A Discord server can be considered an online asset as it can be monetized depending on its activity.
Notable pros of this business model are the low investment of time and money it requires once the ball gets rolling:
- The concept revolves around generating a community. Once it’s built, server owners handle important issues and take care of monetization. Also leads important changes to the server which are usually suggested by server members or moderators.
- Most of the moderation / engagement needed in the server is performed by the community itself since the most active and loyal members will usually volunteer for a moderation position just for the status or for little benefits within the server.
- If the community is big even the little expenses of the server will be covered by the community in form of server boosting, donations and even GFX art from volunteers or competitions.
This model may sound great but it also has a negative side:
- It may be hard to grow in members since the usual ways of promoting a discord server involve a lot of manual work. And it’s almost impossible to generate “organic” traffic. The key here is to provide value with the content so visitors have a reason to stay. This may be challenging considering usually the value within a discord server is its community and not the content itself.
How to grow in members on a discord server?
Server directories: list your discord server on server directory listings such as:
Advertise in other discord servers: other servers usually have a channel where members can advertise their own servers for free.
Partner with other servers: other server owners may allow you to have a channel promoting your server on their servers as long as you promote their server on yours.
Drive traffic from other platforms: if you have a large following on social medias, you can promote your discord servers there.
Paid advertising / promotions.
Some ways to monetize your discord server are:
- Affiliate programs such as the NordVPN affiliate program for discord server owners.
- Direct sales of advertising spaces (dedicated channels),
- Commissions or middleman services if there’s a marketplace in your discord.
- Sell your own digital products or services.