[Guide] Starting a decent clan

[KnightXNinja]

Hello potiontial clan owners!

I have noticed an unbelievable amount of threads, asking for help for starting a clan. And even more clan leaders that seem to be doing everything wrong. As a semi-experienced clan leader, I would like to share some tips that may help you get a decent clan going. I hope you are able to use this guide to your advantage

How to use this guide
This guide is will contain tips on how to get a clan up and running succesfully. I will try to make it quick and easy to read.

Who am I?
I am KnightXNinja (obviously ). I lead a american clan with 30+ members, all at least level 15. We get a new member almost every day, and we have clan wars and alot of fun

Getting started:

-You need to know what you want your clan to look like when Its finished. Are you looking for a clan with 50+ members? Or are you looking for a elite hand-picked team? Or just a fan-club? If you did not choose the first, you are not starting a clan. Teams and clubs are somthing completely different.

-You need to look at yourself thuroughly. Are you willing to spend money? How much time do you want to spend on your clan? How honestly popular are you? These are all impotant factors. Think about this before you do anything.

-Are you going solo? This is a major part of starting a clan. I personally find it much easier to have around 3 admins including myself. This means I am not the only person promoting the clan, but it also means I have put alot of trust in these people. They could hurt your clans image alot.

Getting resources:

-There are several thing that help your clan grow drasticly. Here are a few of the important ones:

Battlefield Heroes server
Voice chat server
Website
Excellent clan signatures

Most of the things above cost money and alot of time. Here are some ratings.

Note: Many people have claimed that with a little luck, this part is unnessecary.

BFH server
cost: 30$ a month
time: Depends on how much you spend on personalizing your server
Rating: Important for large clans, not for smaller ones

Voice Chat server
cost: dependes. The best ones are 20$ a year
time: almost nothing
Rating: This is a top priority if you want to have clan wars. It can never hurt to use one for random chat as well

Website
cost: dependes. Domain name costs around 20$ a year. Keeping it up to speed adds anywhere from 10-30$ to that cost.
time: This will take 15 good hours. At least.
site templates:
http://www.webs.com (not recommended unless you have alot of experience/skill.)
http://www.lefora.com (not recommended)
http://www.enjin.com (recommended-expensive)
http://www.forumotion.com (decent)
http://www.spurz.com (ideal for tight budgets)
http://www.dmon.com (added by request)
rating: Priority one. Get it done immeadiately!
note: As moke said, you will probably need a message board, or forums. This adds another element to your clan. All of the sites above incude forums.
note2: Tpang has pointed out that with alot of work, a http://www.webs.com site can look nice. You have to work hard on it though

Clan signatures
cost: none if you use http://www.gimp.com
time: Alot. Its best if you get somone else to do it for you.
rating: Not very important. Good clan sigs (Like MetroidDread of the KCA) can help your clan gain some intrest, but wont help much more than that.

Starting Recruiting

There are many ways to recruit effectively. Here are a few:

Make a topic in the clans forum. Be sure to give it a topic according to ub2old's template. You want to sell your clan to thread viewers. What do you have to offer? Who are you looking for? What makes it unique? Ultimately you want to tell them why they should join your clan. Use neat bold/italics/centered text and maybe videos/pictures to make the post look interesting instead of the booring same old crap.

Example clan recrutiment topic

Hello heroes! I am recruiting for the new clan, example clan!

[insert cool picture/logo here]

Link! (Biggest failure of clan topics is not provding a link)

Requriements/info/resources should all go here in a neat and organized manor.

Spread word through xfire or PM. This way you can target a certian group of people effectively. XFire works great because you can make your nickname have your clan's tag. People should be interested when they see a new clan tag on a mature name. Note that only a limited number of people will see your clan.


USE GOOD GRAMMAR! Try to eliminate stupid errors. I am horrible at this and it hurts

Now that you have your clan going

-Leading a large, powerfull clan is not always just some dandy happy thing. There will be fights between members that you will have to solve quickly. Banning sombody from your clan is hard, but somtimes it must be done to keep everyone happy. Don't give up on the first hardship. Preseverance is key.

