Minecraft can seem lonely at times, especially when you’re playing a single-player survival world, where the only human contact you have is with the dumb villagers who only trade with you. Though the Minecraft Devs constantly add new features and mobs for us to play with, you can’t help but feel bored.
In times like this, the server community comes through; they help you enjoy the game once again. Minecraft is pretty great, but it becomes a hundred times better when playing with others, especially your friends!
Minecraft hosting servers helps you do this; they help you play mini-games and go on adventures without having to worry about the path, as the game moderator has already laid it down for you. Server Moderators have a big task at their hands; they have to keep running the server smoothly while getting more players.
Just using Minecraft server hosting and sitting ideal isn’t going to help; you’ll have to get your hands dirty, dirtier than the competition if you want your server to be one of the best in the game. As a server moderator, you have a job to fulfill; the job involves giving the players the best experience to never think of leaving. Players come to the server to have a good time with other online players, making sure you give it to them.
Because let’s face it, no one would like to play on a server with 2-3 players, especially in Minecraft, which is a community-driven game. So if you’re a server moderator, you’d have to advertise the server so that new players keep coming onto the server.
And, this is no easy feat; advertising is hard, especially for a new server with 0 players. But there’s nothing in this world that can’t be achieved, and you can get hundreds of players on your server if you have the proper knowledge about this stuff. And that’s what we’ll be providing today, the best tips and tricks that will give you a much-needed boost to advertising your Minecraft server like a PRO!
But remember, advertising a server is like doing business, and you need capital for doing business so that you can afford the best Minecraft server hosting. So yes, there are other free ways possible, which may work, but again we’re trying to get results, widening our horizons is the best way to do it. Do keep in mind ElixirNode offers the cheapest Minecraft server hosting on the market, yet the BEST!
Server Lists
Probably the best way to advertise your Minecraft server is by putting them on a server list. These lists are incredible at making your server. In addition, Minecraft players are constantly searching for new servers to play on, and these lists influence their decision drastically!
If your server is ranking in the top 10, you’d be getting many players on the server, and by lot, I mean thousands of new players every day. So it is essential to have your server listed on these sites.
The most popular sites in this category are MinecraftServers and MinecraftServerList. But to get the most out of this technique, it is best to post your server on every one of these lists. It will increase your visibility, especially when you’re new.
When you’re just a newbie on these sites, they place you in the new servers category, which will give you a quick boost in the early days. From then on, it is only a matter of time before you start climbing rankings. The only problem is that players might not vote for you.
Even if your server was great, no one will go voluntarily to these sites and give you votes. So you have to encourage players to go out and vote for you, and this can be done pretty quickly by providing special perks and rewards every time a player votes for you. This will create a feedback loop, a player will come from one of these sites, play on your server, vote to get rewards, and it will start making your server trendy. More players will start joining, and from there, the only way is up!
Then again, this entire strategy is based on the preconceived notion that your server is worth playing on. If your server disappoints players, they won’t even bother waiting for the rewards. So as a server moderator, you must provide the best experience possible because without that, good luck finding new players. Minecraft server hosting is no easy feat, and you should try to give your best. Also having a decent Minecraft server hosting site is important, so take care of that first!
Paid Server Lists…
Getting visibility on server lists is hard, especially with the competition being so harsh. But, there’s an easy and effective way around it. It requires money, though, and a great server!
These server list sites accept paid sponsorships, so you can rank on the top without having to do much. This alone will make you so visible that you’ll have an influx of new players every day.
Many consider this wrong, but if the player comes through a paid ad and has the time of his life, he won’t complain. So remember to have your server in good shape!
YouTube
YouTube Sponsorships…
The Minecraft YouTube community is immense; there are thousands of Minecraft youtube channels out there that cover different aspects of the game.
These youtube channels are the perfect place to start your ad campaign for the server. Paying them a small amount should enough to kickstart the process because a youtube video is forever, and players watching the video will keep players coming to your server for years to come.
You can go one step beyond a set up a partnership with a YouTuber of your choice; this will help your server grow at an exponential level. All this sounds good, but things can go south pretty quick if you miss out on critical details.
First of all, the YouTuber you want to team up with should have at least 20-50k subscribers. Second, you need to specify to the Youtuber to put your sponsorship ad in a video that isn’t about recent stuff (news, rumors, speculation). Because news will get old one day, and no one will watch the video.
Instead, urge him to plug your sponsorship in a different video, which you know will be relevant for a long time (top 10s, Minecraft theory, how-tos, etc.) Also ask them to play on your server, it’ll create the much-needed hype, and make sure you have a good Minecraft server hosting plan, or your server wouldn’t be able to handle the load!
Organic YouTube…
We already discussed how a youtube sponsorship could help you, but it requires money, so we also came up with a more accessible and free solution. So start your youtube channel, it requires no money, and it will help people who come onto your server for the first time.
