“You're not paying to get access, you're paying because you want it in the world”

“You have to know your audience before you build a membership business,” starts Matt Hardigree, publisher of The Autopian. “I have seen problems where people have just hopefully assumed there would be a readership there. The math is hard, but not impossible. You can use all the data that you have.”

He says that if you already write for a site, look at how many readers you have. “If I'm at a site with 10 other writers and three of us want to start something, what is our combined readership? Do we make up 15% of the website's traffic? That's not a lot. Or do we make up 80% of the website's traffic?”

At one point, The Autopian founders David Tracy and Jason Torchinsky made up 50% of Jalopnik’s traffic. “They would have thought, ‘We can start something – we can do this’,” continues Matt. “What's interesting is David and Jason don't have huge social followings, which seems like the obvious way to translate into readership. But they didn't have to have that because they already had readers.

Before launching, The Autopian did a competitive analysis of the motor industry and media. “We know how many car enthusiasts read these different sites. Do the math: once we take out the costs, what do we need in order to be successful? Then you ask, ‘Where are those people going to come from?’ and ‘What percentage have some awareness of who we are?’ and ‘What percentage of those do we need in order to meet a point of sustainability?’ and ‘In terms of membership, what are we going to charge?’.”

He continues: “You can make some guesses – you don't have to be right, but you have to have those data points. Once you start, you can plug in those data points and see where you're wrong and make adjustments. If you have no data and you're just guessing, you have to do the math and figure it out.

Matt acknowledges that even after doing your research there will be a 'hold your breath’ moment: “In the first hour or two of launching membership, I was a wreck! I was thinking, ‘What's going to happen? Once those memberships started coming in, it felt great! But we're still doing data analysis and still constantly looking at what is working and what isn't.”

Growth and engagement strategies

“I think that we are at 10% of where our membership can be,” Matt continues. “We've been successful, we've had a lot of members, but the first 10% are the easiest to get. Those last 10% of members are going to be the hardest. Every tranche is going to be harder than the tranche before; we're going to have to be clever.”

Matt believes 10x growth is certainly a five-year goal. “If we can get to 50% of that goal, we are almost completely sustained at our current level with membership. If we can get to 100% we are more than sustained by membership or we're making money just on membership – I would love to get to that point.”

So what are the team’s plans to get there? What do they offer now in terms of membership perks and how do they use this to attract members?

Matt replies: “It’s a balance because we are a journalistic endeavor and an enthusiast endeavor. We look at it as three buckets of how we get people to become members – and to stay members – by making The Autopian feel valuable.”

Strategy 1: Content

Matt says the first bucket is content. “We have to write something that is good enough and exciting enough and different enough from what 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 this to exist.’

“You're not paying to get access to it, because it's not paywalled. You're paying because you want it in the world.” Matt confirms that content is always going to be The Autopian’s biggest value proposition: “You need this thing to exist so badly, you will part with $4 a month, $10 a month, $85 a month for some people.”

Strategy 2: Benefits

Bucket two represents the items a member receives, such as Discord access, clothing including T-shirts, access to events including trivia nights and merchandise like stickers and badges.

“We have a whole suite of things you get: it's like you're buying a car. The bottom level is cloth ($70/year), then vinyl ($100/year), then velour at $250/year, then the top level is rich Corinthian leather, which is $1,000/year. We've had way more people do velour and leather than I would expect!”

“One of the things that you get is a birthday drawing: one of our co-founders is an artist. We didn't expect to have so many of them so he's doing way more birthday drawings than we expected – we're still catching up!”

Offering a $1000/month level seems like a huge ask but this came as advice from well-established media company Defector. They told Matt they had many more people at $1000 than expected. “I was like, ‘I don't know, $1,000?’ and they were like, ‘Do it’!” Matt laughs.

“They also said they wished they had a middle tier level, because they have two lower levels and a higher level,” he continues. “We went back and forth on it and decided on $250/year. It turned out to be the magic number: we have so many velour members and [this year] more people moved up from vinyl to velour then moved from velour down to vinyl – more people went from 100 to 250 than went from 250 to 100. That makes me think we're doing it right!”

The Autopian team has also realized that behind the scenes content is popular. They share procedural content, like how they came up with a headline, and they do ‘Tales from the Slack’. Matt explains: “We have our internal Slack and obviously it's not for public consumption."

"People say stupid, ridiculous, hilarious things!" Matt laughs. "Our editor-in-chief David has no pop culture awareness so he's constantly getting things confused. He thought Ronan was Serpico; he thought an Al Pacino movie set in the 70s was a Robert De Niro movie from the 90s!”

Strategy 3: Fear of missing out (FOMO)

“The third content bucket – and the one that works really well and people probably underestimate – is FOMO. People don't want to miss out on stuff,” Matt continues.

“We have a Discord with weekly advice columns. Our Discord is free and open, but there is a membership section," he adds. "I encourage members to share pictures in the general chat: ‘Here's me with my shirt’ or ‘Here's me with my badge’ and people want to be part of that.”

Matt concludes attracting members works really well when the appeal aligns with the types of content you publish. “Every now and then we’ll do a ‘Here's everything you get’ appeal – a reminder of what membership brings.”

More regularly they will thank their community: “We love our commenters – you make us great. If you can't be a member, we understand. Not everyone has the money. If you're a student, whatever, we get that. If you don’t have the money, just be a reader. We want you here; we want you as part of our community. But, if you love this thing, here's a way to be a part of it.”

But then we'll do a FOMO post where Jason will say ‘Here are all the birthday drawings I did this month!’ and people will see them and think ‘God, I want that.’

It seems like building a community comes in all shapes and sizes – even birthday drawings for car enthusiasts.

More information

To learn more and to become a member of The Autopian, go to theautopian.com.