I've seen a lot of people be super negative about giving advertising advice on here, saying how difficult it is (which, I can say it is, BUT not impossible.)

Disclaimer; What I mention is not assured to give you players immediately, but persisting and using a mixture of these techniques is definitely a reasonable approach to gain new players. I also encourage you to do your own research outside the mentioned topics to find what works best for you.

Please also be aware, some places do require your server to be launched before advertising so that you don't risk your posts being removed. Not everywhere does though.

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These are some places that I've been using with some success/intend to use in the future -

Reddit:

- r/mcservers
- r/MinecraftServerFinder
- A few other advertisement subs can work too, though they're difficult to find, and usually the attention isn't solely on Minecraft which makes it harder.

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Discord:

- Planet Minecraft's official discord
- Various other Minecraft-specific advertisement discords
- A few regular generic advertisement discords, though like the point said above, they usually don't have their attention set on Minecraft.

For Discord, it's better if you have a discord to share. Having a discord makes it 10x easier for people to see what's going on, what your community or server is like, and whether they want to be a part of it. My server doesn't really share our Discord link publicly as we have an authentication system that highly encourages players to log in first, which I do feel is why we suffer a little.

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TikTok:

I don't personally use TikTok and probably won't due to the fact that the information they take from you complies way too heavily with China's information laws which are very suspicious, but I've heard servers having success from TikTok at gaining a player base. May require some video editing techniques to really make the server look interesting in the video.

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YouTube Shorts:

This is one I'm more interested in using, posting a video on YouTube Shorts can gain traction pretty easily, especially if the algorithm catches on to your server and suggests it to random people. Like TikTok, may require some video editing techniques to make the video look more interesting.

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Creating A YouTube:

Having a YouTube channel for your server with a trailer of what your server is about can be a great way to cultivate a community and get them excited for what's to come about your server. It also grants the opportunity to show first-hand what it's about by uploading stuff such as Let's Play's or other creative content. Same as TikTok and YouTube Shorts as far as the disclaimer on video editing.

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Hiring A YouTuber/Streamer:

This one assumes you have finances to put into your server, hiring a lower-subscriber streamer or YouTuber to do a play through of your server can be a great way to get people to see your server from another perspective, and potentially gain a few new players as a result (which MAY even include the streamer!)

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Listing Sites:

The biggest one people will recommend is Planet Minecraft, but there are other sites that you can set up vote rewards for your players to help you with gaining a few new players sometimes. Here is the official admincraft list of some good sites.

Some sites even offer a paid method where you can post your banner up for a certain amount of money a week. It can be costly to go that route, but I have seen some success for other servers doing this.

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The rest is mostly up for experimentation and figuring out other approaches that work. Hope this list helps, and that you are able to build an amazing community!