Terms

"You have to know those who will be your clients before you develop a membership-based enterprise" starts Matt Hardigree, publisher of The Autopian. "I have seen problems that have been solved by people who just they'd find readers there. The problem is math-related, but, it's not hard. You can benefit from every detail you've collected."

If you're writing on an online platform, you should take note of the amount of readers you've. "If I'm at a site with 10 authors, and 3 of us are looking to start something, what are our readerships? Do we represent 15 percent of the site's traffic? This isn't a huge amount. Do we comprise over 80% of all the websites' traffic?"

In the past, The Autopian founders David Tracy and Jason Torchinsky made up 50 percent of the Jalopnik traffic. "They could have thought "We have the potential to create something, and we could accomplish it"," continues Matt. "What's fascinating is that David and Jason aren't awash with huge amounts of followers on their social media, which seems as a natural method to turn them into readers. But, they don't have to have that because they already had followers.

Before launching, The Autopian did a study of competition in the industry as well as the media. "We are aware of how many car users who check these websites. Think about this: once we have figured out the cost what do we need to be successful? You then ask yourself, where are those people going to come from?' and 'What percentage have some awareness of who we really are?' And what percentage are we required to have to meet a point of sustainable?' In terms of membership, what are our plans to cost? ? '."

He says: "You can make some assumption - but don't need to prove it In order to prove it, you have to be able to prove it with figures. When you've started with the data, you'll be able to plug in the data points, and then examine where you're off and make adjustments. If there's no information and your guess is just guesswork, you'll have to do the math and figure it out.

Matt admits that despite the fact that conducting an investigation of your own, it's not uncommon to be in a 'wait your breath' moment "In the first half hour or so of starting my membership I was a complete wreck! I thought, "What's going to happen? When memberships began to flow into the club, it was great! But, we're still performing the analysis of data, and we're always analyzing what's effective and what isn't."

Strategies for engagement and growth

"I think we're only 10% of what the number of members could be."" Matt continues. "We've achieved our goals, we've had lots of members, but those first 10 percent of members are the most straightforward to get. The remainder of 10% is going to be the hardest. Each tranche will be more difficult than the previous one. it. We'll need to come up with a plan."

Matt believes that 10x growth is probably a five-year goal for the next five years. "If we can get to 50% of that target, then we're almost entirely supported at this point with the membership. When we get to 100%, we're far more reliant on the membership fee or are getting income only from membership and would love to get to that point."

Matt Hardigree, The Autopian

The team's goals to reach them? What do they currently offer as benefits for members and what can they do to make use of this to attract members?

Matt responds: "It's a balance because The Autopian is a journalism project and also an enthusiastic one. It's like having three buckets to help people sign up to become members and stay members by giving The Autopian feel valuable."

Strategy 1: Content

Matt states that the first collection of content should be the first. "We have to come up with something interesting and interesting enough to be different enough from what is available elsewhere and  also 'I'm only able view this content only on the Autopian. You must be an official members of The Autopian if I want the Autopian to be a reality.'

"You're not paying for access to the content because there's not a paywalled entry to it. The reason is that you'd like the content to be available all over the world." Matt affirms that the autopian's content will always be the best-selling idea: "You need this thing to be there so desperately and you'll shell out 4 dollars per month, 10 dollars a month, $85 monthly and for a few."

Strategy 2: The Benefits

Bucket Two is a representation of the things that members get for free, like Discord access, clothing such as T-shirts, membership to trivia events, and other items like badges or stickers.

"We provide a variety of things you'll be receiving the case if you buy a vehicle. In the middle you'll find cloth ($70/year) and then vinyl ($100/year) and then Velour, which is $250 annually, while the top level is rich Corinthian leather, which is $1000 per year. There have been far more clients who have used leather and velour than I'd think!"

"One of the things that you'll receive is a birthday drawing one of our co-founders has a artistic talent. We didn't expect to receive so many of them so he's doing way greater birthday-themed sketches than we thought which is why we're only in the process of catching up!"

Offering a $1000/month level appears to require a lot of work. But it was the recommendation of a well-established media firm Defector. They advised Matt that they could get more clients with $1000 in their accounts as would be normal. "I was thinking to myself"I I don't know the many, but what about $1000 is it?' They replied"Do that!"" Matt is laughing.

"They were also saying they would like to have an intermediate level, since they currently have two levels below and a third one." he adds. "We went back and forth on this issue before we finally decided at the $250 annually. This proved to be the best amount since we have many velour members and [this year] we witnessed more people move upwards from vinyl to Velour, before moving back to vinyl. There were more people who went between 100 and 250 more than those that went between 100 and 250. It's a sign that I think we're on the right path!"

The Autopian team also has realized that content from behind the scenes is very popular. They share procedural material like how they came up with a headline as well as "Tales of Slack". Matt adds: "We have our internal Slack and obviously it's not meant for consumption by the general public."

"People create ridiculous, absurd, hilarious things!" Matt laughs. "Our director of editing David does not have the pop-culture experience and is always having difficulties understanding what's going on. He believed Ronan was a Serpico, He was thinking that the Al Pacino film from the 70s was actually the Robert De Niro film from the 1990s!"

Strategy 3. Fear of Missing out (FOMO)

"The third bucket of content - and the one that works really well and many people overlook is FOMO. We don't want people to be missing out on things," Matt continues.

"We are on our own Discord with a weekly columns of tips and advice. Our Discord is free and public however, there is a separate member-only section," he adds. "I encourage members to share pictures in the chatroom general: 'Here's me wearing my shirt I'm wearing my badge'. And people are eager to participate in the community."

Matt states that getting members is an approach that is extremely effective in the event that your appeal is compatible to the content type that you post. "Every time we'll make"Here's all you'll get' appeal, an opportunity to remind people of the benefits that joining offer."

More regularly they will recognize their communities by saying "We are very grateful to our members who leave comments and they are the reason we're so great. If you aren't an active members, please understand. Not everyone has the money. If you're in school, however, that's all we get it. If you're not able to manage the cost, you can just become an avid reader. We're here to serve you We'd like to invite you to be an integral part in our family. But, if you're a lover of this thing and want to be a part of the group."

We'll then do a FOMO post where Jason will say 'Here are my birthday-themed drawings that I made during the month of March!' Then people will be able to see these and say 'God! I'd like to do that.'

Building communities can be found in a variety of dimensions and shapes - including birthday cards for car enthusiasts.

More details

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

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