As regular listeners will know, I’m currently sitting on 40 or more recorded interviews, over 100 hours of audio encompassing former high profile footballers, well-known writers and episodes featuring people from the brilliant world of Subbuteo, including Peter Adolph’s son Mark and also from the football comics of yesteryear.
While I feel a responsibility to those guests for lending me their time, I also need to make a living and the show’s growth has been slow. I realised that as solid as my business plan was, I’d made a number of errors.
First, I’d overlooked the fact that the generation likely to be interested in football pre-1992 aren’t necessarily going to live lives governed by the internet and social media, so are unlikely to fully graps the importance of retweeting and sharing show links, and of leaving reviews. Despite 5000+ downloads (not high when you learn you need 10k per ep in order to be able to carry ads with Acast, which would help finance the show and this was 5k for 30 eps), the podcast still only has 25 reviews on Apple Podcasts. This means the show is barely discoverable on iTunes which limits its chances of finding new listeners.
Also, despite having tens of thousands of followers on social media, the former players I interviewed, rarely shared their episodes on social media which was a massive missed opportunity. I also found myself blocked by many fan forums as I tried to put the word out on the show. That was disaappointing. Lastly, and this was an unfortunate one, I completely underestimated the impact the dementia situation among former players would have on the show. Some guests, clearly suffering from it already, were booked onto the show and those interviews are tricky to edit.
While I’m not a fan of crowdfunding, there’s no way the podcast can move forward without funding. It’s clearly not going to happen under the current model and the Patreon was a disaster. I work alone and up against the big equivalent shows, usually inferior I think to When Shorts Were Short, and simply cannot find the time to produce those episodes unless it’s paying. That’s the reality and I can’t apologise for wanting to pay my rent and bills. Ultimately I wanted to find at the very least an editor to take care of that side of things and save myself three days of work, but right now that’s not possible. The pandemic and the level of work on WSWS compromised my health and it’s taught me a big lesson.
What I’m proposing therefore is that listeners, and there were 400 to 500 per episode, tiny, but big enough to make this work, would subscribe to each show. It will no longer, if this is to work, be available everywhere. Listeners would need to donate a minimum £1.50 to have the episode wetransferred to their email. The downloadable link would be valid for a week.
Once the threshold of £150 in subscription donations to an episode has been reached, then I begin work on that episode and release it within days. It’s not realistic to do it any other way.
To prevent a situation whereby donations are made but the £150 threshold isn’t reached, I’m proposing written pledges via this page or my social media. Once those pledges have reached £150 minimum, then I will set up a link for the donations to be sent to, and once those pledges have come in, that episode will be edited and released.
I don’t think I’m wrong when I say that’s a fair deal.
To register your interest/and pledge or a suggestion, tweet @shortswereshort or email WSWS
