Terms

"You have to know the individuals who will be your clients before you create a membership-based company" begins Matt Hardigree, publisher of The Autopian. "I have had problems where people have just hopefully believed that there are readers, and there are. It's a math problem however, it's not too difficult. You can use any information you've got."

If you're already writing for the website, look into the number of readers that you have. "If I'm on a site that has 10 writers, and 3 of us are looking to start something how many readers do we have? Do we constitute 15% of the site's traffic? This isn't a huge amount. Are we over 80% of all the web's users?"

It was the case that in the past The Autopian founders David Tracy and Jason Torchinsky made up 50 percent of the traffic on Jalopnik. "They could have thought 'We can start something - we can do this'," continues Matt. "What's remarkable is the fact that David and Jason don't have huge the social world, which would appear to be the most obvious way to turn them into readers. However, they didn't need to be, as they already had followers.

In the days before the launch The Autopian did a review of the rivalry in the automotive industry as well as media. "We recognize how many automobile people use these sites. Do the math: once you've figured out the price, what do we require to be profitable? You then ask yourself, which country do these people come from? What percentage of them are aware of who we are?' And 'What percentage do we require to be able to attain our objective of sustainable growth? and in terms of membership, what do we going to charge? '."

He continues: "You can make some speculations, but they don't need to be correct, however, you must be able to get access to the data points. After you've begun using the data, you'll able to plug in these data points to discover where you're not right and make adjustments. If you don't have any information or just guessing the next step is to conduct the math and determine.

Matt acknowledges that once you've completed your research and you've done your homework, you'll experience the 'wait and see' moment "In the initial hour or two of launching the membership, I was in an absolute mess! I was thinking, 'What's going to happen? Once those memberships started coming in, I was happy! We're still conducting studies of data and always looking at what is doing well and what's not."

Engaging strategies and ways to improve

"I consider that we're about 10% of the way towards where the members of our organization could be,"" Matt continues. "We've had success, and there have been a number of members. But the first 10% of members are easy to obtain. The the last 10% of members will be the most difficult. Every tranche will be more difficult than the one preceding it. We'll then be able to come up with the best solution."

Matt believes that 10x growth over the next five years is a certain target for the next five years. "If we can achieve 50% of our goal, we are almost completely sustainable at this membership level. If we can get to 100%, we'll be supported by our members, and making a profit from membership alone It's great getting to this point."

Matt Hardigree, The Autopian

The team's plans to get there? What do they offer today in terms of member benefits, and how do they make use of this to attract new people to join?

Matt says: "It's a balance because the Autopian is a journalism and passionate project. We think of it as three buckets of how we help people join and stay members by creating The Autopian feel valuable."

Strategy 1: Content

Matt says that the primary bucket is the content. "We must write something that's good enough interesting to stand out enough from the content is available in other places and I'm the only one capable of reading this on the Autopian. You must be an official member of The Autopian if I want this to be published.'

"You're not paying to gain access to it, because it doesn't have paywalled access to it. It's because you'd like it to be available everywhere." Matt affirms that the Autopian continues to be the most important proposition of the Autopian: "You need this thing to exist so badly that it's going to cost you $4 per month, or $10 per month, or $85 monthly, in exchange for a certain."

Strategy 2: The Benefits

The bucket 2 is an illustration of what members receive like Discord access, clothes such as T-shirts, invitations for occasions like trivia nights with other things like stickers or badges.

"We provide a wide range of items you'll receive as if you're purchasing an automobile. At the bottom is cloth ($70/year) and then vinyl ($100/year), then Velour, which is $250 per year, and the most expensive level is Corinthian leather, which is $1000 per year. The number of clients who have used leather and velour than I'd expect!"

"One among the presents that you receive is a birthday card: One of our co-founders is a talent as an artist. We weren't expecting to see several drawings. He's doing a lot greater birthday-themed sketches than we had hoped for We're only getting caught up!"

A monthly rate of $1000 is an enormous amount of work but it was a suggestion from an established media firm Defector. Defector told Matt that they had clients that could pay the $1000 they were expecting. "I thought to myself 'I don't know how much however, what about $1,000 could be a lot' They replied"Do that!" Matt laughs.

"They were also stating that they'd like the middle-level, as they're at two levels below and one that is higher" the author says. "We were bouncing around about it until we decided on 250 dollars annually. It's the right amount because there are many velour users and [this year] we saw more people move up from vinyl to the Velour, and then down to vinyl. More than 100 people moved from 250 than did they change from 100 to. I think that we're doing it right!"

Autopian has also discovered that the Autopian team has also found that content from behind the scenes is well-liked. They share procedural material similar to how they conceived of an idea for a headline. Additionally, they publish "Tales of Slack". Matt says: "We have our internal Slack. It's clearly not meant to be consumed by anyone else."

"People make up absurd, bizarre, hilarious things!" Matt smiles. "Our director of editing David isn't an expert on pop-culture, so he's constantly getting things unclear. He thought Ronan was Serpico. He thought it was an Al Pacino movie set in the 70s was Robert De Niro's film from the 1990s!"

Strategy 3. Fear of Missing out (FOMO)

"The third category of content - and the one that works really well, and that people probably underestimate - is FOMO. We do not want anyone to not be able to enjoy things," Matt continues.

"We are a discord, with weekly column of advice. The Discord we use is free and accessible, however there's a section for members," he adds. "I am looking for members to post pictures in the chatroom in general"Here's me with my shirt I'm wearing my badge', and I would like people to want to be part of this."

Matt states that the process of recruiting new members is an excellent idea as long as the content is consistent with the type of articles you publish. "Every every now and then we'll create a 'Here's the benefits you'll receive' appeal. It's a way to remind people of the advantages members receive from joining."

In more frequent intervals, they'll acknowledge their communities "We love our commenters - you make us great. If you're not a regular user, we're tolerant. Some people don't have enough money. If you're in school, whatever that is, we understand. If you're not able to pay for the tuition, then be a reader. We'd like to welcome you and we'd like to have you as part of our community. But, if you love this kind of thing, there's a way to join it."

We'll then do the FOMO announcement where Jason writes 'Here's a list of my birthday-themed sketches that I designed in the month of March!' The people who view the sketches will think 'God! I'd like to be that.'

The idea of building communities could come in all sorts of sizes and shapes - even birthday celebrations for auto lovers.

More information

For more information concerning the Autopian and how you can join The Autopian, go to theautopian.com.

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