About Gilded Bedrock: Our History and How we Make Money
Hello! This post goes in series with our article on How to Make Money with Minecraft. That article goes into more detail about the many ways you can make money, but here we will be much more specific on how we do it at Gilded Bedrock.
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Our Story
The Beginning
We started off during 2021. There was just two of us who discovered that Minecraft Bedrock Edition addons were possible to create. We had been playing Bedrock Edition for a long time, and it was amazing to see how we could change how the game worked. Our first addon was an “Extreme Biomes Pack” that we posted on MCPEDL. The pack itself took around only 3 hours to create. We used a Linkvertise link, as we thought we could make a little bit of money from it. It took 2 days for MCPEDL to verify and then post it, and right when it posted, we were amazed. Hundreds of people were downloading our pack, and we were actually making money! It was on the front page of MCPEDL, and that pack got around 5000 downloads in the first few weeks. We were thrilled and so excited that we could publish things for everyone to download!
Learning Moments
We started making more content, such as the complete extreme biomes pack which included all biomes instead of just a few. We decided to try to publish this on Patreon to see how it would go. This was a decision we would later regret. People were very disappointed that they could not get the pack for free, and had to pay. Although several people did end up downloading it, it was much less than we had hoped. Only a few dozen people ended up paying for the pack, and we lost a lot of ratings on MCPEDL, as well as lots of angry comments. This was our wake up call that led us to decide to make free content from then on. This shows how when creating a platform, it is important to think how people will react, as your main goal is to make your audience happy!
The Next Leap
Our next and new strategy was making our own website. We searched around for a good deal, and decided to go with Bluehost. We decided to only pay for 1 year, for $35, which is really cheap. Then we started applying for an AdSense account, but this process took a long time, and we continued to use Linkvertise in the transition. The website creation took a lot of work, and I spent hours working on the pages. We used WordPress for our website as it make the website creation faster and easier. Over the next couple years we have made several website rewrites, but it is always enjoyable to try to rework and improve your website.
Now and Onward
After getting AdSense working, we used up our Bluehost hosting for the rest of the year, then we ran into a problem. After your first term of purchasing it gets much more expensive, but we were not ready to switch hosting providers, so we had to pay much more for another year of hosting. Looking back, we definitely should have switched hosting providers. The website continued for another year, and AdSense was and still is our sole source of revenue. We do take donations, but as a creator, you should not expect to receive any. We have actually only received one donation, yet we still accept them. After Bluehost expired the next year, we finally decided to switch hosting providers. We wanted to pay for something we wouldn’t have to worry about for quite a while, so we chose a 4 year Hostinger plan. This ended up being a much better and cheaper deal than even the last two years cost combined, so it was a great investment. We use a shared business plan, and it has worked great for our website. The transfer of the website between hosting providers did have a bit of a problem, as we did not save a copy, and had to use an old backup, but we did a website rework after the transfer anyways. Now here we are, going on another year. Hoping for more good times ahead!
Our Recommendations
Start Slow (But not too slow!)
Don’t go straight to the complex stuff. Start small, make a few pieces of content, and publish them. Monetize them with Linkvertise, it’s a great way to start. Build up your amount of content before you attempt any other big investments.
Make your Personal Website
Making your own website is a great milestone. It does require an investment in purchasing your own website, yet try to find a cheap hosting provider. This investment pays off, as AdSense is a much better way to make money than Linkvertise. We would recommend starting your AdSense application early, as it can take quite awhile to get approved.
For website hosting, if you want a cheap option to try out for a year, we would recommend Bluehost. It has good 1 year options for about $36 using our promotion link. It’s about the cheapest you can find for an option that has all the features you need to monetize your website, but remember that after the first purchase term, it dramatically increases in price, so it’s a good idea to switch after your first year (or pay for more time upfront).
If you want to really commit to a website builder and get a good deal for longer term, we recommend Hostinger. It is what we are using now, and has a great deal for a 4 year plan. It does increase in price after the first 4 years, but this gives you plenty of time to build your website up and build your brand. Here is a discount link that gives you 20% off. (Hostinger does have other options for time lengths, but we wanted the longest to not have to worry about it)
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