Terms

"You must know the people who will be your customers before you can build the membership-based business" says Matt Hardigree, publisher of The Autopian. "I have seen problems that have been solved by people who just believed that there was an audience that exists. The math is hard however, it's not difficult. It is possible to use any facts you've gathered."

He suggests that if you already write for a site, look at the amount of readers you've. "If I'm on a site that has 10 writers, and 3 of us are looking to start something, what is our combined readership? Are we fifteen percent site's users? That's not a lot. Are we the ones who make up more than 80% of all the websites' traffic?"

At one point, The Autopian founders David Tracy and Jason Torchinsky made up 50 percent of the traffic on Jalopnik. "They might have believed "We could start something, you can make this happen'," continues Matt. "What's intriguing is David and Jason aren't affluent in followers on social media, which would seem like the obvious way to convert into readership. However, they didn't need to get that, since they already had readers.

Before launching, The Autopian did a study of the competitive landscape in the automotive industry and the media. "We know how many car fans visit these sites. Do the math: once we have taken out the expenses What do we require to succeed? And then you have to ask: 'Where do those individuals come from?' and  what percentage are aware of our identity?' and 'What proportion of them do we require for us to achieve an objective in sustainability?' and  in terms of membership how much will we charge ?'."

He adds: "You can make some assumptions - but you don't need to be right However, you need to have those information points. When you've started, you can plug in these data points to discover where you're not right and then make changes. If there's no information and you're just guessing then you'll need to perform the maths and figure out.

Matt admits that when you've done your homework, you will have an 'in your mind"' moment "In the initial one or two hours of beginning my membership, I was an absolute mess! I thought, "What's going to occur? As memberships started to come in, it was amazing! We're also still performing data analysis and still constantly 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 that first 10% are most easy to acquire. Those last 10% of members will be the hardest. Every tranche is likely to be more difficult than the one prior to it; we'll need to think a lot."

Matt thinks that 10x growth is probably a five-year objective for five years. "If we can get to 50% of the goal, we are almost completely sustained at our current levels of members. If we reach 100% we're more than sustainably fueled by membership or we're making profits from membership alone It would be great to reach that level."

Matt Hardigree, The Autopian

The team's goals to reach them? What are they offering now in terms of membership benefits and how can they use this to attract the members?

Matt replies: "It's a balance because we are a journalistic endeavor and an enthusiast endeavor. We see it as three different buckets to get people to become members - and to stay in the long run - through creating The Autopian feel valuable."

Strategy 1: Content

Matt states that the first bucket is content. "We must write something that's good enough, exciting enough, and distinct enough from the content is available elsewhere - 'I can only read this on the Autopian. I have to be a member of The Autopian if I want this to be a reality.'

"You're not paying to gain access to this content because it's not a paywall. You're paying to get it to be available everywhere." Matt confirms that the content will always the Autopian's most valuable offering: "You need this thing to exist so badly, it will cost you the equivalent of $4 per month, $10 monthly, or $85 a 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, entry to events including trivia nights as well as merchandise such as stickers and badges.

"We provide a wide range of things you get as if you're purchasing an automobile. It starts with cloth ($70/year) and then vinyl ($100/year), then velour at $250/year, then the top level is rich Corinthian leather which costs 1,000 dollars per year. There are more people who use leather and velour than I would expect!"

"One one of the gifts you receive is a birthday drawing One of our co-founders is an artist. We hadn't anticipated having as many drawings, so he's doing way more birthday drawings than we anticipated - and we're just getting caught up!"

The $1000 per month level sounds as a big ask, however this was the advice of an established media firm Defector. They informed Matt that they could have many more people at $1000 than would be expected. "I thought"I don't know what, $1,000?' and they replied"Do it!"" Matt laughs.

"They also said they wished they had a middle one, as they currently have two levels lower and one higher," he continues. "We went back and forth on it and decided on $250/year. This turned out to be the magic number: there are so many Velour members, and this year] we saw more people move upwards from vinyl to Velour, and then from velour down to vinyl - more individuals went from 100 to 250 than those who went from 100 to 250. That makes me think we're on the right track!"

Autopian's Autopian team also has discovered that the behind-the-scenes content is a hit. They also share procedural material, for example, how they came up with the headline and also 'Tales from the Slack'. Matt says: "We have our internal Slack. It's clearly not meant for consumption by the general public."

"People are prone to saying ridiculous, stupid and hilarious things!" Matt laughs. "Our chief editor David doesn't have any pop culture awareness so he's constantly being confused about things. He was thinking Ronan was Serpico; he thought it was an Al Pacino movie set in the 70s was a Robert De Niro film that was released in the 90s!"

Strategy 3: Fear of missing out (FOMO)

"The third category of content which is extremely effective and which most people don't realize is FOMO. We don't want people to miss out on stuff," Matt continues.

"We have a Discord with weekly column of advice. Our Discord is free and public, but there is a membership section," he adds. "I encourage members to share pictures in the general chatroom: 'Here's me wearing my shirt' or 'Here's me with my badge'. People are eager to participate in this."

Matt says that attracting members is a process that is a great idea as long as the message is in line with the kinds of content you write. "Every every now and again we'll do a 'Here's everything you receive' appeal, as a reminder of the benefits that membership brings."

In the future, they'll acknowledge their communities: "We love our commenters We are grateful to you for making us better. If you can't be an active member, we are understanding. Not everyone has the money. If you're a student, whatever that is, we understand. If you don't have the money, just be a reader. We'd like to welcome you; we'd like you to be one of us. If you're a fan of the idea, here's the opportunity to be member of this community."

But then we'll do a FOMO posting where Jason will write 'Here's all the birthday drawings I created in the month of March!' the people who see them will be like 'God! I want to do that.'

It seems like building communities can come in a variety of kinds of shapes and sizes, including birthday cards for car enthusiasts.

More details

To find out more about the Autopian and become a member of The Autopian, go to theautopian.com.