I see you’ve got an entrepreneurial attitude. And a city server like McCities is the perfect place for that! However, it’s not as easy as some other income is. If you’d like a few tips on how to start a business, keep reading.
To make a business work, you need three main components: A product or service, infrastructure, and labor. Without any one these 3 parts you’re destined to be unsuccessful. Let’s see what these parts look like individually.
1. A product or service. A product, a physical thing that you can actually sell, or a service, something your business does that actually helps players. Services can be fun, however besides a hotshot realtor they don’t pay much (in general.) Producing large amounts of resources or efficiently producing expensive items is the best way, in my humble opinion. Determining what items to produce and how to do it is up to you. Your main income here is either from the server itself or the players. Figure out where your demand is. My suggestion is to look at /warp shop and see what goods are worth selling. Then devise a way, whether it be through the use of slimefun machines or a trade network that connects vital pieces of that product’s recipe, to mass produce. The other option is to see what players are using/buying and gather/produce those items.
2. Infrastructure. But what does that really mean? You’ve found what you’re gonna sell. Now you have to make it. Your infrastructure is either the machine or method you use to create it and/or the network of players that grind the natural resources or components needed to run the machine or create the finished product. Efficiency is key here. Just because you have an initial solution doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think about how it can be improved. Can that machine be made easier/quicker to use or can you set up a sell chest shop in order to buy materials even when offline? Consider all possibilities.
3. Labor. The workers are what turn a good idea into a great business. In my personal opinion, you should always be your first laborer. If you’ve done the work yourself you know exactly how difficult the job is or isn’t, how much it pays, and can better explain to to your other employees.
Start off by hiring only 1-2 employees. It’s easier to manage a smaller workforce and if you do make changes to your infrastructure, it will be easier to re-train 1 person than 5.
And now the biggest part of labor: The pay. Nobody is going to work for you if they can make more money at another job that requires the same skill/effort or if they can simply do it without you. This is where you’ll need to get into some mathematics. Nothing crazy but the numbers here are important. If you make a product, figure out how much money a stack of that product will sell for. Now subtract the costs of making that stack (the price of resources, fuel, etc.) Now you have the maximum price you could pay your worker for this product. Of course, whatever you don’t use of this remaining budget is profit. Straight to your pocket. However if you don’t pay them enough, they won’t work. There has to be a balance. Don’t overlook the option of paying your worker more for that stack than what you profit in the end. Everyone thinks being a boss is about being rich but in reality if you’ve chosen a product and set up the infrastructure, your workers are spending more time daily then you are. Obviously you want money, but just remember that’s always an option.
