Terms

"You need to understand your audience before you build the membership-based business" begins Matt Hardigree, publisher of The Autopian. "I have seen problems that have been solved by people who just thought there'd be an audience that exists. The math is hard but it's not impossible. It is possible to use any facts you've gathered."

He says that if you already write for an online platform, take a look at how many readers you have. "If you're on a website that has 10 writers, and three of us want to begin something, what is our combined readership? Are we 15percent of site's traffic? It's not much. Do we constitute more than 80% of all the websites' traffic?"

At one point, The Autopian founders David Tracy and Jason Torchinsky made up 50% of Jalopnik's traffic. "They could have thought "We could start something, it's possible"," continues Matt. "What's interesting is David and Jason aren't affluent in followers on social media, which would seem like the obvious way to turn into readership. However, they didn't need to get that, since they already had readers.

Prior to launching, The Autopian did a competitive analysis of the motor industry and the media. "We are aware of how many automobile enthusiasts read these different sites. Consider the following: after we take out the costs then what are we going to need for success? You then ask yourself, where are those people going to originate from? 'What percentage have some awareness of who we are?' and 'What percentage of them do we require to reach an objective of sustainability?' 'In terms of membership, how much are we planning to be charging? ?'."

He continues: "You can make some guesses - you don't have to be correct However, you need to have those data points. Once you start with the data, you'll be able to plug in these data points to see where you're wrong and make adjustments. If you don't have any data or you're guessing, you have to do the maths and figure it out.

Matt acknowledges that even when you've done your homework, there will be an 'in your mind"' moment "In the initial half hour or so of starting the membership, I was a mess! I thought, "What's going to happen? As memberships started to come in, it felt good! However, we're still conducting the analysis of data, and we're always looking at what is effective and what's not."

Strategies for engagement and growth

"I consider that we're just 10% of what our membership can be," Matt continues. "We've had success, we've had a lot of members, however those first 10 percent is the easiest to get. Those last 10% of members are going to be the toughest. Every tranche is likely to be tougher than the tranche that preceded it. We'll need to think a lot."

Matt believes that 10x growth is probably a five-year target for the next five years. "If we can get to 50 percent of this amount, we're nearly entirely sustained at the current level with membership. If we reach 100% we're more than sustained by membership or we're making money just on membership and I'd love to see us reach that goal."

Matt Hardigree, The Autopian

The team's plans to get there? What are they offering currently in terms of member benefits and how can they make use of this to draw new members?

Matt responds: "It's a balance because it's a journalistic and an activity for fans. We see it as three buckets of how we help people become members - and to stay members by making The Autopian feel valuable."

Strategy 1: Content

Matt states that the first bucket is the content. "We must write something that's interesting enough, exciting enough, and different enough from what you can get everywhere else I can only read this on the Autopian. You must be part of The Autopian if I want this to exist.'

"You're not paying for access to this content because it's not a paywall. It's because you'd like to have it everywhere." Matt confirms that the content will always be the most important value offer: "You need this thing to be there so desperately, it will cost you four dollars a month, ten dollars per month, and $85 per month for some people."

Strategy 2: The Benefits

The bucket two is a representation of the things that members get like Discord access, clothes including T-shirts, invitations to various events, such as trivia nights as well as merchandise such as stickers and badges.

"We have a whole suite of products you can choose from that's similar to buying a car. It starts with cloth ($70/year) and then vinyl ($100/year) followed by Velour, which is $250 per year, and the most expensive level is Corinthian leather, which is $1,000/year. There have been far more customers make use of leather and velour than I'd imagine!"

"One of the things that you'll receive is a birthday sketch one of our co-founders has a talent as an artist. We didn't expect to have numerous drawings so he's doing way greater birthday sketches than we thought he would - we're just getting caught up!"

A monthly rate of $1000 seems to be a lot of work, but this was the advice of the well-established company in media Defector. They informed Matt they had more people at $1000 than would be expected. "I thought"I don't know what, $1,000?' and they said"Do it!"" Matt laughs.

"They were also saying that they wish they had a middle level, because they have two lower levels and a higher level," he continues. "We debated on it and decided on $250/year. It turned out to be the ideal number since We have a lot of Velour-loving members. This year] we saw more people move between vinyl and the velour and later down to vinyl. More than 100 people moved from 250 than went from 100 to 250. I think that we're doing it right!"

The Autopian team has also discovered that the behind-the-scenes content is a hit. They share procedural content, such as how they came up with a headline, and also "Tales from Slack". Matt explains: "We have our internal Slack. It's clearly not intended for the public to use."

"People say stupid, ridiculous funny things!" Matt is laughing. "Our chief editor David doesn't have any pop culture awareness so he's constantly having trouble understanding things. He thought Ronan was Serpico; he thought it was an Al Pacino movie set in the 70s was actually a Robert De Niro movie that was released in the 90s!"

Strategy 3. Fear of Missing out (FOMO)

"The third bucket of content which is extremely effective and which most people don't realize is FOMO. We don't want people to be missing out on things," Matt continues.

"We have a Discord with daily advice columns. Our Discord is completely free and public, but it has a member section," he adds. "I recommend that members share images in chat: 'Here's me with my shirt Here's me wearing my badge', and I hope that people would like to join the group."

Matt says that attracting members is a process that is a great idea when the appeal aligns with your content types you publish. "Every now and then we'll make a 'Here's what you receive' appeal, as a reminder of the benefits that members get from membership."

They will also thank their community: "We love our commenters - you make us great. If you aren't an active member, we are understanding. Some people don't have enough money. If you're a student whatever that is, we understand. If you're not in the position of having funds, you can just become a reader. We're here for you, we'd like you to be an integral part of our community. If you're a fan of the idea, here's the opportunity to be part of it."

We'll then do the FOMO post where Jason will write 'Here's all the birthday drawings I made this month!' people will see them and consider 'God, I want to do that.'

It's like forming communities come in many forms and sizes. There are even birthday cards for car enthusiasts.

Additional information

To learn more and to become a member of The Autopian, go to theautopian.com.