I cant do this by myself unfortunately. It's going to take as many members of the community as possible to make this work.
In like 2014 me and Xurnt started pumping money into advertising the server. We probably spent like $200 each. The way we did it was through Facebook advertising. I created a facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/War2TidesOfDarkness/ and had the ability to "Boost" posts. Boost literally means "spend money to advertise this post"
Long story short it was successful. The server grew (temporarily) by like 50% at some stages of our advertising. We went from like 60 peak active users to 90 peak active users for a short amount of time.
Why didnt it last long term? The number one reason is that even with the 50% increase in temporary users, it wasnt enough to overcome the majority of skilled users who wanted nothing to do with them. They were booted/banned out of so many games that there was no reason for them to continue playing... and I can't say I blame them. Who wants to participate on a server where the biggest challenge is actually finding people who will let them play?
I've learned some over the last few years about how to properly advertise. I'm going to do more research on it. The biggest factors are the amount of time the AD runs(The longer the better), and the targeted demographic. Unortunately me and Burnt were just kinda going into it blindly at the time.
So I'm asking the community to help me come up with $1,000 USD so we can run an AD promoting the server for 30 days straight. I'll personally donate $100.
I'd like to run this AD by March 1st. So we will have like 7 weeks to reach this goal of $1,000.
I'm open to brainstorming on things like targeted demographics, how to run the ad, and what content we will actually be advertising that is most likely to catch people's eye. I currently have thoughts on all of the above, but i'll definitely listen if someone has better ideas.
I want to keep everything 100% transparent. $1000 is not a small amount of money and anyone donating needs to know that it's going towards what it is intended to go towards. I will be posting How much money is donated, and Who has been donating ... If its from an anonymous donor, it will be listed as such here. When the advertising actually gets started I will be taking regular screen shots to show all of the analytics that state how much has been spent, how much remains to be spent, how many people have viewed the AD, how many people have clicked etc...
If at any point someone decides they no longer want to donate (between now and March 1st) I have no problem sending their money back to them.
If we dont come close to reaching the $1,000 number, I'll be sending all money back. I dont want to advertise the server unless it's going to work, and the reality is that it's going to take a substantial amount of money to be successful long term.
If you're already in, and want to contribute.. all donations will be sent to spencermarkguffey@yahoo.com ...Anything will help.. even $5 if that's all you can afford.
We have about 7 weeks to make it happen, and i'm open to ideas/suggestions between now and then to make sure we get the most bang for our buck.
We need to BUILD this community. It's really our only chance at surviving another 5-10 years... And I truly believe we can if we come together as a community to make it happen.
