Terms

"You have to know the audience you are targeting before creating the membership-based business" says Matt Hardigree, publisher of The Autopian. "I have encountered issues where people have just hopefully thought there'd be an audience there. It's a math problem, but not impossible. You can use all the facts you've gathered."

He suggests that if you're already writing for an online platform, take a look at the amount of readers you've. "If I'm on a site together with 10 other authors and three of us want to create something, how is our combined readership? Does it make up fifteen percent site's visitors? This isn't a huge amount. Or do we make up more than 80% of all the websites' visitors?"

At one point, The Autopian founders David Tracy and Jason Torchinsky made up 50 percent of the traffic on Jalopnik. "They would have thought 'We can start something - we can do this"," continues Matt. "What's fascinating is that David and Jason do not have massive social followings, which seems to be the most obvious method to convert into readership. However, they didn't need to have that because they already had readers.

Prior to launching, The Autopian did a study of the competitive landscape in the automotive industry and media. "We are aware of how many automobile people visit these websites. Do the math: once we take out the costs What do we require to succeed? Then you ask, 'Where will those individuals originate from? 'What percentage have some awareness of who we are?' and 'What percentage of them do we require in order to meet an objective in sustainability?' and  In terms of membership fees, how much are we planning to be charging? ?'."

The author continues: "You can make some guesses - you don't have to be right, but you have to possess the relevant numbers. After you've begun making your predictions, you'll have the ability to connect the data points, and then find out where you're off and then make changes. If there's no information and you're just guessing, you have to do the math and figure it out.

Matt admits that when you've done your homework, there will be the 'wait and see' moment "In the first hour or two of launching the membership, I was a wreck! I wondered, "What's going to occur? As memberships started to come in, it was amazing! We're also still performing analyses of data and are always analysing what's effective and what's not."

Strategies for engagement and growth

"I consider that we're about 10% of the way to where our members could be," Matt continues. "We've had success, we've had a lot of members. However, that first 10% is the easiest to get. The remaining 10% are going to be the most difficult. Every tranche is likely to be tougher than the tranche that preceded it. We'll need to think a lot."

Matt believes 10x growth is probably a five-year objective for five years. "If we are able to reach 50% of that target, then we're almost totally sustained at our present levels of membership. If we are able to reach 100%, we're more than sustainably fueled by the membership fee or are earning profits from membership alone It would be great to get to that point."

Matt Hardigree, The Autopian

What are their plans to get there? What do they offer as a member perks and how do they use this to attract new members?

Matt responds: "It's a balance because we are a journalistic endeavor and an enthusiast endeavor. We see it as three buckets of how we encourage people to join and then to keep them as members - by making The Autopian feel valuable."

Strategy 1: Content

Matt states that the first bucket is the content. "We need to create something that is good enough, exciting enough, and distinct enough from the content you can get everywhere else I can only see this on the Autopian. I have to be part of The Autopian if I want the Autopian to have this.'

"You're not paying to get access to the content, as there's no paywalled access to it. You're paying because you want it to be available everywhere." Matt confirms that content is always going to be the most important value offering: "You need this thing to exist so badly, you'll pay four dollars a month, ten dollars a month, $85 a month for some people."

Strategy 2: Benefits

Bucket 2 represents the goods members receive, such as Discord access, clothes including T-shirts, access to trivia nights, events along with other items such as stickers or badges.

"We have a whole suite of things you get that's similar to buying an automobile. The bottom level is cloth ($70/year) followed by vinyl ($100/year) followed by velour at $250/year, then the top level is rich Corinthian leather that costs $1000 per year. There have been far more customers make use of leather and velour than I'd imagine!"

"One among the items you receive is a birthday sketch One of our co-founders is an artist. We weren't expecting to get as many drawings, therefore he's drawing more birthday drawings than we anticipated - and we're just getting caught up!"

Offering a $1000/month level seems as a big ask, however this came as advice from the well-established company in media Defector. They told Matt they had many more people who could afford $1000 than they anticipated. "I was like"I don't even know how much, but $1,000?' they were like, 'Do it'!" Matt laughs.

"They were also saying that they wish they had a middle stage, since they've got two levels below and a higher level," he continues. "We went back and forth on it and decided to go with $250 per year. This turned out to be the ideal number since there are so many velour members and [this year] there were more people moving between vinyl and Velour, and then from velour down to vinyl - more people went from 100 to 250 than did they go from 100 to 250. I think that we're on the right track!"

Autopian's Autopian team has also recognized that behind the scenes content has become popular. They also share procedural material, for example, the way they came up with a headline, and also "Tales from the Slack". Matt clarifies: "We have our internal Slack, and it's obviously not meant for consumption by the general public."

"People are prone to saying ridiculous, stupid, hilarious things!" Matt smiles. "Our editor-in-chief David has no pop culture understanding, which is why he's continually being confused about things. He was thinking Ronan was a Serpico, he believed that it was an Al Pacino movie set in the 70s was a Robert De Niro flick that was released in the 1990s!"

Strategy 3: Fear of missing out (FOMO)

"The third category of content - and the one that works really well and people probably underestimate - is FOMO. The people don't want to miss out on stuff," Matt continues.

"We are a discord, with regular column of advice. Our Discord is free and public, but there's a section for members," he adds. "I recommend that members share pictures in the general chat: 'Here's my picture with my shirt I'm wearing my badge'. People would like to join this."

Matt concludes attracting members works really well when the appeal aligns with the types of content that you create. "Every every now and again we'll do a 'Here's everything you'll get' appeal. It's a reminder of what members get from membership."

More regularly they will acknowledge their communities: "We love our commenters and you are the reason we're so great. If you can't be a member, we understand. Not everyone has the money. If you're a student, whatever you are, we'll accept that. If you don't have the money, just become a reader. We're here for you, we would like to have you as a part of our community. If you're a fan of this kind of thing, there's the opportunity to be member of the community."

But then we'll do a FOMO post where Jason will say 'Here are all the birthday drawings I did this month!' and viewers will look at them and consider 'God, I'd like this.'

It's like forming communities can come in a variety of kinds of shapes and sizes, including birthday drawings for car enthusiasts.

Additional information

For more information and to become a member of The Autopian, go to theautopian.com.