Terms

"You must know the people who will be your customers before you can build an organization that is based on membership," starts Matt Hardigree, publisher of The Autopian. "I have had issues where people have just hopefully thought there'd be readers that exists. It's a math problem but it's not impossible. You are able to make use of all the information you've got."

If you're writing on a site, look at the number of readers you've got. "If I'm on a site together with 10 other authors and we all want to create something, how is our combined readership? Does it make up 15percent of site's users? That's not a lot. Or do we make up 80% of the website's traffic?"

At some point, 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 - you can make this happen'," continues Matt. "What's interesting is David and Jason aren't affluent in social followings, which seems like the obvious way to translate into readership. They didn't have to have that because they already had readers.

Before launching, 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 enthusiasts read these different sites. Calculate: Once we take out the costs What do we require to succeed? You then ask yourself, where will those individuals come from?' and 'What percentage have some awareness of who we are?' and  what percentage of them do we require in order to meet a point that is sustainable?'  in terms of membership how much are we planning to be charging? ?'."

He continues: "You can make some predictions - and you don't have to be right However, you need to possess the relevant information points. Once you start making your predictions, you'll have the ability to connect these data points to see where you're wrong and make adjustments. If you don't have any data or you're guessing, you have to do the math and figure out.

Matt admits that when you've done your homework, there will be a 'hold your breath' moment "In the initial one or two hours of beginning membership, I was a complete wreck! I was thinking, 'What's going to happen? When the memberships began coming in, I felt great! However, we're still conducting analyses of data and are always analysing what's effective and what's not."

Engagement strategies and ways to grow

"I think that we are just 10% of what the membership could be,"" Matt continues. "We've achieved our goals, and we've had plenty of members, however those first 10 percent of members are the most straightforward to obtain. That last 10% of members will be the most difficult. Every tranche is likely to be more difficult than the one prior to it; we'll have to be clever."

Matt believes 10x growth is certainly 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 stage with our members. If we are able to reach 100% we are more than sustained by the membership fee or are earning income from membership only and I'd love to see us reach that goal."

Matt Hardigree, The Autopian

The team's strategies to achieve this goal? What do they offer currently in terms of member benefits and how can they utilize this to lure the members?

Matt replies: "It's a balance because The Autopian is a journalism venture and an enthusiast endeavor. It's like having three buckets of how we get people to become members and then to keep them as members - by creating The Autopian feel valuable."

Strategy 1: Content

Matt claims that the primary bucket of content is the first. "We must write something that is good enough, exciting enough, and distinct enough from the content you will find elsewhere - 'I can only read this on the Autopian. You must be an official member of The Autopian if I want the Autopian to have this.'

"You're not paying to gain access to the content, as it's not paywalled. You're paying to get it to be available everywhere." Matt confirms that it will continue to be the most important value offering: "You need this thing to exist so badly, you'll pay four dollars a month, ten dollars monthly, or $85 a month, for some."

Strategy 2: The Benefits

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

"We offer a variety of items you'll receive as if you're purchasing a car. It starts with cloth ($70/year) followed by vinyl ($100/year) followed by Velour, which is $250 per year, and the highest level is Corinthian leather which costs $1000 per year. We've had way more people use leather and velour than I'd imagine!"

"One of the things that you receive is a birthday card: one of our co-founders has a talent as an artist. We didn't expect to have numerous drawings so he's doing way greater birthday sketches than we anticipated - and we're still catching up!"

Offering a $1000/month level seems like a huge ask but this came as advice from an established media firm Defector. They told Matt that they could have many more people with $1000 in their accounts than was anticipated. "I thought to myself"I don't even know, $1,000?' and they were like"Do it!"" Matt laughs.

"They were also saying that they wish they had a middle tier stage, since they've got two levels lower and a higher level," he continues. "We were bouncing around on it and decided on $250/year. It was the ideal number since We have a lot of Velour-loving members. This year] we saw more people move upwards from vinyl to the velour and later down to vinyl. More individuals went from 100 to 250 than went from 100 to 250. That makes me think we're doing it right!"

Autopian's Autopian team also has recognized that behind the scenes content has become popular. They also share procedural material, like what they used to come up with the headline and also 'Tales from the Slack'. Matt says: "We have our internal Slack. It's clearly not intended for the public to use."

"People say stupid, ridiculous and hilarious things!" Matt smiles. "Our chief editor David has no pop culture knowledge, so he's always having trouble understanding things. He believed Ronan was a Serpico, he thought the Al Pacino movie set in the 70s was a Robert De Niro movie that was released in the 90s!"

Strategy 3. Fear of Missing out (FOMO)

"The third category of content which works really well and many people overlook is FOMO. People don't want to miss out on stuff," Matt continues.

"We are a discord, with regular advice columns. Our Discord is completely free and public, but it has a member section," he adds. "I encourage members to share photos in general chatroom: 'Here's me wearing my shirt I'm wearing my badge', and I hope that people are eager to participate in that."

Matt concludes attracting members can be very effective as long as the message is in line with your content types you write. "Every once in a while, we'll do a 'Here's everything you'll get' appeal. It's as a reminder of the benefits that membership brings."

More regularly they will be thankful to their followers: "We love our commenters - you make us great. If you aren't part of our community, we're sorry. There are many who don't have the funds. If you're in school, whatever you are, we'll accept that. If you're not in the position of having funds, you can just become a reader. We'd like to welcome you; we want you as one of us. But, if you love this thing, here's the opportunity to be part of it."

But then we'll do the FOMO post where Jason will write 'Here's all the birthday drawings I did this month!' the people who see them will consider 'God, I'd like this.'

It's like forming communities come in many shapes and sizes - even birthday drawings for car enthusiasts.

More details

To find out more about the Autopian and be a part of The Autopian, go to theautopian.com.