Starting a successful Minecraft server is not easy one bit, take it from an experienced server owner! From choosing the best minecraft server hosting to making up the content of your server to actually attempting to get players. In the end, the servers that make it have owners behind them that persevered and never gave up! Which is the ultimate key to running a successful server. In this article, we’re gonna go through the basics of what you need to do to start a successful Minecraft server.
Choosing Gamemode(s)
There are so many gamemodes to choose from when it comes to starting up your Minecraft server. It’s important to know which gamemodes are trending which may have some weight into your decision in which gamemode you choose. But loving a gamemode is more important, as you need the passion to run your Minecraft server successfully.
Here is a complied list of some popular gamemodes we collected for you!
– Factions: Lucky for you, you can go here to learn how to create a minecraft factions server from scratch, we made it all for you! Factions is a popular game mode for Minecraft Multiplayer Servers. Most Factions servers use version 1.8.8 because it is the last version with the old PvP mechanics. Factions is essentially survival Minecraft with a slight twist where players can join teams and battle other teams and steal territory, loot etc.. Factions isn’t very difficult to get up and running depending on how complex you want to make it.
– Creative: It is just like what it sounds, creative mode! Creative usually involves downloading a plugin such as PlotSquared or any other plot plugin to allow players to claim a plot and start building creatively!
– Survival: When it comes to survival, there is a wide arrange of gamemodes that can branch from survival itself. You can have standard vanilla survival, economy survival, towny survival, etc. but they all follow a general principle in which players must play Minecraft survival to progress somehow in the game.
– Skyblock: You create an island, you build it up, you try to be rich. Skyblock is simple but can be made very complex, examples can be like Hypixel skyblock or CosmicSky. Skyblock is a very popular and fun gamemode, be unique when doing it!
– Prisons: We’ve noticed that prisons has been on the decline when it comes to popularity, we don’t recommend you run a prisons server unless you have the passion and idea to do so! Prisons essentially requires players to go into mines and mine ores to make money as a major aspect of the game, then players may get a cell to store things and do other stuff.
– Minigames: If you’ve never heard of Hypixel, then do you really play Minecraft java multiplayer? Minigames are by its name, mini (small) gamemodes that go pretty fast which means they quickly end. They can be super fun and provide you quick joy.
After you’ve made a decision on which gamemode(s) you’d like, we can move on to the next step! Notice the “(s)” since you may choose to run multiple servers under a BungeeCord network.
Choosing Hosting
There’s a lot when it comes to hosting, we have created numerous articles regarding it which we will link below:
– Minecraft hosting vs VPS hosting
– Minecraft server hosting 3 tiers comparison
– VPS hosting 2 tiers comparison
– What is VPS hosting
then we will briefly touch upon choosing the right plan generally.
When it comes to choosing which hosting option and which plan, it is important to know what type of server you’re running, how many plugins, how many players, and all such information regarding your server. After that, you can analyze how much power and resources you need and also to know how much you want to decide to invest into hosting section of running your Minecraft server.
An article not in the resources list is dedicated server, generally we recommend using dedicated servers when your server makes enough money which is generally around the 30-50+ players consistently range.
Otherwise, for most server owners, you’ll find that Minecraft server hosting is the way to go! At ElixirNode, we offer the best Minecraft server hosting around.
Creating the Server
GOAL
Once we have figured out all the basics, we need to discuss actually creating and running the Minecraft server. It is important to first clarify to yourself, what is my goal? What is the goal that you have in mind when it comes to creating your own Minecraft server? It is money? Is it just players? It is for you to have fun with your friends? Do you wanna build a community? Your goal can be any of these things, it’s important to single it out to not only focus on it, but to be your reminder as a motivation whenever time gets tough because as we’ve stated, running a Minecraft server is tough!
BUILDS
When players first join your server, they will either see a hub or a server spawn, depending on if you run a Minecraft server network or an individual server. That building they see will be the player’s first impression regarding your Minecraft server, which is highly important. It is important therefore to invest in builds wherever you can, whether you and your friend build it or whether you hire builders. Ensure you have every aspect of your server built such as perhaps a duel arena, prison mines, etc. You may be tempted to take the downloading maps route, whilst you may want to do this slightly at the beginning, ensure the bread and butter of the server such as the spawn or hub is downloaded, we’d only recommend doing it for duels or mines perhaps, if you don’t have the budget to pay for it all.
PLUGINS/MODS
Downloading public plugins, especially from spigotmc, is generally safe and good! You can find that there is a public plugin for every aspect of your server that you wish, however, don’t think you’ve got it just yet! To make your server more unique, you will need unique aspects too, this will require you to pay for custom development. We would recommend this highly for server owners with higher budget, as this allows the Minecraft server to be more unique and therefore more enjoyable.
When it comes to mods, it is generally not recommended for you to run plugins/mods together through magma or spongeforge. If you decide to go mods only then we do not recommend you run a public server, that would generally be best for playing with friends or a community of friends that know each other (i.e not public).
MONETIZATION
Money is needed as our next section will tell you. Monetizing your Minecraft server is what allows you to earn money back to be able to put more into your server or even reap some profits! Our #1 recommendation for monetizing through donations/purchases is Tebex, although you can give CraftingStore a try although we do not recommend it, you would have to use it at your own risk, but Tebex is guaranteed to be good and secure! Monetizing your server through other means such as ads is generally not recommended and won’t generate much.
BUDGET
Perhaps the most important aspect of running a Minecraft server is having a high budget. As with all business, money makes money. For a public server this is especially true, paying for server costs is very important and the more money you have the better and the more choices you’ll have! It is important to have a good budget to start a public server, but if that’s not you then you can run a small community or friends server easily! As after all, we do have a $0.85/GB Minecraft hosting tier.
Getting Players
WORD OF MOUTH
The classic way of advertising anything including a Minecraft server! Word of mouth can include anything from letting your Minecrafters family or friends know about your Minecraft server. Then when they enjoy it they’ll tell their friends and the cycle keeps going and your server will then have players out of nowhere, completely for free. However, this is much harder said than done and usually requires a substantial amount of people to get it going. It also requires an unbelievably amazing experience given to players to urge them to do these things.
SERVER SLOTS
Make sure you have your server listed on all popular Minecraft server lists. You should then reward your players for voting for your Minecraft server, this also requires a good amount of players to get going. So when it comes to server slots, if you have a high enough budget, server slots may be something to consider. However, we generally recommend server slots for larger servers with at least 75-100 consistent players. Nevertheless, it is an option you may consider for your Minecraft server.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Minecraft servers is not rewarding enough, it is an option we recommend for very large servers in order to continue growing. However, for smaller servers and especially starting servers, it is highly not recommended as it can take over a year to get SEO going for your server without any guaranteed results at all.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Last but not least, social media. This includes both free and paid social media, getting your accounts actively posting on a daily basis and getting players through outreaching on social media can be very rewarding. When it comes to paid social media, we generally do not recommend paid ads for Minecraft server directly through social media such as youtube ads or facebook ads. Instead, we recommend you take the sponsorship route in social media, this has been in our experience, the best return you can get on your investment, although it is costly. Getting streamers on your server would be best for a starting up server, it can jump boost your server right away. Make sure you try to sponsor content creators that are in it for the long run!
That’s it! Let us know how your server goes on our twitter or instagram.
If you need help or have any further questions, contact us!