Terms

"You have to know the people who will be your customers before you can build the membership-based business" starts Matt Hardigree, publisher of The Autopian. "I have seen problems where people have just hopefully thought there'd be a readership there. It's a math problem however, it's not difficult. You are able to make use of all the facts you've gathered."

If you're writing on an online platform, take a look at the amount of readers you've. "If I'm at a site that has 10 writers, and three of us want to start something, what are our readerships? Are we 15percent of website's traffic? 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% of Jalopnik's traffic. "They would have thought "We have the potential to start something and we can do this"," continues Matt. "What's interesting is David and Jason do not have massive numbers of followers on social networks, which appears like the obvious way to convert into readers. However, they didn't need to have that because they already had readers.

Before launching, The Autopian did a competitive analysis of the motor industry as well as the media. "We have a good idea of the number of car enthusiasts read these different sites. Consider the following: after we take out the costs What do we require to succeed? You then ask yourself, where are those people going to come from?' and 'What percentage have some awareness of who we really are?' and  what percentage of them do we require in order to meet a point of sustainability?' and 'In terms of membership, how much are we planning to cost? ?'."

He adds: "You can make some assumptions - but you don't need to prove it However, you need to have those numbers. When you've started, you can plug in the data points, and then see where you're wrong and make adjustments. If there's no information and you're just guessing then you'll need to perform the maths and figure it out.

Matt acknowledges that even after you've conducted your own research, it's not uncommon to have a 'hold your breath' moment "In the initial half hour or so of starting my membership, I was an absolute wreck! I was thinking, 'What's going to occur? As memberships started to come in, it was good! However, we're still conducting data analysis and still constantly analysing what's working and what isn't."

Growth and engagement strategies

"I consider that we're just 10% of what the membership could be,"" Matt continues. "We've been successful, we've had lots of members, but those first 10 percent of members are the most straightforward to obtain. Those remaining 10% will be the hardest. Each tranche will be more difficult than the one prior to it; we'll have to be clever."

Matt believes 10x growth is probably a five-year objective for five years. "If we can get to 50% of that target, then we're almost entirely sustained at the current level with the membership. If we reach 100%, we're far more sustained through the membership fee or are earning income from membership only and I'd love to get to that point."

Matt Hardigree, The Autopian

So what are 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 the members?

Matt replies: "It's a balance because The Autopian is a journalism venture and an enthusiast endeavor. It's like having three different buckets to help people become members - and to stay members by giving The Autopian feel valuable."

Strategy 1: Content

Matt claims that the primary bucket of content is the first. "We need to create something that's interesting enough and interesting enough to be different enough from what is available elsewhere and 'I'm only able to read this on the Autopian. You must be an official member of The Autopian if I want this to exist.'

"You're not paying for access to the content, as there's no paywalled access to it. It's because you'd like it to be available everywhere." Matt confirms that the content will always the Autopian's most valuable proposition: "You need this thing to exist so badly, you'll pay four dollars a month, ten dollars a month, $85 a month, for some."

Strategy 2: Benefits

Bucket two represents the items that members get for free, like Discord access, clothing including T-shirts, access to trivia nights, events along with other items such as stickers or badges.

"We have a whole suite of items you'll receive as if you're purchasing a car. At the bottom is cloth ($70/year) followed by vinyl ($100/year) and finally Velour, which is $250 per year, and the top level is rich Corinthian leather, which is $1,000/year. There have been far more customers make use of leather and velour than I'd imagine!"

"One one of the gifts you'll receive is a birthday sketch: one of our co-founders has a talent as an artist. We weren't expecting to get so many of them so he's doing way greater birthday sketches than we anticipated - and we're just getting caught up!"

Offering a $1000/month level seems to be a lot of work, but this was the advice of well-established media company Defector. They informed Matt that they could have many more customers with $1000 in their accounts than was would be expected. "I thought to myself"I don't even know how much, but $1,000?' they replied"Do it!"" Matt laughs.

"They were also saying that they wish they could have a middle one, as they currently have two levels below as well as a higher one," he continues. "We went back and forth over it before settling to go with $250 per year. This turned out to be the ideal number since we have 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 people went from 100 to 250 than those who went from 100 to 250. This makes me believe we're on the right track!"

The Autopian team also has realized that behind the scenes content is popular. They post procedural content like the way they came to a headline as well as "Tales from Slack". Matt says: "We have our internal Slack and obviously it's not meant for consumption by the general public."

"People make up ridiculous, absurd, hilarious things!" Matt laughs. "Our chief editor David isn't a pop-culture knowledge, so he's always having trouble understanding things. He believed Ronan was a Serpico, he was thinking that an Al Pacino movie set in the 70s was actually a Robert De Niro movie in the 90s!"

Strategy 3. Fear of Missing out (FOMO)

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

"We have a Discord that has daily column of advice. Our Discord is free and public, but there's a section for members," he adds. "I encourage members to share photos in general chatroom: 'Here's me wearing my shirt' or 'Here's me with my badge' and people are eager to participate in the group."

Matt says that attracting members is a process that works really well when the appeal aligns with your content types you publish. "Every once in a while, we'll do a 'Here's everything you receive' appeal, an opportunity to remind people of the benefits the benefits of membership are."

More regularly they will acknowledge their communities: "We love our commenters and you are the reason we're so great. If you aren't an active member, we are understanding. Not everyone has the money. If you're a student, whatever that is, we understand. If you're not able to afford the funds, you can just become a reader. We're here for you, we'd like you to be an integral part of our community. However, if you are a lover of this thing, here's a way to be a part of the community."

But then we'll do a FOMO post where Jason will say 'Here are my birthday-themed drawings that I made in the month of March!' and people will see them and be like 'God! I'd like to do that.'

It's apparent that building communities come in many shapes and sizes - even birthday drawings for car enthusiasts.

More information

For more information and to be a part of The Autopian, go to theautopian.com.