Terms

"You need to understand your audience before you build an organization that is based on membership," says Matt Hardigree, publisher of The Autopian. "I have seen problems that have been solved by people who just believed that there was a readership there. The math is hard, but not impossible. You can use all the information you've got."

He suggests that if you're already writing for the site, you should look into the amount of readers you've. "If I'm at a site together with 10 other authors and 3 of us are looking to begin something, what is our combined readership? Does it make up fifteen percent website's users? That's not a lot. Are we the ones who make up 80percent of the site's traffic?"

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 - it's possible"," continues Matt. "What's fascinating is that David and Jason don't have huge followers on social media, which would seem like the obvious way to translate into readers. But they didn't have to be able to do that since they already had readers.

Before launching, The Autopian did a study of the competitive landscape in the automotive industry as well as the media. "We have a good idea of the number of car fans visit these sites. Calculate: Once we take out the costs, what do we need in order to be successful? You then ask yourself, where are those people going to be from?  what percentage are aware of who we are?' and 'What proportion of them do we require in order to meet a point in sustainability?' and  In terms of membership fees, what are we going to be charging? ?'."

He continues: "You can make some predictions - and you don't have to prove it however, you must be able to access the data points. Once you start, you can plug in those data points and find out where you're off and then make changes. If there's no information and you're just guessing then you'll need to perform the math, and work out the answer.

Matt acknowledges that even after you've conducted your own research, you will have a 'hold your breath' moment "In the initial one or two hours of beginning the membership, I was a mess! I thought, "What's going to happen? When the memberships began coming in, I felt good! We're also still performing the analysis of data, and we're always reviewing what's effective and what's not."

Engagement strategies and ways to grow

"I consider that we're at 10% of where our members could be," Matt continues. "We've achieved our goals, and we've had plenty of members, but those first 10 percent are most easy to acquire. Those last 10% of members are going to be the hardest. Every tranche is going to be harder than the tranche prior to it; we'll have to be clever."

Matt believes 10x growth in five years is definitely a target for the next five years. "If we 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 are more than sustained by membership or we're making income from membership only and I'd love to reach that level."

Matt Hardigree, The Autopian

What are their plans to get there? What can they provide as a member perks and how do they utilize this to lure members?

Matt answers: "It's a balance because it's a journalistic and an activity for fans. It's like having three buckets of how we get people to become members and then to keep them as in the long run - through making The Autopian feel valuable."

Strategy 1: Content

Matt claims that the primary bucket is content. "We must write something that's interesting enough and interesting enough to be distinct enough from the content you can get everywhere else I can only read this on the Autopian. I have to be a member 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 in the world." Matt confirms that it will continue to the Autopian's most valuable offering: "You need this thing to exist so badly, you will part with $4 a month, $10 per month, and $85 per month for certain people."

Strategy 2: Benefits

Bucket two represents the items members receive like Discord access, clothes including T-shirts, entry to various events, such as trivia nights as well as merchandise such as stickers and badges.

"We provide a wide range of products you can choose from: 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 highest level is Corinthian leather, which is $1000 per year. There are more people who make use of leather and velour than I'd imagine!"

"One one of the gifts you'll receive is a birthday card One of our co-founders has a talent as an artist. We hadn't anticipated having numerous drawings and he's been doing a lot more birthday drawings than we thought he would - we're just getting caught up!"

A monthly rate of $1000 seems as a big ask, however this came as advice from an established media firm Defector. They informed Matt they had more customers at $1000 than anticipated. "I thought to myself"I don't even know, $1,000?' and they said, 'Do it'!" Matt laughs.

"They have also expressed their wish that they had a middle tier level, because they have two levels below and one higher," he continues. "We were bouncing around on it and decided that we should go for $250/year. This turned out to be the perfect number because there are so many Velour-loving members. This year] there were more people moving up from vinyl to the velour and later down to vinyl - more individuals went from 100 to 250 than went from 100 to 250. This makes me believe we're getting it right!"

Autopian's Autopian team also has realized that behind the scenes content has become popular. They post procedural content like the way they came up with the headline as well as "Tales from Slack". Matt says: "We have our internal Slack, and it's obviously not for public consumption."

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

Strategy 3. Fear of Missing out (FOMO)

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

"We have a Discord that has regular column of advice. The Discord we use is free and accessible, however it has a member section," he adds. "I would like members to post pictures in the general chat: 'Here's my picture with my shirt Here's me wearing my badge'. People would like to join this."

Matt concludes attracting members can be very effective as long as the message is in line with your content types you write. "Every every now and again we'll make a 'Here's what you'll get' appeal. It's as a reminder of the benefits that the benefits of membership are."

More regularly they will thank their community: "We love our commenters We are grateful to you for making us better. If you're not part of our community, we're sorry. Not everyone has the money. If you're a student whatever you are, we'll accept that. If you're not able to afford the money, just be a reader. We'd like to welcome you; we'd like you to be an integral part of our community. However, if you are a lover of the idea, here's the opportunity to be member of this community."

We'll then do a FOMO post where Jason will write 'Here's all my birthday sketches I created in the month of March!' and people will see them and consider 'God, I'd like this.'

It seems like building a community comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes, including birthday cards for car enthusiasts.

More details

To find out more about the Autopian and join The Autopian, go to theautopian.com.