Hello.  My name is MCfuncraft, and I have made 3 servers so far.  They all have been successful, but the first two I cancelled because I was using MCprohosting, but it was very expensive.  Now I am using Minespan, and I can afford it, and it has NO LAG and INFINITE STORAGE!!!
Now, lets get on with the stuff.  No one wants to read my story, so lets just get to the tutorial!

1. Make your server good.
   Your server needs to be complete, if you want players to stay.  The players want to be on a complete server, and only griefers/trolls want to be on a incomplete server because chances are, they want to give themselves OP.
   
2. Make a good banner
   Your banner cannot be crap.  Here is an example: some guy has a server with a custom gamemode and sooo many servers and everyone thinks that it is the best, even better than the big guys.  He puts up a banner on the PMC server list, and his banner just says "Good server better than mineplex play now" with no background.  Its not even an animated GIF!!!  No one comes on.  Some other guy has a crappy server that is vanilla survival with a horrible spawn and an economy.  He uses attractive colors, and makes a GIF banner that says: Frame 1: "Vanilla survival" 2: "Economy" 3. "OP vote rewards" 4. "Family Friendly" 5. "Nice staff".  He gets at least 8 players every day he bumps the submission.  See what I mean?  The guy that has the good BANNER wins, not the good server!
   
3. Submit it minecraft server lists.
   For players to find your server, submit it to minecraft server lists.  I reccommend ones that have bumping because otherwise youll have to hope that some player goes to page 678 and joins your server, instead of the 10000 other servers.  Chances are, they will see the first page of the server list and go to that server.  Use the server lists like Planet Minecraft to get players to come to the "recently updated" part, and when you bump the submission, voila!  They will see YOUR server, and you have a 2/3 chance of that player coming to YOUR server!
   
4. Hire nice staff
   Hire nice staff that do not grief, and be nice to your players
   
   
   

Thanks for reading, and please give me a diamond for my hour of typing:D.