Generally, it’s usually just smart to keep your clan on the current platform that you support. In other words, if your clan is an XBox clan, I wouldn’t suggest trying to expand to PC, and vice verse. There are several reasons why this doesn’t work for most clan leaders. The main reason is that these members will spend most of their time on your current platform, and it is hard to motivate them to participate in other avenues that they may not necessarily be interested in. I do have a few tips and tricks for you, that may help you get your members interested in gaming on a new platform, if even for a short while.
Offer Incentives
Maybe you can offer every member that moves to the new platform for a short while to help you expand a medal or ribbon if your clan offers those, or you could even offer money for the help. You’d be surprised how many people may rethink their position when a little bit of cash is involved.
Hold A Contest
Offer a recruiting contest on the new platform. Remember, the prize has to make it worth if for your members to participate, so give them a good sized cash prize, orperhaps a free game, or game card depending on what types of games you play.
Mass leavings will always be a headache in any gaming clan leaders life. Sometimes it’s your own fault, sometimes there is nothing you can do about it. Either way, the problem persists and you shouldn’t spend your time kicking yourself over mistakes made, you should spend your time trying to correct the situation. A mass leaving will almost always be triggered by one person, or one group of people becoming upset with the current situation, and leaving to create their own clan. Of course, the idea of a high rank or other percs will excite members, and cause them to leave.
Don’t panic. Remember that these things happen alot, and most of the time they don’t work out and you’ll have those same members back within a few weeks. Most clans fail within their first month. But don’t just sit back and let your members desert the entity you’ve put so much time into!
Negotiate. Find out what their problem is, and what they feel the necessary changes should be. If it’s within reason, honor it. If it’s not, don’t, and tell them why it can’t be done. Try to have your members see things from your perspective.
Announce something. Sounds ridiculous, but trust me it isn’t. Right as the mass leaving begins, or just before, announce something of importance. Maybe it’s a new co-leader. Maybe you set up a committee to help implement the clan’s will. Doesn’t matter. Just do something to let your members know you are not going to sit back and let the clan fall apart because of a disagreement. This will also let your remaining members who weren’t part of the mass leaving know that it didn’t discourage you too much.
Turn Recruiting Up a Notch. With members leaving, you need new incoming members. You want it to seem to your on-the-fence members like the clan didn’t miss a beat. If they are considering leaving, and the clans situation worsens, you can bet they’re going to leave.
The bottom line is not to be discouraged. To start a clan from the ground up is a much harder task then dealing with a migration of members, and you’ve already been there, done that, right? Stay level headed and never become angry with those who are leaving. In fact, I like to go out of my way to let them know they are always welcome back.
09 Apr
Keeping Order During Clan Meetings
Posted by JohnnyLocke as Articles, Clan Managment | 0 Comments
As a former clan leader, I know how hard and frustrating it can be to run a clan-wide clan meeting. Once the discussion gets rolling there are always people butting in with disagreements and counter arguments. Many times, at the end of the meeting I felt like we had accomplished nothing. It became very clear to me that the next time we were to hold a large meeting, there would have to be some sort of order. Through trial and error, I developed these useful tips for clan leaders having the same problems I had run into:
1) Use a chat client that features moderation
I would personally advise that you use IRC. It is the most easily accessible and widely used chat client that features moderation. You need to be able to control the conversation if things get sidetracked or out of hand. If you can, try to find a chat client that allows you to allow 1 speaker at a time. I would advise against using AIMchat. While it is probably the easiest and most accessible for your clan, it has no moderation features.
2) Develop A Speaking Order
Things will never work with people speaking out of turn. In the chat room or on your forum, post a speaking order. You bring up the subject at hand, then go down the list and allow everyone to comment on it. If you feel you need a second go-through for rebuttles, don’t hesitate to do so again. Give everyone a chance to express their opinion in an orderly fashion. Hopefully this way everyone feels their viewpoint was strongly represented.
3) DO NOT BE AFRAID TO BAN
If a member continues to speak out of turn, and constantly disrupt the flow of the meeting after several warnings, go ahead and ban him, and explain to him the situation on AIM. Perhaps this will help him to see what you are trying to accomplish and settle down if you decide to unban him and give him another shot.
4) Be prepared before the meeting starts
Don’t just wing it. That will almost certainly lead to a disorganized and unproductive meeting. Beforehand, post on the forum asking your members what they feel needs to be talked about. Brainstorm yourself as well. Then write it all down in a notebook in an order that seems to flow, and go down the list. This will help you be productive and get through all the subjects in a timely fashion.
5) Upload the chat log for all to see
Show off your results. Let your members know that you really do value their opinion, even if they couldn’t attend the meeting. Post it up on your forum for comments/critisism. Factor in these new opinions before making any drastic changes. This is also great for showing your members that you are capable of running an effective, organized community.
