Terms

"You need to be aware of the people who will be your customers before you create a membership-based business," starts Matt Hardigree The Autopian's publisher. The Autopian. "I have seen problems where people have just hopefully assumed there would be readers there. The math is hard however, it's not complicated. You can use any facts you've gathered."

If you're writing for the website, take a look at how many users that you've got. "If I'm on a website along with 10 other writers and three of us want to start something then what's our collective readership? Are we 15% of all the site's viewers? That's not a lot. We are the ones that comprise more than 80% of the web's traffic?"

Sometime in the past, The Autopian founders David Tracy and Jason Torchinsky made up 50 percent of the visitors to Jalopnik. "They might have believed "We might be able to start something; it's possible'" continues Matt. "What's interesting is that David and Jason do not have massive following on social media this would be a natural way to turn into readers. They didn't really need to acquire that as they already had readers.

Prior to the launch, The Autopian did a competitive analysis of the motor industry as well as media. "We are aware of how many car fans who check these websites. Consider the following: after you have figured out your costs, what are the things we require to be successful? Then, you ask yourself: what country are those people from? What percentage of them have a sense of who we are and who are we? What percentage do we require in order to attain our objective of sustainability? In terms of membership fees, what are we planning to charge? '."

He adds: "You can make some speculations, but you do not have to prove it. But you need to get access to the data points. When you've started, you can plug in these data points in order to figure which direction you're headed before making changes. If you're not able to find any evidence or you're guessing, then do the maths and figure out what the result is.

Matt acknowledges that even if you've taken the time to research your options There's a tendency to experience the "wait and look" the moment "In the first half hour or so of starting my membership, I was an absolute completely mess! I was wondering "What's going to take place? The memberships started coming in, it was wonderful! The team is still conducting data analysis and still constantly analysing what's effective and what's not."

Strategies for engagement and growth

"I think we're at least 10 percent of the way towards where our members would be,"" Matt continues. "We've achieved success. We've seen a number of members join However, the top 10% of members are the most straightforward to get. The last 10% of members are likely to be the toughest. Each tranche will likely to be tougher than the one that preceded it. We'll have to be clever."

Matt believes that a 10x increase is certainly a five-year objective over five years. "If you can achieve 50 percent of the target, then we're almost entirely sustainable at the moment through the membership. If we reach 100%, then we're better off with the membership fee or are receiving income solely from membership It would be great to reach that level."

Matt Hardigree, The Autopian

What are their methods to achieve this goal? What could they offer members with benefits? And how do they make use of this to attract members?

Matt responds: "It's a balance because The Autopian is a journalism project and also an enthusiast venture. We look at it as three buckets in order to encourage individuals to join and to maintain their membership for the future - through the process of making The Autopian feel valuable."

Strategy 1: Content

Matt states that the most important bucket of content is. "We have to come up with something interesting and engaging enough to make it stand out to stand out from the rest everywhere else - 'I can only access this via the Autopian. I have to be an authentic part of The Autopian if I want it to become a reality.'

"You're not paying to get access to the content, as there's no paywalled access to the content. It's because you're interested in access to it everywhere." Matt says that this will remain the top value-added service: "You need this thing to be there so urgently and it's going to cost four dollars a month, ten dollars every month as well as $85 per month for certain individuals."

Strategy 2: The Benefits

The bucket two represents a representation of the things users receive such as Discord access, clothing including T-shirts, invitations to events including trivia nights along with other items like badges and stickers.

"We provide an array of goods you'll get similar to buying the car. It starts with cloth ($70/year) followed by vinyl ($100/year) as well as Velour that costs 250 dollars per year. the highest level is Corinthian leather, which is $1,000 per year. There are a lot more people who do velour and leather than I'd imagine!"

"One among the items that you get is a birthday drawing: one of the co-founders has an art talent. We didn't anticipate receiving as many drawings, and he's been doing lots more birthday-themed drawings than we had anticipated. And we're just getting caught with it!"

A monthly income of $1000 sounds as a big ask However, this was advice from the well-established company of media Defector. They told Matt they had many more people who could afford $1000 than they anticipated. "I thought"I don't know. $1000?' And they said"Do this!"" Matt smiles.

"They also have expressed their wish that they had middle-tier insurance in place, since they have two lower levels and a more prestigious one," he says. "We discussed the issue and decided on $250/year. It turned out to be the perfect number because there are so many members who love velour. In the past year, we have seen more people move between Velour and vinyl, as well as later reverting to vinyl. Actually, over 100 people moved from 250 to 100 than people who went between 100 and 250. That's a sign that I think we've got it right!"

Autopian has also realized that the Autopian team has also realized that content behind the scenes is very popular. They also share procedural content like the method they came up with headlines and also "Tales from Slack". Matt clarifies: "We have our internal Slack. It's clearly not meant to be used by anyone else."

"People say stupid, ridiculous and hilarious things!" Matt smiles. "Our chief editor David has no pop culture understanding, which is why he's constantly having a hard time understanding matters. He was thinking Ronan was the name of a Serpico and believed an Al Pacino film from the 1970s was actually a Robert De Niro flick that was released in the 90s!"

Strategy 3. Fear of Missing out (FOMO)

"The third type of content that is highly efficient and that a lot of people aren't aware of is FOMO. The people don't want to be missing out on items," Matt continues.

"We are a discord, with daily column of advice. Our discord is totally free and open, but there is a section for members," he adds. "I recommend members share images in chat: 'Here's my picture with my shirt I'm wearing my badge'. Members want to join the group."

Matt affirms that the method to attract new members performs really well as long as the content is consistent with the types of content you produce. "Every once in a while we'll put out a "Here's what you'll get' ad. It's an opportunity to remind you of what the benefits that come with membership."

In more frequent intervals, they'll acknowledge their communities "We love our commenters We appreciate our commenters for helping us improve. If you're not a current members, we're tolerant. There are many who don't have the money. If you're in school, what ever, we'll accept that. If you're not able to afford the money, just become a reader. We'd love to have you as a reader and make you part of our community. If you're a fan of this kind of thing, here's the option to be part of this community."

We'll then do the FOMO post, that will include Jason will post a message saying 'Here's every birthday-themed drawing I did this month!' People will look at them and consider 'God bless me, I'd like that.'

It's like forming a community comes in all shapes and sizes, including birthday celebrations of car enthusiasts.

More details

For more information about the Autopian and to join The Autopian, go to theautopian.com.

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