How to advertise your Minecraft server
Introduction
Minecraft servers strive when you play together with a large and broad community. Factions, survival or bedwars, all offer a unique experience when played with tons of both randoms and friends. Hence it is crucial for a server to have a community surrounding it in order to survive.
It can be challenging for a server owner to achieve their desired player amount. It requires both engaging gameplay and excellent marketing, perhaps even some luck. In this blog, we will cover some tips & tricks that may help your server get a larger player base.
Before you start advertising
Before you even start advertising it is important that your server is ready for the players. Both if the server can handle it, but also that the players will stay. This is where having fun and engaging gameplay comes to play. You want the players that connect for the first time to stay, and later invite their friends, who invite their friends.
Do not sacrifice too much on advertising. You should not spend more than you can lose. Spending $50 on advertisements does not mean you will get $50 back in donations in three weeks. You need to be aware that your advertisement can fail and not give you any players. Do research on the best platform to advertise for YOUR server.
Tips on how to advertise
There are multiple different ways to advertise your server and only your creativity can limit you. Here are some tips on how you can advertise your server, but feel free to take your own path.
Server lists. Add your server to a handful of server lists. There is a lot of competition on server lists, and a dozen of servers there already. A tip to cope with that is utilizing votifier, Voting for a server makes your sever appear higher. Generally, your players can vote once per 24 hours for your server. Having votifer gives an incentive and reward to voting, decided by you. It is also important to utilize tags etc. the server list utilizes. For example, adding a survival tag if your server is survival and so forth.
You can download Votifier here!
Tell your friends. Tell your friends about your server, this can give you a small player base for free. It also makes a tight-knit community from the start. Perhaps you have a brother who plays Minecraft you can ask to join, and maybe he enjoys it and decides to invite 10 of his friends. Already you have an engaged player base of 10 without any costs. Just remember to be careful, and not give your friends any large in-game benefits or advantages that may be seen as unfair.
Make videos. You may have seen them, the viral earth survival videos on TikTok. Making small videos like that does not cost you a penny, however may be time-consuming. You can also go as far as to unleash your inner YouTuber and start posting YouTube videos on your server. You might hit a lucky shot and your videos may blow up, giving your server tons of exposure.
Minecraft forums. Minecraft forums give you the opportunity to advertise and engage with a community, you can make attractive posts to try and persuade people into trying your server out. Or possibly find people to help you on your journey. Forums give you the opportunity to elaborate more on your server, and give a detailed description of it, compared to server lists.
Build a website & discord. Having a discord and website generates a community outside of the server for people to socialize and engage with each other. For example different chat channels in discord, or forums. It also makes your server look more professional, and it is easier for players to approach staff members and other players.
Paid advertisements. If you have some funds available, you can always pay YouTubers, Server-list, forums, and so forth. This is the best way to gain a player base, but definitely, the ones that cost the most. If you decide to pay for an advertisement, make sure it is worth the money. Do your research, and research each option carefully.
IP address. Have an IP address that is easy to remember and forward to others. For example MinecraftServer.com. That IP address is easy to remember and easy to forward to your friends. And hostingcompany.myminecraftserver.net:343243, is a difficult IP address to both remember and forward, it also looks unprofessional.
Ending
In the end, it is very time-consuming to gain a stable player base. It will not happen overnight, you and your team need to be patient and continuously advertise, rather than doing it once a week, or once a month. There are also plenty of ways to advertise not mentioned here. In the end, it is up to you, and just as important as advertising is making sure your players stay. It is pointless to advertise if they get bored and leave after an hour. Hope this blog helped you!