So I (re)opened my own Minecraft server 5 days ago. People said don't do it as there are enough server out there already, and the vast majority of them fail because they can not get enough players to justify keeping their server up.

To that I say no. 100 and 10% no. There is every reason to try your own MC server. You will succeed if you do it right. There are millions and millions of MC players out there. If you even get 0.000001%, which you easily can, you will have enough players to keep your server up.

Do not be fooled though the players are not going to come to you without some good old fashioned hard work. So how can I get some of those players you ask me? Well glad you asked, and here my friends is an answer to that question.


Step one

First things first if you are hosting it on your own rig get an ip. Nobody want's to connect to a long or hard to remember address. Same thing if you are using a server host. My server host allows me a rather simple ip name nameofserver.serverminer.com. Even this is slightly too complicated for some people, but for me it suffices. The simpler the address the more people who will remember it and connect. Would you rather try to remember mcpvp.net, or minecraftpvp.com:35566. Exactly. So step 1 before you even launch your server is get a good connection name.

Step two

How good is your pc/laptop, or server host? Also is there such a thing as too good? Let us answer the second question first. Yes you can have too much ram and cpu on your server. If your server is new it isn't likely that more than 5 or 6 people are on at once. 3gb ram is more than enough to start out with. Increase it as need be. That said running a mp server with too little ram will be more laggy and fill up to 100% quite fast. A good guide is to have at least 1gb for every 12-15 players who are regular players on your server.

Now that you have a good amount of gb dedicated to your server as well as a nice ip address you can open your server.

Step three

Great you opened your server. You are enjoying being the boss for a change. The only problem is nobody is playing on your server. So how do you get people to play? A good first step is if you have friends or family who play mc ask them to join in. If you do not have anybody you know who plays that is ok as well you will get players. Step 3 is getting the word out about how your server exists. Advertise. That is your one and only friend. Stop. So you advertise your server but what are you advertising exactly? The 7568th survival server on the platform you are advertising on? A cookie cutter raid server maybe? Another dull factions which only has 3 active players, so is barely even team based. So while step 3 is advertising its a two step process. Step a and step b

step three a

You need at least 1 hook. Something that you do that not every other server does, or at the very least something you do better than the rest. It doesn't have to be original if only 10% or less of other servers does what your 'hook' does you will get noticed. My personal hook is two fold. Firstly I only run the latest snapshot or release if no snapshot is currently out. There are not that many snapshot servers so you can stand out in this field if you are good enough. So currently I am running 1.13 pre3. When 1.13 comes out I will change to that and when the frst 1.14 snap releases I will change to that. My second hook is that I run custom vanilla. I use custom commands, but no command blocks. Command blocks can lag the server when overused. All my commands run on triggers, scoreboards and similar commands. With this I have a vanilla version of popular commands like home, sethome, spawn, afk etc.

These are my hooks and they are attracting players. Here on pmc I went from a server score of 42 to 71 in 4 days. I managed to get 2 diamond and 2 favourite already. Where other 1.13 snap servers in the same time frame and even longer time frames in many cases have a score of half of mine. I have got 7 regular players from pmc alone. They have all played at least 16 hours each already over the 4 days. Why do they play so much straight away. Part of that is step 4 which we will cover later, another part is step 3b, which is back to advertising.

You need to pick as many places as possible to advertise, there can never be too many. However is is impossible to check every platform you want to advertise on everyday, tun your server and have a life outside mc as well. So you need to pick about 3 or 4 platforms to concentrate heavily on. Check each and every one of them multiple times a day. Update them. Keep the player base coming back to them. Updates and player bumps = more people will notice you.

Getting back to pmc for a second I am high up on the server list for 1.13 servers. I am not high up overall yet as I am a new server. That will take time and effort, but i am high up on my niche section of snapshot/1.13 servers. In 4th place as of this article. That is achieved by a combination of updating the server everyday, bumping the listing everyday, voting, and most importantly getting my server users to vote. Please don't beg them for votes though people do not like that. I use a custom trigger/command in game that lets people click a link to vote if and when they want to. It is your job to make them want to without begging. Offering a small reward is a good way.

Aside from pmc I advertise on minecraftmp.com. I find this to be a good platform for me as it is a popular mc search engine. Again there are many ways to search there with many filters. So I concentrate on getting high up the list of 1.13 servers. In a week I have climbed up to 7th in the rankings for 1.13 snap servers. There are about 100 snap servers there and bar 3 all are established months, and in a lot of cases even years. How did I climb over them so quickly? Same as in pmc. Bump. Vote. Update. Stay active. Being number 1 on the list is nice, being top 5 is good too. Neither one is vital though. What is vital is being on page 1. Being on page 1 anywhere in the rankings is instantly more clicks and views. Who is going to see you on page 13? about 1 in 20 people who search that is who.