The Youtube channel you start can cover any topics of your, topics you think are relevant and will help your server grow. If views start going up, the number of players joining your server will go up as well. For this, your youtube channel should be taken seriously because the majority of Minecraft players are on youtube.
Having your own Youtube channel has its perks; you can Livestream your server activities, you can show off your server and its players, you collaborate with other YouTubers o increase your audience. The possibilities are endless; the only limited thing is your willingness to take action.
Apart from this, your youtube channel will serve as an entry point for many newer players, who, after watching the videos about how phenomenal your server is, will try to join in on the fun. This may not seem a lot, but once you have a decent subscriber count, you’ll have a significant influx of players!
Forums & Internet Stuff
Probably the easiest and cheapest way to get your server on the radar of players is by making them aware of it. Many players scavenge the internet searching for new servers to play on with their friends; the moderators who bump into these players get an influx of layers on the server.
We want to capture this market; players should come directly to us when they want a new server to play on. Forums are what bridge the gap between a curious player and a server.
There are many Minecraft-related forums out there; you should be aware of all the popular ones. For starters, after that, all the lower ranking ones, this will help you monopolize the entire Minecraft Forum space.
How to this, though?
It’s pretty simple; you’ll need to hunt these curious players on forums, so you need to be on the constant lookout to don’t miss out on any opportunity. Whenever you find a player trying to find a new server, just tell him how great your server is and provide a link.
Sites like Reddit and Quora are really popular. Many other server moderators already use this technique to gather players for their servers; you need to convince players to join your server over them; for this, your server should be top-notch. For your server to be top-notch make sure you have a decent Minecraft hosting server that’ll cater to all your needs!
Also, an alternate approach to this might be by creating your site. It will serve as an entry point and instruction manual for your server. And using this site, you can get a lot of new players.
SEO, i.e., search engine optimization is the key here; make relevant blog posts and articles regarding your server or anything related to Minecraft. S the next time someone needs help regarding a new server, your site will show up first!
This unlocks lots of new potential players that’ll join your server! And apart from that, learning SEO isn’t as tedious as it seems on the surface. Once you get a basic idea, you’re good to go!
Social Media
Social Media apps are gold mines for server moderators, and there is no greater concentration of Minecraft players anywhere else on the internet. Especially on Instagram and Facebook, both these sites have tons and tons of big Minecraft pages with millions of followers, which only shows the number of Minecraft enthusiasts on the platform.
You should start by opening an account named after your server and start promoting it via posts. This requires no money whatsoever and helps you reach thousands of possible players for free!
Though it may take some time to gain momentum when you first start, once you have followers in three digits, the job becomes much easier than before. Experimenting with different hashtags will help out a lot as well, and using high-quality images for posts will also help attract players to your page.
You can also post memes on the regular; this will keep your followers engaged. And for the high-quality posts, you can use canva; it is free to use the tool and has a lot of free templates; you just need to add relevant images, and you’re done; you’ll have a great post in no time!
Referrals
You’ve seen referral systems; they’re on every central platform that deals with money. So you refer some friend to this app of yours and if he downloads it via your link, you get rewarded. It is one of the oldest tricks in the book and still hit’s a home run every time you play with it!
Simply let all the players on your server know about your referral system, incentivize them to bring more players by giving away special rewards. This will create a chain of free advertising for you, a friend refers to his friend, and he refers to another, which goes on and on, leaving you with a substantial number of players to deal with!
The rewards you provide should be of use in the server only; this way, you won’t be spending any real money, and as a server moderator, this shouldn’t be hard at all.
Paid Social Ads
Facebook and Google are the most prominent ad platforms globally; they have billions of users logging in and logging out every day. Fortunately, the prices they charge for advertising are not a lot, especially if you’re targeting a niche audience, like Minecraft!
Both Facebook and Google ads are a great way of advertising the more traditional way, and yes, it works every time; you’ll get a good amount of players by paying for ads. And if you want the best out of the deal, you can hire a freelancer who deals with ads on these platforms; the prices these people charge are cheap.
On Fiverr, you can go as cheap as $5 and get a good result. The only reason why this technique is ranked so low is because of the money needed to do it. Not every server moderator will have enough cash to put up ads. And in the beginning, you need to save cash, so try finding a nice and cheap Minecraft server hosting site!
Concluding further…
No matter how hard you advertise or how great your ads are, the players will leave as soon as possible if your server isn’t good enough. So first, make sure to have a great server up and running with features unlike any other, and then think about marketing it to the world. And as we know, to have a great server you need great hosting for minecraft server, there are a lot of options out there, but ElixirNode is unlike any other, so make sure to give it a try, you’ll see the difference! You can read about our 3 plan breakdown here.