Terms

"You need to understand the people who will be your customers before you can build a membership business," begins Matt Hardigree, publisher of The Autopian. "I have seen problems that have been solved by people who just assumed there would be an audience there. The math is hard however, it's not difficult. You can use all the information you've got."

He says that if you're already writing for an online platform, take a look at the number of readers you've got. "If I'm on a site together with 10 other authors and 3 of us are looking to create something, how do we have in common? Do we make up 15% of the site's users? That's not a lot. Or do we make up 80percent of the site's traffic?"

At some point, The Autopian founders David Tracy and Jason Torchinsky made up 50% of Jalopnik's traffic. "They could have thought 'We can start something - it's possible"," continues Matt. "What's intriguing is David and Jason aren't affluent in social followings, which seems like the obvious way to convert into readership. However, they didn't need to be able to do that since they already had readers.

In the days before the launch, The Autopian did a review of the competition in the motor industry and the media. "We have a good idea of the number of car fans visit these sites. Do the math: once we have taken out the expenses then what are we going to need to succeed? And then you have to ask: 'Where will those individuals originate from? 'What percentage have some awareness of our identity?' and 'What percentage of those do we need to reach a point in sustainability?' and 'In terms of membership, how much are we planning to be charging? ?'."

He continues: "You can make some assumptions - but you don't need to prove it However, you need to have those numbers. After you've begun, you can plug in these data points to discover where you're not right and adjust. If there's no information and are guessing at it then you'll need to perform the math and figure it out.

Matt admits that after doing your research you will have an 'in your mind"' moment "In the first hour or two of launching membership, I was a mess! I was thinking, 'What's going to occur? Once those memberships started coming in, it felt good! However, we're still conducting the analysis of data, and we're always reviewing what's effective and what's not."

Strategies for engagement and growth

"I believe we're at 10% of where our membership can be," Matt continues. "We've been successful, we've had plenty of members. However, the first 10% of members are most easy to acquire. Those last 10% of members are going to be the most difficult. Every tranche is going to be more difficult than the one that preceded it. We'll be able to come up with a solution."

Matt thinks that 10x growth in five years is definitely a goal. "If we can get to 50% of the goal, we are almost totally sustained at our present stage with our members. If we are able to reach 100%, we're far more sustained through membership or we're making profits from membership alone - I would love to reach that level."

Matt Hardigree, The Autopian

What are their strategies to achieve this goal? What are they offering now in terms of membership perks and how do they make use of this to draw members?

Matt answers: "It's a balance because The Autopian is a journalism venture as well as an enthusiast-driven endeavor. It's like having three different buckets to help people become members as well as to remain members by making The Autopian feel valuable."

Strategy 1: Content

Matt states that the first bucket is content. "We need to create something that's interesting enough and exciting enough and different enough from what is available elsewhere and 'I'm only able to read this on the Autopian. You must be part of The Autopian if I want the Autopian to have this.'

"You're not paying to gain access to the content, as there's no paywalled access to it. It's because you'd like to have it everywhere." Matt confirms that the content will always be The Autopian's biggest value proposition: "You need this thing to be there so desperately, you will part with four dollars a month, ten dollars per month, and $85 per month for certain people."

Strategy 2: The Benefits

Bucket 2 represents the goods members receive for free, like Discord access, clothes including T-shirts, entry to events including trivia nights and merchandise like stickers and badges.

"We offer a variety of things you get: it's like you're buying the car. At the bottom is cloth ($70/year) followed by vinyl ($100/year) and finally velour at $250/year, then the most expensive level is Corinthian leather, which is 1,000 dollars per year. We've had way more people do velour and leather than I'd imagine!"

"One among the items you'll receive is a birthday card One of our co-founders has a talent as an artist. We weren't expecting to get numerous drawings and he's been doing a lot more birthday drawings than we thought he would - we're still catching up!"

A monthly rate of $1000 seems as a big ask, however this was the advice of the well-established company in media Defector. They informed Matt they had many more customers at $1000 than anticipated. "I thought"I don't even know, $1,000?' and they replied"Do it!"" Matt laughs.

"They also said they wished they had a middle stage, since they've got two levels lower and one higher," he continues. "We went back and forth on it and decided on $250/year. It turned out to be the perfect number because there are so many velour members and [this year] we saw more people move upwards from vinyl to velour then moved from velour down to vinyl. In fact, more people went from 100 to 250 than did they go between 250 and 100. This makes me believe we're getting it right!"

Autopian's Autopian team also has recognized that behind the scenes content is popular. They post procedural content such as how they came to a headline as well as "Tales from Slack". Matt explains: "We have our internal Slack, and it's obviously not for public consumption."

"People are prone to saying ridiculous, stupid and hilarious things!" Matt is laughing. "Our editor-in-chief David isn't a pop-culture awareness so he's constantly getting things confused. He believed Ronan was a Serpico, he believed that an Al Pacino movie set in the 70s was a Robert De Niro movie in the 1990s!"

Strategy 3: Fear of missing out (FOMO)

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

"We have a Discord with regular column of advice. Our Discord is completely free and accessible, however there's a section for members," he adds. "I encourage members to share images in chatroom: 'Here's me wearing my shirt I'm wearing my badge', and I hope that people are eager to participate in this."

Matt concludes attracting members works really well as long as the message is in line with the kinds of content you publish. "Every now and then 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 - you make us great. If you're not a member, we understand. Not everyone has the money. If you're a student whatever that is, we understand. If you're not in the position of having cash, read. We want you here; we'd like you to be an integral part of our community. If you're a fan of this kind of thing, there's an opportunity to become a member of the community."

But then we'll do an FOMO posting where Jason will say 'Here are all my birthday sketches I created during the month!' the people who see them will be like 'God! I want to do that.'

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

Additional information

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