Best Posts in Thread: Quick Guide To Monetizing Your Town

Chances are if you've been a mayor for long enough you've sunk at least 100,000 into building up your town. Town management is a very rewarding experience but I think we can all agree that it is also very expensive. This guide is going to share with you some information that could help you generate some town revenue to go towards building and maintaining your town.


Taxes

Taxes are the most obvious way to recuperate town expenses. These are charged from each resident of your town every 12 hours and go automatically into the town bank. If your town has a fairly small, tight-knit community or is made of mostly wealthy residents, you should set your taxes between 50-200, depending on what people want out of the town and what they're willing to put into it. If you're looking for rapid expansion of town population, however, you may unfortunately need to keep taxes at zero as many players (especially new players) look for this in a town.

Taxes are set using this command: /t set taxes [$amount]


Plot Taxes

This is probably the most effective way to generate town revenue. This tax is charged directly to plot owners per plot they own. Note that residents owning no plots are unaffected, as are residents who simply have building permissions on a plot but do not own it. Lets look at what plots costs the town:

Claim cost: $50/ea
Upkeep (bi-daily cost): $75/ea

This means that if your town has 10 plots, your upkeep will be 75 x 10= $750. You also will have paid a flat cost of 50 x 10 = $500. Therefore if you set your plot taxes to $80, in just 10 days you will start actually profiting off of that plot you gave to a resident - and that's just assuming the plot was given for free!


Plot Selling

Plot costs range from absolutely free to 5k+. It depends on the approach of your town. If you seek to remain relatively tax-free, it might be beneficial to charge more for plots in order to recuperate money.

What some towns do that is quite effective is give every resident 1 plot for free with the stipulation that every additional plot will cost x. This is a good way to both encourage new players to join your town and make money from your plots.


Donations

This is the classic town fundraising method. If you want to run a town that is relatively free of most costs it would be a good idea to ask residents for donations and post signs around town encouraging them to do so. Remind players that donations are vital in order for their town to thrive. You can find creative ways to make residents want to donate including making a donation top board at spawn to show off how much a resident has contributed.


VIP

VIP is a town rank that does nothing besides absolve you from taxes. However, even in a tax-free town many residents want the VIP rank, even if it's just to make them feel important. Some towns have implemented a donation cut-off point at which the resident receives the VIP rank. For example, anyone who donates 20,000+ to the town will get VIP rank. This is a really good way to encourage residents to chip in to making sure the town is a success.


Be Rich!

Many towns bypass taxes and plot costs and donations simply because, well, they have a filthy rich mayor. If you have over 1mil there really isn't much reason to worry about costs getting out of hand - unless your town is gigantic, you'll be able to cover costs easily. Being rich is, of course, highly recommended.



Thanks for reading, let me know if you have any questions or if you have any other ideas that could help towns grow economically.