A bit about my server and myself

Hello all,

I have been running a medium sized Minecraft server for about a year now and I think it necessary to share my knowledge and experience on what it has been like and how to do it.

My server, PortalCraftSMP, is quite a popular server averaging around 30 people on it all the time. It has been hard work getting it to be this popular but it has been worth it. I will share with you why it has been so much fun and very profitable.

In my first month of running this server, I was hoping to get 100s of members on it and earn lots of money really fast. In reality, this is very rare. Over the year, I have made around $1500. This may seem like a fair bit of money and I suppose it is, but after you pay out all of the expenses over the year it brings it down to around $900. Yeah, $900 seems a nice amount of money to have spare in your pocket but it is very rare that this will happen to you. This is why I have wrote this blog. To share the knowledge on how to make a popular Minecraft server.



So, here is a list of things that I have done to make money with my server.

- Make a server... Obviously

- Make sure to make a good first impression

- Advertise on sites to make your server seen

- Never publicly release your server till it is finished completely

- Make a decent server website (I recommend using Enjin)

- Make it so that if people donate to your server they get more permissions

- Be a good and reliable server owner

- Advertise enticing offers to your players



Making the server;

When you are making your server make sure you re confident on what your server genre will be and orientate the building style around this. Saying that you are a PvP server and actually you can't even hurt a fly will only get you members who want to be able to kill on the server. Not letting them do this will just annoy them and then they will say bad things about you're server.

Also, make a Bukkit server. To be frank, vanilla servers are pretty terrible. Even if you are making a pure survival server, still use bukkit. With bukkit, you can do so much more eg. Add plugins to make you server even more enjoyable, insert prefixes before usernames and much more. This helps the user to understand the server and it will make it a whole lot easier for you to control it.



Make a good first impression;

Say if you were a general Minecraft simpleton and you stumble across a server named PortalcraftSMP. You think 'Oh, this looks great, I'm going to give this server a try because it looks amazing and awesome and I think that everyone should go on it.' And then you spawn in the desert with a small crumby house made out of dirt. This is not what you want to do. Make an extravagant spawn. Even if the spawn looks to good for you're server with no members on it just stick with it. I personally would prefer, 'wow, what a great spawn but it looks like it should be on ObsidianCraft' than a 'Meh, it's crap'.

When you join a server, The one thing I always do is check to see if they have protected the spawn with worldguard and have they got an anti-griefing plugin? If they have neither of these things I ask for the owner to give me TnT and a lever and just blow it to hell. I am stressing to be more careful with you're spawn.



Advertising

As I know that you don't want to spend much or any money to get you're server noticed. It isn't actually that difficult. Just submit you're server to any Minecraft server advertising website. Here is a list of popular ones.

- minecraft servers.net

- minecraftserverlist

- planetminecraft

Get members to vote for you're server whenever they can. This will make sure that you're server gets noticed. Even asking members to tell their friends about the server helps you out a little bit wvwn if they don't donate it will look better for new player when they join.

Another good way of advertising is to spam. I know that no-one likes it but it brings in more traffic to you're server. A great way of spamming is to post comments on popkular youtube videos like the "Yogscast" or "CaptainSparklze". With new comments every minute, 100s of people will see you're server. Just be careful not to over do it or your youtube account might shutdown.

Choose to advertise your server at peak times. I get around 50 new members on my server everyday. Of course, not all of them stay but those few who do are effectively giving money to you. The best times to advertise you're server is from 8pm to 9pm London time. This is the time when the British are on their computers instead of watching TV and its when the Americans are sitting down to relax. You could be surprised how critical timing can be toward the success of you're server.

Advertising offers on you're actual servers can be very beneficial. Saying that a rank has been reduced for a set amount of time by 20% will grab you're target audience to you're website and then hopefully donate to the server.



Publicizing you're server unfinished;

Obviously, if you do publicize your server unfinished it would make a big dent on the amount of users you draw in onto your server. Someone joining you're server and them not being able to do simple commands like '/spawn' or '/tpa' would be very annoying. Just be sure to finish or be near to completing you're server before advertising it.



Make a good server website;

Making a server website is crucial towards the success of you're server. They are used by users to find out important server news and changes, to donate to you're server and it will just generally make you look more professional. Not having one would put you at a massive disadvantage to all the other servers but if you do make one you have to make it look great. The three click process is very important on all websites. Ease of use is very important as well on the site. Make sure it is easy to find the website forums page, homepage and the donations page. All these pages are very necessary.



Permissions;

When donating to a server I would expect to be rewarded in some sort of way. If you do not deliver these rewards, people will think that there is no point in donating. Giving people permissions to do /tp instead of /tpa or to make better shops than normal members is very important. On my server, if you donate you will be able to fly dragons, use virtual chests and workbenches, have the ability to do /tp and much more. This will make the users think that it would be worthwhile donating to you.

If you do get lucky or if you're server is already averaging 15 people on it you should consider making even higher or custom-able ranks to them. It takes more time but you do get a hell of a lot more money out of it. If people do want these higher ranks, make it very inviting for them to donate a lot of money. ive them the ability to fly or to spawn items. It is easy to control what items people can spawn via the blacklist in the essentials plugin.



Be a good Owner;

Being a good server owner is obviously one a the things that makes you're server what it is. Be forgiving and if people die in lava give them a few diamonds. Even if it is a survival server, still give them a few things. Keep doing this until you're server gets bigger. One of the main objectives as a server owner is to keep people playing on the server. This will get easier as your community grows larger.



I really do hope that these tips do help you out a lot for all you server owners out there. Don't forget to comment and join my server. Unfortunately i'm not allowed to give you the IP on my blog but just search 'PortalcraftSMP' in the google search enjin and you will find it there.

09millarda.