Moving on from the previous article, today we will be discussing what stores you should use, how to set up the store theme, a guide to EULA, how to grow your Minecraft server with advertisements and more.
1. Choosing a store to monetize your server
Before we get started there are some considerations to take into account and be aware of.
Minecraft’s Commercial Usage Guidelines or EULA specifically state that selling any in-game benefits for real-world money is forbidden. It states that items, commands, plugin functionality, and similar are not allowed to be sold for any real-world money. This however does not include things that don't affect the actual gameplay; which you can still sell cosmetics, ask for donations, and sponsorships. These are allowed.
Currently, there are two stores you could use to start selling perks to your server community. These are Tebex or Craftingstore. Each webstore provider will have different features and pricing plans so it is important to check them both out to see if you have specific needs one covers but the other does not.
In my opinion, Tebex would be best for an aspiring server owner who wishes to profit from their server. This is due to Tebex's excellent chargeback protection policy. They handle all types of fraud and even fight chargebacks on your behalf. If you win or lose a chargeback, you still keep all your original earnings. However, for someone who is on a budget Craftingstore would be better as you can have most features Tebex offer for a small fee or free.
Choosing a store theme and guide to setting it up
Before you set on choosing a store theme, you should already have a theme that your server will revolve around. For example, if your server revolves around RPG you would prefer to have an RPG-themed store, don't you?
Wynncraft store for example is consistent with the theme that the server set for themselves. Unfortunately, this is pretty expensive and hefty work for a beginner server to work with. Regardless, if you have good artistic and coding skills you could attempt to make one yourself with Tebex or Craftingstore as they allow full access to HTML & CSS code which allows you to replicate your existing website's layout and match their custom templates. Either that or you can create your own CMS pages if you have the skills for it.
(Images taken from Tebex)
(Image taken from CraftingStore)
2. How to advertise your server
Servers are fun when you get to play and enjoy the game with many players. This however can be tricky and hard for new server owners due to competing against the abundance of new Minecraft servers coming up every day and the already existing ones. Before you advertise your server it is important to make sure your server is ready and tested for players and create a good player retention strategy, making sure players regularly play the server and bring along their friends too as a bonus!
The only way free method to advertise your server is to put your servers on Voting sites. These websites are some of the most popular to publish your servers in.
Make sure to make your voting rewards worth it to vote for, and regularly host competitions such as Vote Top Rewards in order to reward your players and entice new players to vote for the server. My advice when using Vote Sites is to know what country you should put your server in. For example, you are aiming for the Philippines community and this means you are only competing against a handful of Filipino-based servers which makes your server stands out more. This is better than setting your server in the USA and competing against hundreds or thousands of servers.
Another way of advertising your server is to contact Streamers, or Youtubers to promote or sponsor your server. This method however is quite costly and can only be used if you have the money for it.
That’s all. Thanks for reading the second part of the article!