AFTN’s subscription only podcast “There’s Still (Extra) Time” moves into year six – Subscribe today and support our independent soccer coverage and help AFTN continue to grow

AFTN’s subscription only podcast “There’s Still (Extra) Time” celebrates its birthday today!

Episode one dropped in February 2017 and it’s kinda crazy to think we’ve being doing them for that long, but we’ve hit 60 episodes, averaging one a month, and are raring to head into year six.

If you’re unsure what this is all about. Let us explain.

The tl:dr version is you can donate $30 a year or $3 a month below and in return you’ll receive our AFTN Extra podcasts delivered to your email. If you want to donate more, or less, you can use the donate button on the sidebar or click the ‘buy as a coffee’ link.

If you want to be a new subscriber (or if you cancelled auto renew and want to start again), then you can sign up via one of the methods below:

12 month recurring annual subscription ($30 per year):

Recurring monthly subscription ($3 per month):

For those that want a more detailed breakdown of why we’re doing this and what you will get in the AFTN Extra podcasts, read on.

The AFTN Extra podcast is just that. Extra content running alongside the regular AFTN Soccer Show, which will be going into year 10 next month and will hit the 500 episodes mark this week. We first started the podcast way back in 2013 and we’re one of the longest running soccer podcasts in North America.

I’m also pretty sure that we’re the longest running soccer podcast in Canada (someone can fact check that for us, but I can’t think of anyone going before us that still is).

“There’s Still (Extra) Time” is basically our primary fundraiser for AFTN. It’s our chance to bring you some extra content in return for you helping to support AFTN with a small financial donation. Even if you don’t want to listen to the podcasts, it’s an opportunity to give us a little financial support to cover costs for all aspects of the website and the main AFTN Soccer Show podcast, while also allowing us to explore new ventures and grow AFTN further.

We know we could just ask for donations, but we want to give you a little bit back as a thank you in return. And let’s be honest, we’re seldom short of content!

The first five years of the ‘Extra’ podcasts seemed to have gone down well. Or at least we hope they have, as no-one has given us any negative feedback and subscriptions have continued to grow year upon year, with few people dropping off!

We’ve covered a wide range of issues over our 60 episodes so far, from Vancouver Whitecaps and Canadian Premier league coverage at club level, to Canada on the international stage, World Cup talk, and more.

If you are already a subscriber, we hope you enjoyed them and continue to subscribe. If you don’t already subscribe, we’d love you to consider doing just that.

As we all know, the sporting media landscape is constantly changing in this modern age, and this appears to be very much true in Vancouver as a city and seemingly soccer coverage in general in our country.

Media layoffs throughout Canada are commonplace and the last couple of years have seen a big hit in soccer coverage. There’s now only one sports radio station in Vancouver, and let’s be honest, their coverage of the Whitecaps is minimal and feels token. We’re proud that AFTN fills a lot of those gaps with quality content and we see the current climate as an opportunity to do even more going forward.

On the written side, it’s not exactly a revelation to state that writing about football is not a full time career option for many in Canada, with fewer and fewer sites wanting to pay, never mind actually wanting quality long-form coverage. That’s an area we were quite prolific in initially, and want to get back to that again going forward.

We’re lucky to have some fantastic independent online websites, blogs, and podcasts in Vancouver and across Canada, and here at AFTN we feel we’ve led the way in that for a number of years and are proud of that. But year upon year, we want to improve. To step up our coverage and expand our content in all aspects – written, audio, and visual.

Despite the difficulties thrown up over the last two years we’ve continued to do that, with the pandemic allowing us to do more in-depth interviews and cover more teams across both MLS and the CPL. We’ve ventured into video, with a few live You Tube shows, including our new quizshow, and we hope to be doing a lot more of those in 2022. That means more watchalongs and post game shows, as well as a couple of exciting new video series that we have in the works now that we can get the gang back together in person again. From quiz nights to soccer culture, we have a lot in store.

But we can’t do all that without your continued support and desire to take it all in. So let us know what kind of stuff you’d like to see us doing.

I’ve always hated AFTN having advertising and sponsorship. We shunned it completely in our fanzine days, but as hosting costs rise, needs must and we eventually succumbed to adding a couple of (hopefully) unobtrusive Google ads on the site and one day we may yet opt in to run some ads on the podcast or get a primary show sponsor (if you or someone you know would be interested in that, then please get in touch!). We’ve said no to a few, but I think we probably need to be more open to that as we move forward.

Ultimately though, as much as I hate asking people for money, we’ve been doing an annual fundraiser piece these past couple of years, and that’s what you’re reading just now!

We want to continue to bring you some of the best independent Vancouver Whitecaps, MLS, CPL, and local soccer coverage around. That means more ‘Caps coverage, at all levels, to take up the void left by the disappearing mainstream media. More coverage of the local game like Vancouver TSS Rovers, VMSL, VISL, Provincial Soccer, the local college teams, along with the Canadian national teams and Canadian Premier League. And of course we have League1 BC kicking off this summer, and we’re very excited to bring you a lot of coverage around that.

