Building a Discord community requires a consistent effort, and managing a large audience as it grows demands financial and human resources. As expenses increase, it makes sense to consider monetizing your Discord server.
While monetization revenue can help you administer your community more efficiently, adequate financial resources will enable you to deliver more value to your community without worrying about money. Ultimately, it is a win-win situation for you and your server members.
If you are also interested in monetizing your Discord server, here are a few official ways to monetize your audience.
1. Leverage the Discord Server Subscription Program
Since it’s a subscription service, members need to pay each month to keep enjoying access to the benefits. It is up to server owners to decide how much to charge, and they can provide multiple subscription tiers to cater to different audiences. As of this writing, Discord takes only 10% of the total revenue and gives the remainder to server owners.
To monetize your server using the Server Subscription program, you must be 18 years or older, have no serious violations on your record, have a verified email address and phone number, and have two-factor authentication enabled. Besides that, you must offer your audience something valuable they will appreciate and be willing to pay you for.
How to Set Up a Discord Server Subscription
To activate a Discord Server Subscription, you need to convert your server into a community. If you aren’t sure whether this conversion has already been made, click on the server’s name in the top-left corner and selectServer Settings.
If you see tabs such as Overview, Onboarding, and Server Insights, under the Community section, your server is already a community.
If you don’t see that, you’ll see a singleEnable Communitytab indicating the community is not yet enabled.
In that case, navigate to theEnable Communitytab and clickGet Startedto start the conversion process.
Following that, Discord will prompt you to go through three steps: safety checks, setting up the basics, and finishing touches. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete each step. Finally, clickFinish Setupto convert your server into a community.
Once you’ve done that, go to theServer Subscriptionstab, and Discord will guide you through the process of completing basic requirements, adding members to create teams, setting up payment options, and more.
Take advantage of all the tools Discord offers to get the most out of the server subscription program.
2. Receive Tips or Donations From the Community
Therefore, for users who would like to occasionally reward the work you do for the community, you should provide a way for them to do that. The right way is to give users the option to send you small tips or donations whenever they want.
In return, you can offer your donors a special role, access to a few premium channels, customDiscord badges, or similar perks in exchange for their support. Hopefully, this would also encourage others to support your efforts.
To receive donations from your audience, you must integrate and set up the Donate bot, which automates the process of accepting donations and makes the entire procedure easy for both donors and server owners. If you want, you can also set up a tip jar to receive tips from your community.
How to Set Up a Donation Bot in Discord
To configure the Donate bot in your Discord server, follow the below steps:
Once you add the PayPal email, your store will go live, and you can begin receiving donations. To accept donations, either copy and pin thePublic Checkout Linkin your server or type/donate, which will request the members to follow the link and support your server.
The default donation with Donate bot is $5, which can go up to $1,005 in a single donation. Those who wish to donate more will have to donate twice.
If you want your community to support you with tips rather than donations, you can set up aTip Jar botjust like the Donate bot. You can alsomanually add the bot to your Discord server.
Most third-party bots require users to grant them access to their Discord accounts. If you don’t want them to intrude on your privacy, you may use any third-party platform to receive tips, such asBuy Me a Coffee.
Create an account on the platform and pin the link in one of your channels to receive tips and donations.
The Right Way to Monetize Your Discord Server
Monetizing your Discord server is a great way to reap the rewards of your hard work in building a loyal community. Hopefully, you now better understand the official ways to monetize your server.
Make both options available to your server members so they can contribute monthly or occasionally as they wish.