-Once you get members, you want to keep them happy. Schedule events and get to know them. People are not required to stay with your clan, and they can leave

-Do not hesitate to ban hackers or immature members from your clan. This will give your clan a real bad picture.
~moke

-Clan wars are great events to test out the effectiveness of your roster, and have a little fun Try to find clans with the SAME talent level as yours. You dont want to get dominated (or dominate a noob clan for that matter).

Topic rules:
No flaming
Constructive criticism only
If there is any thing I missed, feel free to point that out. (Mainly other clan owners )

Thanks,
Knight

[KnightXNinja]

More help from experienced leaders

I am aware that this is kind of a wall of text. But to preserve the orriginal post, I need to refrain from inserting extra blank lines

(17-08-2010 09:09 AM)Vercetti Wrote:  ^^ What Moke said.

I especially like what Ninja said:

Quote:Are you looking for a clan with 50+ members?
Or are you looking for a elite hand-picked team?
Or just a fan-club?
If you did not choose the first, you are not starting a clan.
Teams and clubs are somthing completely different.

And Moke

Quote:Behavior

Be VERY aware that every clan member represents the clan. If one hacks, its a hacker clan.... If one is an part of the human anatomy, the clan are assholes...

^^ is one of the most important things. If you have flamers or otherwise in your clan, they can ruin the whole reputation.


As for the voice comms, they are very important, not just for clan wars. I spend more time on TS for chat than for gaming (but that's because of al the 'management tasks'). Being a clan/community leader looks awesome, but you also have to deal with a lot of crap. Members come with questions or complain possibly about other members etc.

What I can tell from experience, dont grow too fast! Gather people you like. In the beginning, of course you need a lot of recruits, because for every 10 registries on the website, 3 fill out a join topic, 2 you actually see on TS and 1 stays. Once a base has been established, you can be picky.

As for the financial part, there are several ways to fix it. You can pay everything for yourself, or a wait for donations. But in order to be successfull, you need to be able to grow, which will cost money. You need a constant income, because trying to raise enough for the servers every month causes a risk for the continuity from the clan. Some people don't like it (and did not join us), but we solved it by asking for a membership fee from every member. We can keep the fee low, and provide the best facilities for our members. Several servers, several games, a website and Teamspeak. If not everyone donates, the donators will ask for more permissions/status etc, and when they leave, you have a problem. It is fair for everyone if everyone pays the same.

My suggestions :-)

Vercetti is a member/leader of =OG=. This is definately great advice

(18-08-2010 12:49 AM)MassiveImpulsa Wrote:  Imho, there's really no need to invest money into a clan.

I firstly recommend, as Knight mentioned to have a solid core. E.G have atleast 2-3 friends joining.

If you don't wanna invest money, then you can easilly find ventrilos/ts which are empty most of the time. (You can also join a public TS and make your own channel.)

Free forums are everywhere.

MassiveImpulsa is a member/leader of MSHV. He is also the leader of team ja, which came in 2nd place in the prestigious MSHV tourny. http://www.battlefieldheroes.com/en/foru...tid=176855 Massive's clan guide

(18-08-2010 01:53 AM)PhiloBeddoe Wrote:  Spot on mate with the behavior thing. Its the single most important thing about clan moral is their behavior. Hi Hats =♠HH♠= have just recently seen a loss in membership due strictly to the behavior and guilty by association with the hacking thing. We will survive it and will learn from it but have a list of don'ts before you start like for instance:

No harassment of other clans members or members of BFH clans.

No constant whining of hacking if you suspect someone investigate them. Just cause you got owned dont mean someone is hackin.

The list only gets bigger from here but it is necessary for clans to have these and other issues covered cause the drama and issues will come and have to be dealt with.

Philo is the leader/founder of Hi-Hats/Punks. The clan is full of mature, respected gamers.

(21-08-2010 09:23 PM)VeeTh Wrote:  Well you could do it like blanks did and about 10000 other clans in other games and just set up an IRC channel on Quakenet. Get your players there and start playing. Then you can borrow/steal someones voip when you have your core group together. Then you can think about getting the server and your own voip with it. After that you can get some website/forums/whatever, but they are really not needed, just a little bonus if you like em. So really you only need 2 things, a meeting place where everyone hangs out when they are online and a voip so you can communicate in game.

