How to Make Money with Your Minecraft Server

Are you thinking to start a Minecraft game server, and want make money from it?

Monetizing Minecraft servers can be a great way to lower server costs. Money from donations can also be used for adding extra content.

To help you make money with your Minecraft server we have listed 5 different ways that you can replicate from successful server owners.

Why Monetize a Minecraft Server

Monetizing a Minecraft server is crucial, except if you run it as a hobby. But even for a hobby, receiving extra income to upkeep is crucial.

Donations play a big part in developing servers. It’s a critical factor for server developers, who create and flip servers on a daily basis.

After all, Minecraft has a huge market for buying or selling established servers.

Not monetizing could only restrict your players from showing appreciation in the form of donations. Also, some of the new players prefer to purchase server cosmetics or perks.

Benefits of Monetizing a Minecraft Server

Monetizing your Minecraft server comes with additional benefits. After all, income helps servers to stay alive and release new content for the project.

To make things easier for you, we will list the benefits of monetizing your Minecraft server.

Lower Server Cost

When you start receiving donations, you pay less from your pocket for hosting plans. You also start getting a return on your investment.

Server costs are important, especially, when hosting companies come with great expenses.

Opportunity to upgrade your Minecraft server

A Minecraft server is usually started on a self-hosted or shared server. Both of these solutions are good for the short term only. A good Minecraft server is usually placed on a dedicated server with high resources.

That’s where donations come and give you the advantage of upgrading. Lowering the costs from your pocket could also help with paying for better hardware.

Helps with Growing your Minecraft Server

Donations are the sole reason for upkeeping and upgrading Minecraft servers. The more income an owner receives, the wider budget he has for upgrades.

These upgrades can result in more content, cosmetics, or custom plugin solutions.

5 Ways to Make Money on Minecraft Servers

Earning money with a Minecraft server is relatively easy. The only things you need to be careful with are your players, your server’s mission, and Minecraft’s guidelines.

If you are not familiar with the conditions, make sure to read Mojang’s EULA. It restricts selling in-game items, which are exclusive to donators.

To prevent you from making a mistake, we have listed 5 ways to make money from your Minecraft server, without breaking the rules.

Paid Priority Queue

Once in a while, some Minecraft servers become exclusive and very popular. When huge waves of players start coming through, it’s hard to upkeep a server.

A good way to prevent losses and monetize  from Minecraft servers is by including paid membership. For example, you can place players in a queue.

Premium players may skip queue waiting times, and access the game faster. There is no problem with offering queue spots, as this does not make anybody overpowered.

On top of that, you could maintain a healthier server and prevent crashes.

A premium queue is also good since players like to be treated as VIP members. You could also create a second queue for non-premium players, where the most active ones enter with priority.

This way you would concrete a positive standing, and prevent discouraged players.

Paid Membership Worlds

Paid memberships are another possibility for monetizing a Minecraft server. With a paid membership, you can charge your players for server access.

That would be possible with whitelisting. You can create different types of worlds, and divide them into premium and non-premium worlds.

You can also offer the newest content for players under a paid membership fee. Most of the players prefer to see Minecraft content before anyone else.

Also, those who like to play on your server would prefer to access the premium Minecraft world. It all depends on how dedicated your player base is.

Donations

Setting up a small donation store could earn your tremendous income. People love to spend money on Minecraft servers. However, it depends on what you are offering.

While the Mojang EULA forbids OP items, perks are one of the safest items to offer to donators.

These perks would include, keys for boxes, trails, pets, and other cosmetic items. If your server offers esthetic and cosmetic items, you can offer them for small donations.

Most of the big servers sell these items and earn a living from donations. You can also expect prices to triple when you offer holiday discounts or limited rare items.

Events

Running events is a great way to monetize the server. The main reason for events is to get more players or raise money.

Many Minecraft servers invest money in ads to advertise their special server events. On top of that, the Minecraft players who enter their servers, make a purchase.

The big thing about promoting your server on an event is what offer, and how it’s different from the others. If you have a big event giving money, expect to receive hundreds of players.

You can also charge players for entering this event, and offer viewers to pay for watching the event live.

After completing the event, you can always reward players for watching, and keep the rest of the income gathered.

Nonetheless, you could also reward the ones who paid to watch the event. Limited rewards keep the player base active, and could result in future donations.

Rent your Minecraft Server

The last and best way to of earning money with your successful Minecraft server is by renting it. It may sound like a non-traditional way, but most server developers do this.

Once you build a steady player base, you can always start a network of servers and rent them out.

New server owners search for ways to obtain a server and start their monetization. Taking the hard work from you, and making a player base could be beneficial in many ways.

However, in some cases renting your server may actually discourage players from being active. Changing the server owners and staff gives a weak point to management.

So before renting out your server, or network, make sure to find a long-term buyer.

Is running a Minecraft server profitable

Running a Minecraft server is profitable when you have a strategy. Without a plan, you are dooming yourself of taking steps in different directions.

If you want to make a profit from your Minecraft server start off with collecting donations.

There are many donation plugins for Minecraft servers, which let you set up a store and earn from it.

The last step would be finding an audience to monetize your server better. Most server owners believe that 90% of the players on a server don’t pay.

But if you have what to offer, many players would actually pay to receive it. Especially when it comes to lifetime cosmetic Minecraft items.