Making money / paying for a server

[RebelNode]

So... this is probably the biggest problem for most server owners, but still there are yet no threads about it. Let's start one.

I have been running a server successfully for over 6 months now. Every month we have gotten just enough donations from players so that I can pay for the server without having to use too much of my own money. I am however very tired of having to worry about it so much every month. Some time ago we used to make it easily every month but lately it has been much harder for whatever reason.

I would like tips from you guys to how I could raise some money to pay for my server. How do you do it? Just get some donations and pay the rest yourself? Advertisements on your website? Have your players do surveys or other shit like that? Hack banned user accounts and sell them on black market? Get funded by the Vatican for telling all the kids on your server about jesus?

I just cannot justify spending 50 €/month on a video game from my own pocket, so as you might guess, I need some better options than the some of the ones above.

[xjjon88]

Well it depends how much you pay for your server, the more you pay, the more you need to make back. And it really depends, are you running your server/site as a business or are you running it as a hobby?

If you're running it a business, you need much more than just a server. Expand your site, expanding your site will give you more opportunities for monetization. For example, add relevant content. Content brings in visitors, visitors = $$$. Content can be anything, videos, articles, even contests. Remember: content is king.

If you're running it as a hobby (i.e. a video game) then your going to have to expect to shell out some money and go into red zone. But remember, you're enjoying it, it's a hobby, rarely do you not have to spend for a hobby. If someone comes a long and donates, then great, their helping out a little bit.

I've been running websites for over ten years now, first it started as a hobby and now it's more of a side income. It's tough to make money online, but don't get discouraged. Start by building your site, once you have a successful site, money will flow in. There's no point in slapping ads for your 1c a day if you only have 1000 viewers.

You can PM me if you have any questions, I wouldn't mind providing some more pointers.

[mikekrason]

I gotta say. In the case of my server, the initial investment was the hardest, but after I put a ton of money in, I quickly made my money back, and I got so much back in 1 month, I paid for the server for the next 3 months in advance. And that's no hefty task, paying for a fully upgraded dedicated server 3 months in advance. I wont specify exactly, but the bill is around 300$ per month. But off of that don't just run a server, I run a community. I run a tekkit server on 18GB, a vanilla on 6GB, a hunger games server on 4GB, a few contest servers, a TeamFortress 2 Server.

As Xjjon88 said above, content is king. I started slowly on a tekkit server hosted off my computer, and grew from there. Once you get your infrastructure set up, (website,forums,buycraft premium, teamspeak3, reliable staff) It is quite easy to expand and grow once you have all of that set up. Suprisingly, I run this as a hobby. Once you get it set up, it becomes low maintainence.

Don't expect to make a profit of it, at least not while getting started. I took all the donations, and put them back into the server, and now it is paid for a while, and it is fully upgraded.

The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. I spent a whole day fixing, rewriting, and adding pictures to my technic forums post, and the day after I did that, the server grew almost instantly! You just have to motivate them to donate. Like I said, since I put all donations back into the server, I would just ask them what they want. If they say "TeamSpeak", I would look into the price for that, and tell them " If you want TeamSpeak, we need **$ to be donated". Then they encourage each other to donate, and overall, it improves the server.

If you have any questions, or want any help, PM me, Add me on skype: mikekrason or send me a email at [email protected] . I'd be glad to help!

[Diabloz]

I invest the donation money on stocks... and i payed for 3 years in advance when i sold out big, i don't really worry about it anymore, i get donations once in a while which I'm planning on investing 3 years ahead if I'm still running a server.

[greedseed]

Running your server to make money on is a hard task.

Let me explain why.

Just donations wil work for the first month or so since most players wil donate and then they have donated thats it.

They dont donate again since they already have.

A way to get them to donate again is to have "membership".

But then again this is a bitch to balance! Since you dont want a server where a donator "membership" is to OP over normal members

since then normal players will leave and your server will die!

It is possible to have a member system! but you need to think long and hard about it! Give normal players a way to enjoy the game as much as the donators and give the donators a bit more so they have a reason to donate but do this without killing "non donating" rank. If you get where i am gooing at.

We get this by giving

Normal user:

1 set home

Teleport cooldown

2.400$ for Bronze kit

Donator :

2 set homes

Free /Kit every 30 days

No teleport cooldown

Supporter ( This is a free rank but a hard one to get since its picked by hand by the Server team):

3 Set homes

Free /kit every 30 days

No teleport kooldown

Extra server slots for this group

You kan add this more the way you like and tune this. We will change out and add a extra rank soon so look at this and see what keeps your server happy

[RebelNode]

I think we have struck the balance with donator ranks pretty nicely. We allow donators to have Swiftwolf's rending gale (aka. the flying ring) but regular players can also fly with jetpacks (which are just a bit more annoying to use than rending gales). If you donate even more you get the extra sethomes and access to /tpa and whatnot. I do wish I could change some of the perks though, since I have supposedly gotten wiser since the early days of the server. But once you pick some you gotta go with what you got I suppose.

I don't need to make more money than what's needed to pay for the server, but sure enough it would be nice to have some buffer.

[warpspeed10]

I do wish I could change some of the perks though, since I have supposedly gotten wiser since the early days of the server. But once you pick some you gotta go with what you got I suppose.

You could always grandfather old donators in, allowing them to keep their past perks, and change the rank a bit for new donators.

[Jeffdonatic]

We have a investor in our server helps alot

[Skuli]

I am on the hobbyist end. I have a decent little server, can host up to 35 people, I just pay for it out-of-pocket.

I may add a donation link, but no perks or in-game rewards.