(22-08-2010 09:47 AM)VeeTh Wrote:  When we started out with just two players we discussed who of the best players we've ever met would be good additions to the clan, then asked them to join the IRC channel. Not long and we had our 7 man core team and started to actively play clanwars. Only after that has the popularity start to do the recruitment work. So what I'm trying to say is that if you want the best players for your team, you need to go and get them, not wait till they end up on your website/forum/recruitment post/etc.

(23-08-2010 08:50 AM)VeeTh Wrote:  

(22-08-2010 11:10 PM)MassiveImpulsa Wrote:  I didn't know anything about blanks, nor any of the founders untill I played against them in the Epsilon Tournament.

That's ture. I hadn't heard of you guys either before the tournament. Funny how we never got to the same server through matchmaking as we usually remembered the good players we met.

Though about the whole being "famous" thing, it's very individual. I mean some people are famous to you but might not be to others. And how to judge how famous someone is? Is there some size limit for the group of people who know the person after which he becomes famous? Kinda individual I would say. For example I would say Keisari was kinda famous even before blanks because of his movies. Also the Suami clan where Keisari and I came from was somewhat known, mostly from the early closed beta "clan wars" and the server we had. And of course everyone of us were in some way between smaller groups. Like for example the SuperHipers who were known back then by many as those crazy royals who challenge the whole national team just by themselves (though there were 3 of them back then ). nFn was quite known from his very agressive sniper play style. Zyklon was very popular as he was pretty much always playing somewhere and was a real pain in the ass to play against. How we found Nelis is actually a funny story as I hadn't heard of him back then. He was dominating the RATS server and some of the RATS discussed on IRC that he's most likely a hacker. Well me and Keisari went to the server to see for ourselves what's this guy up to. No hacks but a great aim and a smart player. We were greatly impressed and asked him to join right away. So everyone is "famous" somewhere, it just all comes down to when your paths cross.

(22-08-2010 11:10 PM)MassiveImpulsa Wrote:  Playing with many players and earning their respect, makes it extremely easy to hand-pick players you want.

Exactly.

VeeTh is a member of Blanks, which is considered by most to be the best clan out there.

(17-08-2010 11:52 PM)MetroidDread Wrote:  Not a bad guide though Knight

The almighty Met likes it! MetroidDread is the leader of KCA. KCA has nearly 200 members.

[BackButBlack]

I might make a clan now since i know how thanks to you
Thanks for the guide

[TPangolin]

http://www.teamnads.net/ is an example that http://www.webs.com is actually works for a major clan such as Team Nads.

[Moke]

I would add :

Ambitions :

--Are you looking to compete with the best of the best.
--or are you just interested in having funwars,
--or do you not care about funwars, but just want to gather people so you can play together

This the clanleader(s) should agree on, and be clear to all who joins. Otherwise the clan risk loosing the members if the clans ambitions dont match the members.

Website

As a minimum, a clan needs a forum where messages can be posted, and wars can be signed up for.

Forums you can get for free.


Behavior

Be VERY aware that every clan member represents the clan. If one hacks, its a hacker clan.... If one is an part of the human anatomy, the clan are assholes...


Last tip..... Dont start a clan, if you have never been in one

Good thread

[Vercetti]

^^ What Moke said.

I especially like what Ninja said:

Quote:Are you looking for a clan with 50+ members?
Or are you looking for a elite hand-picked team?
Or just a fan-club?
If you did not choose the first, you are not starting a clan.
Teams and clubs are somthing completely different.

And Moke

Quote:Behavior

Be VERY aware that every clan member represents the clan. If one hacks, its a hacker clan.... If one is an part of the human anatomy, the clan are assholes...

^^ is one of the most important things. If you have flamers or otherwise in your clan, they can ruin the whole reputation.


As for the voice comms, they are very important, not just for clan wars. I spend more time on TS for chat than for gaming (but that's because of al the 'management tasks'). Being a clan/community leader looks awesome, but you also have to deal with a lot of crap. Members come with questions or complain possibly about other members etc.

What I can tell from experience, dont grow too fast! Gather people you like. In the beginning, of course you need a lot of recruits, because for every 10 registries on the website, 3 fill out a join topic, 2 you actually see on TS and 1 stays. Once a base has been established, you can be picky.