It’s a lot of work and a lot of time, with little reward and a lot of expenses. But we do it because we love it. But to help fund that all of it, we’ve looked at various ways of monetizing AFTN.

We decided against launching a Patreon campaign (for now at least), or some other kind of crowdsourcing campaign as well. We are now open to having a main podcast sponsor, as mentioned, so if any business or venture out there is interested, get in touch.

Which brings it all back to our ‘Extra’ podcasts and how we’d love as many of you as possible to subscribe. Here’s all the details….

WHAT WILL THE MONEY BE USED FOR?:

In a nutshell, primarily costs. No-one is getting rich out of AFTN (sadly!). Our website and podcast hosting first and foremost, along with service subscriptions and other costs that we incur for things such as Flickr, memberships, and other things of a similar ilk. The past couple of weeks has seen us renew a number of those for the next year.

We also want to keep growing AFTN. Every year we try and add something new and expand into something a bit different, which the last couple of years have been You Tube shows (we also launched an East Fife podcast back in Scotland, but I’m sure you don’t want to hear about that!!).

This year we plan to do some more video work (as mentioned above). We plan to use funds raised from these podcast subscriptions to buy some equipment to enable us to do that, ranging from lighting to editing software.

HOW MUCH DOES THIS COST?:

Our pricing structure will remain the same as it has from the start (all prices are in Canadian dollars):

A 12 month donation/subscription – $30 per year [12 months for the price of 10, based on the monthly subscription rate]

Monthly donation/subscription – $3 per month

Each subscription will auto-renew at the end of the your 12 month or 1 month billing cycle unless you cancel, which you can do at any time free of charge. You have to manually do it via PayPal.

The only commitment will be for the duration of the time period you subscribe. There will be no cancellation or refund requests accepted, but if we stop the service before the end of your subscription period, we will refund any remaining months pro-rata.

WHAT WILL I BE GETTING FOR MY MONEY?:

We’ve brought out 60 ‘Extra’ episodes over the first five years of this fundraising initiative. That’s averaging out at one a month. I don’t want to put a number on how many episodes we’ll do this year, but we’re aiming for around the same ratio, so equating to roughly one a month. Some months may have two or more episodes come out, some none.

The reason I don’t want to definitively say one per month or whatever is we want to put out a quality product. We feel we did, but we don’t want to be forced to bring something out if the material isn’t quite there just to hit a number.

We’re aiming for each show to be a minimum of 30 minutes in length. Most will likely be more, some may be a tad less. Hopefully all will be enjoyable though!

And the actual content?

Well we plan to continue in the same vein, with some stuff that you never get to hear, like full conference calls, some player interviews, discussions, and whatever else we can think of. We may even throw in a Wavelength special! But we want to hear what you want to hear. Let us know what kind of stuff you’d like in the AFTN Extra episodes.

This year we may look to do some varied interviews with those involved in the non playing side of the game (writers, presenters, product providers, etc). Some of these may appear in part in the radio show, but the full interviews will be saved for the ‘Extra’ podcast.

We do a lot of conference calls with coaches, players, and the game’s movers and shakers. We’re never able to bring you those in full in the podcast or even use that much of what is said in written articles. There’s often a lot of interesting stuff, especially insight, background, and analysis, discussed that just goes nowhere. We hope we remedied that a little by using these in the AFTN Extra pods.

You can check out what we brought you in the first five years HERE to see if it’s up your street or not.

HOW WILL I GET THE PODCASTS DELIVERED TO ME?:

As of right now, we’re wanting to continue to do it all in-house in the DIY punk spirit that AFTN has always adhered to. Plus it takes away most of the middleman’s fees, which are a biggish chunk. It seemed to work well so far.

What that means to you dear listeners is that we’ll send you a download link by email to enable you to download and save the episode to your device of choice. We’ll be doing this via a service called WeTransfer. We’ll email you a download link once each show is available (make sure it doesn’t go into your junk folder).

We’ll use the email address from your PayPal payment, but if you want to use a different email, let us know. This link will be valid for seven days but don’t worry, if you somehow don’t download the episode in that time period, just let us know and we can send you another link at any time that month.

Files will be sent as mp3’s and normally saved at a 192kbps bitrate quality barring any original source issues.

OKAY, I’M IN. LET’S GET THIS STARTED:

Ready to support AFTN in this venture?

If you’re an existing subscriber, your subscription will automatically renew from whatever day you signed up, and we thank you for your continued support.

If you want to be a new subscriber (or if you cancelled auto renew and want to start again), then you can sign up via one of the methods below. We’ll also have a separate sign up article/page for each episode once it comes out.

12 month recurring annual subscription ($30 per year):

Recurring monthly subscription ($3 per month):

If you don’t have PayPal and want to pay a different way, or if you have any further questions about the service, then drop us a line at: aftncanada @ hotmail.com.

If you have no interest in getting the podcast, but do want to help the site, then you can find details of how to donate HERE or you can ‘Buy us a coffee’ on the link in the sidebar. Both of those methods also work if you want to donate more or less than the annual or money amounts.

Thanks for reading this far and for your support of AFTN. We hope to continue to entertain and inform.