I also advertise on reddit's mc sub and on minecraft forums.net. On both of these platforms they are more chat and forum post based. So I update my server threads multiple times a day. Don't just post 'bump' though. A lot of people hate that. Post genuine updates, and reply to every comment as people like that you gave them attention.

There is also the option on some platforms to use paid advertising. I do not recommend this personally. Its being proven that this will get you maybe 10 players on day one of the paid advertisement, and falling off by 1-2 every day.So you spent up to $2000, which is what the top spot servers pay, for people you can't even know will come back. Many of these players are the 5 minute type. Join for 5 minutes and never return. Don't waste your money.

On reddit, mc forums.net, and similar sites you also need to actively search out other players. If you see a thread with a server similar to yours and it the op has posted sorry applications closed or something like that and their are replies/applications after the closed comment use this. Ask those players would they like to join your server first as they can't join the they wanted. To be extra nice ask the thread creator if it is ok to take these players since they cant join your server.

Also search the posts for threads like these.

*Looking for a server. Any thread like this give them your ip and explain what server you have.

Another vital part of advertising is honesty. Do you run a factions server? Great then use that as a keyword. If you have no intention of ever being a factions server then do not say you are just because its a popular keyword. People will not like this. You might get a few more players using popular keywords even if its not your server, but you will greatly annoy many people too.

I said I am number 7 in the mc mp.com list. Of the 6 ahead of me I played on 2 of them before I made my own server. Both started off very popular, but have being declining in popularity. One because of staff that do not care, more on that later. The other because they use buzzwords that have nothing to do with their server. They list Adventure, economy, events, hardcore, pvp, pve, ranks, survival and vanilla as their keywords. As far as adventure goes its just a spawn protection, there is no adventure gamemode. They have no ranks or economy at all. It's not hardcore mode. So people join and some stay even though its not what they want, but many more leave as its a lie.

My server is Anarchy, pve, pvp, raiding, grief, discord ready and vanilla as that is what It is. No b.s. just plain honest keywords and I am rising in the ranks daily.


Aside from keywords you need a good description. 'Join my cool server' is not going to cut it. Describe in detail what your server offers and what is available on your server. Keep each description short and almost bullet point like to keep attention. This might have text blocks in it as its a blog. Your server description should never ever have text walls.

Great you have advertised the people are coming, slowly at first but several unique players per day per advertising platform. Now step 4 how to keep them.

step 4

How to keep the players around. So you have had 67 people on your server, but they have a combined playtime of 74 minutes. Not so great. Simple fact 80% of your players will judge your server within 20 seconds. Of that 80% at least 90% will have logged out, usually forever, within 2 minutes if something does not entice them to stay.

A nice spawn. You need to build something at spawn to greet them. It doesn't have to be a big diamond and gold building. In fact some players are put off by large spawns you get lost in. You need something though. Mine is just a log cabin with the rules posted and a few basic decorations. Its not fancy, but it gets the job done. I still get some 2 minute players, but less than if they spawned in the wild with nothing to see. Greet every player individually. If you are online and somebody joins say hello or WB.
Additionally I have a custom message set up saying welcome to the server on screen for any new player.

Talk with your players, interact with them. Go to greet them personally at spawn when they first join.

As mentioned before I also get them to stay by having basic commands like home and spawn. If You are vanilla having these is a must. If you run some software that allows plugins use some basic ones for the same result. Do not overload on plugins as it gets laggy quickly.

You can not possibly be online 24/7 but your players can be due to time zones. So watch your players for a few weeks, decide which ones are on often and look like mature players.Are they always greeting new players, always helping or trading? You need staff so what better way to promote than from within. Give these mature and friendly players a staff trial. Do not bother advertising for staff. Most people who reply will be trolls or immature kids. Always use who you have if they seem suitable.

Have somewhere your players can interact. Your own server website with an ip similar to the server address. Or a Discord site for your server.

Listen to your players. Example you have keepinventory on, but 10 players have requested to turn it off. Listen to them. none of this its my server its my rules nonsense. Ask more players their opinion and it most of them want something changed it will probably be a good idea to make the change. Within reason.


With these tips you will own a server that rises to the top quickly You will have a server that builds a user base quickly.
You won't ever be number one as it's hard to beat the big servers with multiple minigames and so on, but you will be in the top 10% of the servers in the 'niche' category you pick. You will make page 1 when people search for your server in this category. You will be page 1 on the forums you advertise on as your thread is often updated.