As for the financial part, there are several ways to fix it. You can pay everything for yourself, or a wait for donations. But in order to be successfull, you need to be able to grow, which will cost money. You need a constant income, because trying to raise enough for the servers every month causes a risk for the continuity from the clan. Some people don't like it (and did not join us), but we solved it by asking for a membership fee from every member. We can keep the fee low, and provide the best facilities for our members. Several servers, several games, a website and Teamspeak. If not everyone donates, the donators will ask for more permissions/status etc, and when they leave, you have a problem. It is fair for everyone if everyone pays the same.

My suggestions :-)

Nice Thread! I hope it becomes a sticky!

[KnightXNinja]

Thanks alot Moke and verceti! I will add them both to the post You are both great clan leaders and it seems like these things could really help new clan leaders.

@TPang, that is the only good webs site I have seen. Alot of them turn out verrrry crappy

@BadBurrito, thanks

[KnightXNinja]

BTW: I pm'd ub2old to see if it could be a sticky.

[MetroidDread]

(17-08-2010 03:13 AM)KnightXNinja Wrote:  USE GOOD GRAMMAR! Try to eliminate stupid errors. I am horrible at this and it hurts

Agreed

(17-08-2010 03:13 AM)KnightXNinja Wrote:  Hello potential clan owners!

Not a bad guide though Knight

[KnightXNinja]

(17-08-2010 11:52 PM)MetroidDread Wrote:  

(17-08-2010 03:13 AM)KnightXNinja Wrote:  USE GOOD GRAMMAR! Try to eliminate stupid errors. I am horrible at this and it hurts

Agreed

ouch

(17-08-2010 11:52 PM)MetroidDread Wrote:  Not a bad guide though Knight

Thanks met

[MassiveImpulsa]

Imho, there's really no need to invest money into a clan.

I firstly recommend, as Knight mentioned to have a solid core. E.G have atleast 2-3 friends joining.

If you don't wanna invest money, then you can easilly find ventrilos/ts which are empty most of the time. (You can also join a public TS and make your own channel.)

Free forums are everywhere.

[KnightXNinja]

(18-08-2010 12:49 AM)MassiveImpulsa Wrote:  Imho, there's really no need to invest money into a clan.

I firstly recommend, as Knight mentioned to have a solid core. E.G have atleast 2-3 friends joining.

If you don't wanna invest money, then you can easilly find ventrilos/ts which are empty most of the time. (You can also join a public TS and make your own channel.)

Free forums are everywhere.

Thanks for your comment.

Of course you can always use xfire for chat as well. Its crappy but it works. So yes it is possible to lead a "free" clan, but eventually a server will really come in handy. Just imo

[TheGreenBassturd]

Spot on mate with the behavior thing. Its the single most important thing about clan moral is their behavior. Hi Hats =♠HH♠= have just recently seen a loss in membership due strictly to the behavior and guilty by association with the hacking thing. We will survive it and will learn from it but have a list of don'ts before you start like for instance:

No harassment of other clans members or members of BFH clans.

No constant whining of hacking if you suspect someone investigate them. Just cause you got owned dont mean someone is hackin.

The list only gets bigger from here but it is necessary for clans to have these and other issues covered cause the drama and issues will come and have to be dealt with.

[ChefMan]

Nice guide, but for now I am content being the ossum guy who runs a clan and never has to pt money in xD

[KnightXNinja]

(18-08-2010 01:58 AM)ChefMan Wrote:  Nice guide, but for now I am content being the ossum guy who runs a clan and never has to pt money in xD

[Adrenaline895]

Good guide

[SufferBaron]

I know what I'm looking for, an Elite hand-picked team, ok, nice guide!

I think I'll go start my Clan now...

I'll call it... Bravo Squad!

[KnightXNinja]

(19-08-2010 10:48 AM)SufferBaron Wrote:  I know what I'm looking for, an Elite hand-picked team, ok, nice guide!

I think I'll go start my Clan now...

I'll call it... Bravo Squad!

Did you read the topic rules? Or was that not sarcasm?

[KnightXNinja]

/Added some info and worked on the quote section

[KnightXNinja]

Be
Under
My
Pants