How to promote a Minecraft server
Setting up a Minecraft server isn’t always the hardest part; there are many other things to consider, such as how to attract players. After all, even a good server needs promotion – players won’t just turn up on their own.
On this page, you can find out about various promotion methods and how effective they are. We draw on our own experience, so we know what we’re talking about.
Contents:
1. Promoting your server via YouTube channels
2. Buying top positions or adverts on server monitoring sites
3. Spamming server adverts in comments on VK and other platforms
4. Placing adverts on TLauncher
Promoting a server via YouTube channels.
Server administrators with a starting budget or an already established budget assume that, since YouTubers have a large number of views and subscribers, they can encourage people to play on the advertised server. However, as our research shows, this is far from the case. Just to give an example, a channel with 500,000 subscribers has ITS OWN(!) server with only 150–200 players online.
It’s important to realise that their server is advertised in practically every video, not to mention a whole series of videos dedicated to the server. And what will you get? At such (inflated!) prices, you can only afford a mention at the start of the video – surely you don’t think you’ll attract many interested players? Twenty to forty at most, and that’s the absolute limit, while the cost of the advertising campaign is out of proportion to such a result.
Effectiveness rating: 2 out of 5
Here’s the number of players online on one channel’s server: with 600,000 subscribers and adverts under every video, the results aren’t impressive. P.S. Yes, we’ve seen YouTubers’ servers with more players online, but as our research has shown, they all relied on external advertising beyond their own channels...
Buying top positions or adverts on server monitoring sites
For some, this is one of the main methods of promotion, but many remain dissatisfied with the quality: huge sums spent on advertising and only a small number of players attracted. It is extremely difficult to recoup any costs at all with this advertising; the only ones who make money are these dishonest monitoring sites, which inflate the price.
Effectiveness rating: 3 out of 5
The cost of placement on these monitoring sites is high, even in lower positions, where servers have dismally low player counts. Bear in mind that the servers in the top positions usually have huge budgets and place adverts in many places simultaneously! If you rely on monitoring sites alone, you won’t get that many players online:
Spamming server adverts in comments on VK and other platforms
The most pointless method of all those presented on this page… It involves simply posting a huge number of promotional messages in VKontakte public groups. But it’s obvious that these groups quickly remove this content (and where they don’t, it means the admins have given up on the group and people aren’t active there anymore), and practically no one takes the bait with such adverts; users have got used to them and simply ignore them. In fact, servers lose their reputation: if they stoop to this, people start to see them as bad servers. In other words, for the server owner, it’s simply a waste of time – and sometimes money too.
Effectiveness rating: 1 out of 5
This is the sort of peak player count you see on servers promoted through this kind of spam. Incidentally, such servers don’t usually last long… We checked many servers advertised in this sort of spam, and after just a month, only 1 in 10 was still up and running.
Advertising on TLauncher
One of the promotional methods we offer involves listing your server in a dedicated list in TLauncher. This method has proven highly effective; the small number of servers, combined with the launcher’s vast audience, yields simply astonishing results. Given the reasonable price, this could be one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your server. Many servers have already tested its effectiveness; our website has a page with reviews. All the necessary information on placing adverts can be found on the dedicated TLauncher advertising page.
Effectiveness rating: 5 out of 5
Below is a small selection of the servers that have been advertised on TLauncher; most now have very respectable online player counts and continue to advertise (those listed for longer attract more players online).
After reading our research on promoting Minecraft servers, it becomes clear that, at present, TLauncher is the most sensible investment, one that will genuinely attract new players and pay for itself. The other methods have had their day; they may have been useful a long time ago, but their time has passed!
Feel free to share your server promotion stories in the comments; many people will be interested to read them.