the wrong people. I had actually considered an “earn other people’s money” mechanism as part of the core mechanics from the very beginning of FDC, but didn’t want the focus to be financial. I wanted to attract people who were primarily interested in writing, not in winning a competition.

However, I’m confident that the cost/benefit ratio of participating in First Draft Club makes it unattractive for “farming”. I haven’t had to disqualify anyone from earning rewards due to “low effort” writing so far, but I do reserve that option if things ever get out of hand.

For now, I’m now happy to lean into the “make money on Farcaster” meta.

The peak period for First Draft Club, as mentioned above, was during the October $higher challenge. After cooling off over the holidays (I was the only person who posted the final week of 2024!) we’re picking up steam again.

I’m not particularly focused on metrics, but it’s nice to be able to track growth and participation.

Some all-time numbers:

• Total submissions: 329

• Total unique posters: 68

• Total members: 82

What other metrics would you be interested in? Let me know!

Thanks for reading (and writing),

Mark