How Do Discord Server Owners Make Money? 5 Tips To Get You Started!
Discord is a popular social media platform with more than 250 million registered users available for all types of devices. It is primarily used for instant messaging and group communication, although it extends to more than that. Users can communicate via voice calls, video calls, text messages, share files in private chats, or participate in Discord servers communities.
Even though Discord was gaming-oriented, its popularity brought various interest groups together. Now the platform hosts many servers to talk about politics, tech, video games, or any other topic users find interesting. With its rising popularity, it’s no wonder that many server owners that have hundreds or thousands of members and want to make some money from their hard work keeping it alive and engaging.
Here are five tips on how to successfully monetize your discord server.
How to make a good discord server?
First of all, you’ll have to come up with discord server ideas. Be creative: there are tons of popular video games that still don’t have a discord server. But there are also technology-related ones, even dating servers! You might pick ideas from other popular discord servers and make your variation, which, who knows, could become even more popular!
Discord server owners spend a lot of time taking care of them: setting it up, keeping it running, up-to-date, and clean. It’s also necessary to set up discord server rules and a discord server banner. In the early stages, it’s easy to do it by yourself, but once your server grows, you’ll need additional help, and it’s not always accessible.
Another thing you might consider is upgrading your server to Discord Nitro. Discord Nitro was developed to provide better performance and server visibility. By subscribing to Nitro, you get extended features like higher resolution for your files, customized emotes, and more. Furthermore, you can use it for discord server boosting. It’s somewhat pricey, $9.99/month of $99.99/year, but it’s well worth the money if you can afford it.
How can Discord server owners make money?
As with every social media these day — you can monetize it! Discord is no exception, and there are few possibilities to earn money from a Discord server.
Below you will find five tips that can help you earn money with Discord.
1. Partnership program for Discord servers.
Unlike most other platforms, there is no built-in way to make money through ads in Discord; therefore, this is the perfect place for affiliate programs, partnerships, and sponsorships.
Currently, the cybersecurity market is booming, and some cybersecurity companies launched profitable affiliate programs to spread awareness of online safety. I am affiliated with NordVPN, an online privacy protection software with 15 million users and growing. They’ve launched a dedicated NordVPN partnership program for Discord server owners, making it much easier to start working with them. Plus, the commissions are great, proving 40% or 30% sell-share for new users or renewals, respectively.
Other big brands may have discord programs launched as well, and if anything, you can always proactively contact them yourself to offer discord advertising possibility. Becoming an affiliate for a company means that you promote their products or services to your audience, and if you refer someone who makes a purchase, you get a percentage from the sale. It’s a great way to generate some passive income from your server and offer your communities some special deals if you can get one.
A few other possible partnership programs:
2. Getting paid sponsorships for your server
This part can take some time as patience is the key here, but the result is worth your time. Being sponsored is a way to earn money from a company to better visibility and brand awareness. Various sponsorship rules exist, but often companies decide to have their logo and name displayed on the server or even on a discord server banner.
Since more prominent companies receive dozens of messages per day asking for sponsors, you will need to show your motivation and determination skills to convince people your server is worthy of sponsorship. And it’s always best to contact companies that have services relevant to your discord server community. For example, if you own a gaming server, companies such as MSI, Roccat, or PlaydBuzz are perfect matches.
Getting sponsors requires some outreach experience, so I attached an email template at the bottom of this article to help you make contacts. Remember that you usually have to have many members on your Discord server to get sponsorship as the companies will want more visibility. The bigger the server is, the more people will see the promotion.
3. Making your server paid members only
Here’s another monetization method for successful discord server owners. Not only will you increase the quality of your server, but you will also have a steady, predictable income. It’s similar to a closed forum and is often compared to an association where you only pay entry fees.
Discord also offers the possibility to create unique rooms inside the servers behind a paywall, while the rest are free to use. This way, you can attract more users, and in time the free ones will convert to paying ones if the server keeps evolving!
4. Accepting donations to keep your server running
This is one of the most underestimated discord server monetization methods. Several websites exist where it is possible to support the server financially directly. I have a Patreon account that sustains my server, and because our community is so related in interests and real life, they see no problem in donating a few dollars every month. And it helps me out a lot to take time and keep improving my server!
The best donation websites are:
It’s easy to set up, and the significant advantage is to let people decide on their donation. Generosity works pretty well, and it will attract more people if you explain your future projects for your server. Users will then consider it as an investment instead of a donation.
5. Advertising other servers on your server
This is one last way I can think of to make some money out of your server, although I’d use it as a last resort. It’s possible to promote another server on your server. This works simply by contacting servers’ owners asking them if they would agree to be featured on your welcome page, and you can negotiate benefits for doing that.
And that’d be all. If you have good Discord server ideas and a dedicated attitude towards discord server advertising — I genuinely believe you should monetize it successfully.
Discord has grown exponentially, and many companies are looking for affiliates to promote their products, so this might be a perfect chance to jump in!
As mentioned previously, It can sometimes be challenging to start the outreach, so I decided to attach the mail I used to send to various brands in the past. You are encouraged and free to tweak it to make it sounds more personal, don’t hesitate to give more details and explain your project entirely to bring more value.
Outreach email template
Hello,
I am the creator and owner of a Discord server [link to your channel]. The server is about [topic] and is related to your company’s services, so I’d like to feature your product on my discord server. Currently, I have [subscriber number] members. My Discord server has grown since its creation and continues to grow with new members joining daily.I want to promote your services since I consider them top-notch quality, and my community could benefit from them. I could advertise it on my Discord server with possible topics for relevant content and pinned posts that every member would see when joining the server. I could also set up a bot that could send the promotional message occasionally on my server so that the members could see your services regularly and get to know them better.
If this sounds like a good opportunity that you’d be interested in, we can discuss the necessary details for a future partnership.
Best wishes and looking forwards to hearing from you,
[your name and surname]
Final thoughts
The tips on how to earn money on Discord are ranked from the most valuable ones to the most difficult ones. I would recommend starting from the first step, and trying out partnerships. Then proceeding with further steps to increase your server’s revenue.
Discord is an easy and convenient way to earn money without requiring much time, but it requires know-how and effort.
If you’ve been spending a lot of time polishing your Discord server and building a community, definitely try to monetize it if you’re thinking of making it even further. It will reward you for your hard work and give you time and resources to improve your discord server further!
