Project Champion: Droste.eth
Squad: WinVerse, Elemental, Tundeturner
Authors; Editors: WinVerse, Droste
Purpose: for-profit and public good
Affiliation: AV Guild, Marketing Department, Writers Guild
Date created: July 20, 2023
Date posted: July 22, 2023
Funds requested: 300,000 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 episode, 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.
We’ve stayed true to that tagline for nearly 18 months.
In Season 9 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.
We view The Making Bank podcast as one of the components of our organization that helps make onboarding more pleasant and smooth sailing. We help foster community by having top level discussions with DAO contributors, highlighting their valuable and diverse contributions in their respective DAOs and growing interconnection between them.
SUMMARY
For Season 9, the project will be requesting 300,000 BANK to continue operations based upon project expenses.
Since its inception in February 2022, the Making Bank project has published 47 episodes through July 2023. 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 9, 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.
S8 RETROSPECTIVE
KPIs met
- Published 2 episodes in Season 8 (1 per month)
- At least 100 downloads per episode
We are on track for at least 100 downloads per episode. Data through 7/21:
-
Episode 47 Ed On (Bankless Japan & Wonder Communities) 97 downloads
-
Episode 46 Bankless Card project update with Links 134 downloads
We typically get 40-50 downloads on the first day of release with a rapid drop-off after day 2 or 3. Over the past month, we have had 251 total downloads, which is up 21% over the prior 30 day period.
Tundee Turner joined our team during Season 8, re-engaging on social media and creating Twitter threads utilizing audiograms from current episodes. To piggyback on the mention of ChippiCon at Permissionless, he promoted our early episode with Perchy that was recorded over a year ago.
We generally create 2 to 3 audiogram-style shorts for each episode, excerpting discussion points that refer back to the full episode.
A collection of audiograms we’ve made are in the bDAO Dash media repository here: Dash
(hint reverse sort by date added)
Stretch goals not met
- We failed to confirm and secure a sponsor in Season 8.
- We did not make forward progress on collectible post & NFT experiments.
- Producing more than 1 episode per month.
Why: There hasn’t been time to focus beyond core. Our top priority is shipping episodes consistently. To be quite candid we will continue to be challenged in this area for most of Season 9.
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
The Making Bank team is requesting 300,000 BANK
Fixed Production Expenses $135/mo (29,000 BANK @ .0047) = 116,000 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 (4 episodes x 20,000) = 80,000 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 80,000 BANK max @ 1 per month release
4 episodes = 80,000 (1 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
Roles
- Producer/ShowRunner - TBD, not budgeted for S9 (see unbudgeted section)
- Currently handled by Host/Editor and paid variably depending on the quantity of output. Simply said, some weeks are busier than others.
- variable hours per production task breakdown
- Charged with overseeing pre-production to production workflow
- Guest booking, scheduling, discussion prep, in-session monitoring, etc.
- Marketing coordination – 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.
- Charged with overseeing post-production workflow
- 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 Number of episodes published and cadence 1 per month views Number of downloads per episode > 100 per episode
Additional UNBUDGETED needs (TBD mid-season planning)
As mentioned in the retrospective above, we are prioritizing shipping episodes until we have more bandwidth.
Web3 experiments - collectible posts, Lens ecosystem
In support of revenue goals/independence, we will be experimenting with collectible posts and episodes. We’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 ‘default’ host at 4 hrs/wk outside of direct production when we were shipping weekly. For most of Season 7 and throughout Season 8, Droste has been and will continue to largely fulfill those admin tasks until other team members’ availability widens.
Suggest budget adjustments to include a minimum ~ 5hrs/wk; possibly deferring payment to end of season based on kpi achievement.
COMMITMENTS
We’ve been shipping for nearly 18 months with a tiny team and a tiny budget.
We’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
Website
Socials
https://twitter.com/makingbankpod
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