To get a popular minecraft server, first of all you need confidence that your spawn is amazing and will make the players eyes appeal to it and then they will look further into it, add signs to guide new players into what your server is about and where everything is.
I used to have a 100+ server and yeah it did take about 1-2 months but I closed it due to a lack of time to administrate it.
Oh and one last thing to make your server have a thrilling experience add awesome plugins like MCMMO playerheads and all that kind of thrilling PVP stuffz.
