Making Bank Podcast Season 8 Funding Proposal

Project Champion: Droste#0063
Squad: WinVerse#2755, Salmanneedsajob#6938, Elemental#7854
Authors; Editors: WinVerse, Droste, Elemental

Purpose: for-profit and public good
Affiliation: AV Guild, Marketing Department, Writers Guild

Date created: April 6, 2023
Date posted: April 7, 2023

Funds requested: 332,000 BANK
Project wallet: 0x9Ad27f9b1885b4324cF9d45af1006E8FcA22c9D9
Discord Server: Bankless Studios

PROJECT TEASER

The Making Bank podcast offers an inside look into BanklessDAO and showcases the people, ideas, and projects that keep it at the forefront of web3. Each week, we invite DAO members to join us for conversations about DAO life, the future of work, crypto, web3, and their journeys to becoming more bankless.

Weā€™ve stayed true to that tagline for over a year. In Season 8 and beyond, we intend to broaden the conversation. One of our overarching goals is to make onboarding into decentralized communities like BanklessDAO more accessible and share our learnings.

SUMMARY

For Season 8, the project will be requesting 332,000 BANK to continue operations based upon project expenses.

Since its inception in February 2022, the Making Bank project has published 44 episodes through March 2023. We did not request project funding during Season 6 or 7. Our last funding request was in Season 5 when we were part of Podcast Hatchery. Since then we have been operating without additional funding. As of yet, we have not successfully added outside sponsorship or funding sources and have been operating on a largely volunteer basis.

Our show has always been for and by BanklessDAO. All of our guests to date have been bDAO contributors; conversations range from stories of their journeys into web3 and bDAO, their contributions in the space, and frequently a specific project at bDAO where others can get involved.

In Season 8, we are looking to expand our guest roster beyond the DAO. We are also looking to further decentralize the project by selectively adding talent in the areas of audio engineering, storytelling & narrative construction, hosting and moderation, etc as our capability to manage a decentralized team improves over time.

S7 RETROSPECTIVE

  • Moved to a new hosting platform at the end of Season 6
  • Published 7 episodes from 23 November 2022 - 30 March 2023
  • Participated in ThriveCoin rewards program: retroactive reward to prior guests as well as new listener rewards for sharing/liking/retweeting episode posts.
  • Began to explore NFT collectible mints and web3 tooling

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

The Making Bank team is requesting 332,000 BANK

Fixed Production Expenses

$135/mo (18,000 BANK @ .0075) = 72,000 for season

Regardless of production, these costs are ongoing to maintain the podcast.
Pod host (RSS.com), recording studio (Riverside), audio software (Izotope), story editor (Descript).

Variable Per Episode Production Costs

(8 episodes x 20,000) = 160,000 for season

We follow the bDAO standard of 1000 BANK/hour for calculating our budget. Task breakdowns, order of completion, and time required to complete them are based upon actual experience. Source data from our Task Tracker is publicly available for analysis.

Task Costs, Typical, in BANK, current
20,000 BANK per produced and published episode = total of 160,000 BANK max @ 2/mo release. 8 episodes = 160,000 (2 per month)

Production Task Category BANK
Research 2000
interview - session prep, session, post-process 6000
Audio engineering post-interview 2000
Narrative edit, Show Notes, pre-pub review 6000
Final processing, upload, share triggers 3000
Sharable AV (audiograms) 500
marketing/social media (tweet threads) 500
Total production per episode 20,000

Non-production Costs

100,000 BANK for season

Suggested roles

  • Producer/ShowRunner - TBD, not budgeted for S8 (see unbudgeted section)
    • Currently handled by Host/Editor and not paid separately
    • variable hours per production task breakdown (may separate in future)
    • Charged with overseeing pre-production to production workflow
      • Guest booking, scheduling, discussion prep, in-session monitoring, etc.
  • Marketing coordination ā€“ 15 hours per month = 60,000 BANK
    • Charged with overseeing post-production workflow
      • Sharing audiograms, sharing to marketing, watching calendar, ensuring social media channels are covered and that the show is coordinating with bDAO-wide marketing - timing, coordination
      • Weekly, consistent.
  • Social media manager (Twitter, Lens) - 10 hours per month = 40,000 BANK
    • Handle Twitter and Lens profile posts

