How to grow a Discord server quick and easy!
Growing a Discord server isn’t easy, nor is it a process that happens overnight. I’ve had many friends give up on their servers because they weren’t getting where they wanted, or didn’t want to put in time or effort into growing their server.
I’m the owner of a Discord server that currently has 200,000 members. Let’s get into how I grew my server to be so big, and what you can do to grow yours.
Listing sites
A good source of passive traffic to your Discord server is listing sites. Adding your server to as many listing sites as you can will increase the flow of members joining your server significantly and this is an excellent first step. When adding your server to a site, please be sure to use relevant tags and have your description be clear, concise and visually appealing to anyone that may read it. If you know how to optimize search keywords then go right ahead, using good tags and optimized keywords on listing websites will make your server easier to find on search engines. Some listing sites I recommend are as follows:
https://disboard.org/ — This site requires you to add a bot to your server. You set this bot up so that you can “bump” your server on Disboard every 2 hours to the top of the website. Disboard is an excellent free method of finding members for your server, especially if you have good tags.
Top.gg — This is the most used toplist for Discord. Adding your server here with good tags will generate a little bit of traffic. There is a voting system that allows servers to get higher up on the rankings for more visibility, but larger servers usually get the most votes so smaller servers will be at a disadvantage and shouldn’t focus on voting until they’re larger. Top.gg also has premium advertisement spots available in the form of “bidding” if you wish to spend money.
Discord.me — This is a simple listing site where you can bump every 6 hours. The servers with the most bump points get shown higher up on the list. There is also a premium feature that is available for $40 which gives you double the bump points per bump.
https://discords.com/ — Another simple listing site, there isn’t much to it but they offer a $15 premium advertising package that might be worth looking into.
https://discordhome.com — Brand new listing site that will get you several joins with its bump system.
discordservers.com — This server uses a unique “gem” system to rank servers. Don’t worry too much about that though, focus on adding your server with good tags because this site gets decent traffic.
These are just the most known, but there are several other listing sites that you can add your server to.
Partnerships
Partnerships are an excellent way to grow. Basically, two servers post advertisements for each other in their partnership channels, which members can view and join servers from. Having a well written, aesthetic advertisement message that clearly shows your community’s features will increase the member gain you get from partnerships. Partnering with servers of similar themes to yours will be most efficient, however I recommend not limiting your partnerships and opening them to every type of server within reason. You can hire partnership managers to help find partnerships for you, or even pay them to do mass partnerships resulting in many joins. If you like, you can also do mass partnerships yourself by joining PM portals and doing masses in them. I know this is very vague and might be hard to understand, however for more information on how massing works you can check out https://syuanime.medium.com/how-to-do-mass-partnerships-on-discord-63fbd8960f65
Paid Ads from other communities
Now I’ve been trying to avoid this since not many people have the budget for paid advertisement but I feel it’s important to add anyways. You can purchase advertisements from other servers, which usually are ping shoutouts, or welcome message advertisements. These are quick and effective methods of gaining hundreds of members to your Discord server. Paid ads aren’t limited to Discord however, and you may pay creators on Instagram, YouTube & more to advertise your server.
Advertising Communities
These aren’t the most effective way to grow, however they’re free and worthwhile if you’re just starting out.
https://www.reddit.com/r/discordservers/ First up is r/discordservers on reddit. Post here daily for maximum joins.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscordAdvertising/ Another subreddit where you can advertise your Discord!
AYS: https://discord.gg/jPrH3T3sW4 This is an advertising Discord where you can post your server’s ad every few hours.
Sound’s World: https://discord.gg/WsphvuEHyQ This is a massive Discord server by YouTuber “SoundDrout”. There are advertise channels here but you may need a certain rank to unlock them. I recommend unlocking by being active for a few days or simply boosting the server, as I get many joins from here.
SPC: https://discord.com/invite/AQcnWHpuVm A self promotion server
DGP: https://discord.gg/kZC4456hdk Basically another advertising Discord.
OB: https://discord.gg/etDpESGKQy Same as the above.
Feel free to search around the web to find communities that allow you to freely advertise!
Server Discovery
The Discovery is Discord’s in-app server searcher that allows users to search for servers by keywords. Discovery does have a high bar though and at the current moment you are required to have 1000 members to get put on Discovery. However, once unlocked, you have the potential to gain several hundred members per day from Discovery. Discovery uses your server’s name and overview as keywords, so be sure to put searchable terms in them.
Affiliating
Once you are growing at a decent rate, you can try DM affiliating with other servers of similar sizes. This is where both servers use a bot that has a DM welcome feature and feature each other’s server link to all of their new members. This is only really effective if you affiliate with fast growing servers, so save this one for when you’re a decent size.
There are also ping affiliates which are like partnerships but both servers ping everyone for the partnership. Honestly this is riddled with cons that in my opinion may outweigh the pros, but smaller/mid-sized servers may benefit from these. Just don’t overdo the pings!
Be Creative!
There are many creative ways a server can grow. Certain niches blow up on their own and require very little help to start growing. Others are a bit harder to grow, and require much time and patience. Finding unique methods of growth that suits your needs will help your server take off, and remember that the bigger you get, the easier it becomes to grow. Word of mouth for example is probably one of the BEST ways to grow, so providing a unique community that your members will share to their friends will help you grow immensely. Being creative on social media with posts that blow up is another clever way to gain traffic, where you can plug your server into! The possibilities are endless, and as long as you put in the time and effort, you can grow a server just like mine! Best of luck!
You can find my server at https://discord.gg/hot