02 Apr
How to create revenue for your gaming clan
Posted by JohnnyLocke as Articles, Website Managment | 1 Comment
A Big problem alot of clans have (especially FPS clans who have to worry about server costs.) is coming up with enough money to support their clan. This can be a daunting task when you factor in all the probable costs of any serious clan. There’s web hosting fee’s, advertising, server fee’s, scripting fee’s, and any other web design fee’s a webmaster may come across that he himself can not deal with. Below are a few strategies that I personally have found effective.
Donations- If you are able to provide a fun, stable gaming enviorment for your members, there are usually at least 3-4 older members who don’t mind donating a small amount of money to help you out. Place a paypal button on your page with big, colored, boldened letters above it that say “DONATE.” Perhaps even ocaisionally make a forum post reminding everyone that donations do in fact go to the clan, and not into your pockets.
Make sure your clan members know what their donation is going towards. If they know their $15 are going toward website improvements or an expansion into a new game, they will probably be more likely to donate. I’ve spoken with many clan leaders that have paid for all of their clans fee’s with donations alone.
Adsense – Since Clans (usually) don’t draw huge amounts of unique visitors outside of the memberbase, Adsense usually doesn’t generate all that much money. However, it can’t hurt to have it. A few points about Adsense:
http://www.adsense.com
There are numerous other advertising agencies, but if for some reason Adsense is not suiting you (AKA you are banned from it 
), then I would suggest using http://www.adbrite.com
JohnnyLocke
Choosing Your Clan Name
Please don’t be a “cloner-clan”. Only silly kids start a clan and CLONE another pre-existing clan’s name or clan [TAG]. We call these silly kiddy clans (that do this) “cloner-clans”. Usually clan leaders, that are not awear, and/or are too lazy or too stupid to even do simple checks to pick an “original” clan name and [tag], are usually starting up a “flop-clan “. A flop-plan” is a clan that runs for 3 months or less, then “flops” (dies). Make sure that your clan name is an original clan name. Pick a clan name that you are proud of and is “presentable” (no cuss words). Help keep the peace in the gaming community and RESPECT other clans, pick an original clan name and clan [tag]. Don’t be a “cloner-clan”
To pick an ORIGINAL clan name and an ORIGINAL clan [TAG], go up to AtomicWARRIOR Club REGISTRY and other “clan start-up” web sites and start checking to see if the clan [tag] and clan name, that YOU want, is NOT taken and being used in games by people on public servers. Simply search to make sure no one is listed at clan-start-up websites already with the clan [tag] and name that you want to use. If you have an IQ above a retarded 3 legged rat, there is NO reason to copy (CLONE) another clan’s name or [TAG] and make your clan a silly “cloner-clan”.
You can use letters (either UPPER “A” and lower case “a”) and numbers (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0,) in your clan [Tag]. You should know that clans consider it RUDE and DISRESPECTFUL to clone their clan [taG]. If you use UPPER and lower case letters and numbers in a (3) character [TaG], there are over 238,328 different possible tags. If you use a 4 character “[tAg2]“, there is almost 15 MILLION different possible tags. There is no reason you should clone another clan’s tag.
For example, we could have made the [yW] YoungWARRIOR tags one of these ways:
[yW], [yw], [Yw], [YW], [Y-W], [y-W1], [1yw], [cyw] (for clan yW), [yWc] (for yW clan), [yW-c], [yW-C], etc, etc, etc,etc, etc.
NOTE: we researched and chose the tag “”[yW]“”.
Some clans use these marks “-” instead of square brackets “[" . Some use "-" and "=" equal sign combos . Some use "~" tilde charaters instead of "[". Some use "[" curly brackets. Some just use a "_" underscore like yW_dawgboy.
Partial Examples of tag enclosures:
[yW], -yW-, -=yW=-, {yW}, ( yW), ~yW~, yW_, _-=yW-=_, [{yW}], [(yW)]. etc, etc, etc, etc.
NOTE: we researched and chose the tag “[yW]“.
NOTE: some server admins KICK people for using the tilde “~” character in there name, as it causes problems for inexperienced server admins during rcon.
We would simply suggest that you use the “[]” square brackets in your clan’s tag as it’s “tag enclosure symbols”, if possible. “[]” Square brackets are THE MOST recognized clan tag symbols and are therefore usually show the OLDEST clan and most stable clan using that tag. If needed, maybe change the letters’ case or add a “c” or “-c” before or after if needed to make it unique (like [c-yW] or [yWc] , [Yw-C], etc, etc, etc).For a squadron you could add a the letter “s”. For a guild you could add a “g”. For a user group could add “ug”, etc, etc, etc.
Come up with a UNIQUE tag for your clan so your members can take pride in it. There is simply no reason to clone a tag, as with all the variations of letter cases and numbers and tag enclosure symbols combinations, there are literally –BILLIONs– of combinations.
By [TiC]EVIL