SEASONAL KPI

Factor KPI Success Metric
consistency # of episodes published and cadence #ā‰„ā€¦ minimum 1/mo
Goal: 2/mo average
Stretch: weekly
views # views per episode, top episodes #ā‰„ā€¦ minimum 100 downloads/episode
Stretch: 200
Mint collects (TBD) # minted #ā‰„ā€¦ tbd
Sponsors or revenue tbd Proof of concept, initial test

Additional UNBUDGETED needs (TBD mid-season planning)

Web3 experiments - collectible posts, Lens ecosystem

In support of revenue goals/independence, we will be experimenting with collectible posts and episodes. Weā€™re exploring ways to both connect with our audience more directly as well as offer opportunities for financially supporting the show and track creator reputation. Suggest structured payment (ie 0xSplits or similar) plus fixed fee for base design and oversight.

Unfunded roles & responsibilities

The Producer/Showrunner was previously budgeted at 8 hrs/wk, and a ā€˜defaultā€™ host at 4 hrs/wk outside of direct production when we were shipping weekly.

For most of Season 7 and for the first part of Season 8, Droste has been and will continue to largely fulfill those admin tasks until other team membersā€™ availability widens. Suggest budget adjustments to include a minimum ~ 5hrs/wk; possibly deferring payment to end of season based on kpi achievement.

COMMITMENTS

Weā€™ve heard from guests and fans of the show that Making Bank has given them insight into people and parts of the DAO they may not have been familiar with, as well as offering a different perspective and insights into our wide-ranging projects and the depth of talent our people bring to the DAO.

The Making Bank podcast provides value for BanklessDAO itself, by surfacing and telling the stories of our contributors and the projects that excite them in web3. For those listeners unfamiliar or new to the world of DAOs, we provide a varied catalog of DAO experiences they can dive into. By sharing our journeys, challenges, opportunities and yes, frustrations, we think we help grow more DAO aligned members in the process.

We also look to attract sponsors by having members of other DAOs and DAO-adjacent organizations as guests. This will help us both to expand our audience and potentially bring in revenue to sustain the show.

We also see this as a form of public good. Sharing DAO journeys, common challenges, projects we work on and ways to participate are all a part of growing web3 and building community.

BRANDING

The current Making Bank logo is a derivation of the branding outlined in the BanklessDAO style guide developed by Design Guild. For collectibles, NFT projects, etc, the brand logo will not be the primary art nor necessarily the same color palette.

FURTHER PROJECT CHANNELS

Project Notion Page

https://bankless.notion.site/Making-Bank-podcast-2022-2023-25add3a9ca47415b926cba692dac293c

Pitch Deck (in Notion on this page, needs updating)

Website

https://rss.com/podcasts/making-bank-banklessdao/

Socials

https://twitter.com/makingbankpod

Thank YOU!

The show could not exist without you. Our content only exists because bDAO members have given their time to share the work they do and the individual journeys they are all on. And of course, thank you for listening, liking, subscribing, and sharing. :heart:

Edit: I goofed on the poll, single option of course. Voting two would be weird, but you do you. :crazy_face:

  • I DO support the Making Bank Podcast S8 funding request
  • I do NOT support the Making Bank podcast S8 funding request
  • I require more information before voting (please comment!)
0 voters
4 Likes

Two options may be a bit goofy :joy:

I voted yes, donā€™t let this fool you. Ha

1 Like

Weā€™re the worldā€™s largest media DAO, and this is just the kind of content weā€™re good at. Well done team!! Strong support for the Making Bank squad.

5 Likes

Well crap :poop: !
Thank you for the note, Homie. Sadly, polls cannot be edited after the original post (only a 5 min grace period). I should have proofread that a bit closerā€¦

Thanks for voting Yes :grinning:

:woman_shrugging:t5:

Oh well! A crazier situation would be forgetting to put the word yes. :grimacing:

Hi @Droste thanks for putting up this proposal! I have a few questions. How many episodes have been produced for seasons 6 and 7?

What does are the responsibilities of the show runner?
Thanks

The showrunner does pretty much everything that isnā€™t actual production or interviewing, such as building budgets, writing forum proposals, responding to questions on those proposals.

Additionally, as acting showrunner, I built a somewhat automated task tracking process in Notion as well as manage the RSS account and pay those bills.

Release dates and episode list with full details are in the Notion link above. Hereā€™s a partial screenshot showing the episodes released during that time period. You can filter for whatever time period you like.

2 Likes

Well Dang that sure looks like an amazing line up