2022: A Year of Highs

2022 has been an eventful year for Advertise Your Server. We've done so many incredible things and worked with so many awesome people. This year in review is dedicated to all of those who made AYS what it is today, a leading community to build your own. It's a privilege to be able to lead this awesome community and company and I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world. Without further ado, let's review the year.

Before we start, let's have a look at some statistics:

• Over 200,000 communities are supported on our different platforms.
• Over 110,000 new members.
• Over 2,000 new social subscribers
• Over 6,000 new newsletter followers.

What we got up to

January

• New Wobbles Emotes - we added a bunch of new Wobbles emotes to the server. Everyone loves Wobbles. Shoutout to our awesome graphic design team for their visions.
• Top Community Growth Tips - we released one of our top blog posts outlining how to grow your server in 2022.
• Email Newsletter - we started our weekly email newsletter with all the cool things happening around AYS as well as tips and tricks.
• New Level Roles - we added some new level roles to reward those who spend their life in AYS (looking at you Baguette). Shoutout to Ray for the implementation.

March

• Dev services - we released our brand new development services website, helping communities to build their own tools and solutions to help them grow.
• E-book - we released our first eBook on how to find good partners and how to set up your own partnership program.

April

• New products - we released a range of brand-new products such as advertising plans and listing optimisation. Huge shoutout to Jephu, Cailee, Stephen and John for helping with the new products.

May

• Carbon Commitment - we started donating a portion of our revenue to fighting climate change. In 6 months we donated triple digits to help save the future.

August

• New Liam - with Discord wanting all bots to use slash commands, we decided to revamp Liam and fix many of its issues at the same time. Big thanks to John, Stephen, Andy and Dan for their help with the bot.

September

• Course - we released our first course on social media advertising for online communities. Big thanks to Stephen and Cailee for their work on it.

October

• Blog guests - we started interviewing guests on our blog about how they grew their Discord Community.
• Our Survey - we conducted a survey of community owners to see what tools they use and their community demographics.

November

• New shop - with our old shop looking a bit stale, we decided to completely switch platforms and rebuild our store from scratch.
• New Blog - similarly to the blog, the old one was slow so we moved to Ghost.

December

• New Rules - we redesigned our rules to make them clearer for new members. Shoutout to Cailee for making this happen.
• New Onboarding - with Discord's new onboarding tools that we got access to, our onboarding process has completely changed to make it easier for new members to use AYS.
• Gift Cards - we now offer gift cards over on the AYS Shop.

Shoutouts

There are some people I'd like to give a massive shoutout to who have helped us this year as well as supported the team.

• Eqilux - while you may no longer be with us, your development work was incredible over the years and your dedication to the community.
• Stephen - you always manage to keep things on track when everything's crazy, you keep the calm and stability in AYS.
• Cailee - Now our Chief Community Officer, without Cailee we wouldn't have had the hundreds of social posts or events that we've held throughout the year.
• Jephu - You probably work the hardest out of everyone at AYS, you spend countless hours ensuring customers get their products on time and that they're satisfied with the service.
• John - Similar to Stephen, keeping everything running smoothly while I'm off on a tangent trying something new or testing out a community growth theory, you were always there to keep everything running smoothly.
• Andy - Thanks for the late nights when things break, whenever something goes wrong you're always there (most of the time).
• Yannu - Thanks for your hard work on AYB in its dying days, you really tried hard to bring it back, sorry we couldn't continue it.
• Ray - Always there to look after our staff team no matter what was going on, in a way the father of the team.
• Cut of Meat - Always there to cheer anyone who was sad up, sad to see that you're no longer with us.
• All of our regulars - Thanks for your dedication to the AYS Community, you bring smiles to people's faces.
• All of our amazing staff and retired members. Without your contribution, we wouldn't be able to do what we do every year.
• All of our premium members for your money... I mean support as without it we couldn't do what we do best, creating new products and services to help grow thousands of online communities.
• Everyone else - there are a lot of people I want to individually thank for their contribution but this blog post would be never-ending. Thanks to everyone who contributes to AYS in some way or uses our services, you are what makes the community special. It's a privilege to be able to wake up every day and see the wonderful and interesting conversations that happen overnight. Cheers to a great year 🍻.

Next Year...

So, what's going to happen in 2023, well we've got a lot of awesome surprises but I'll share a few of the ideas we want to bring to life:

• We want to completely redevelop Discord Expert into one of the top server directories to find Discord Servers.
• We want to engage as many members in the community as possible, even people who have given up on their community through events and giveaways.
• We hope to bring a brand new online course early next year.
• A virtual community growth summit bringing industry leaders together to host groups and talks.
• A whole bunch of other things that I won't spoil just yet, keep an eye on our socials and email newsletter which you can follow here.
  

Christmas is just around the corner and we're all super excited about the community plans we have. Be sure to keep your eyes out for our Christmas surprises, events and giveaways.

We’re looking forward to seeing what 2023 has in store for the AYS community, and we’ll be working hard to provide even more server growth tools and resources to our users. Thank you to everyone in the AYS community who made it such a special year. Love you all ❤️ and happy holidays (don't forget to take some time to look after yourself).