How to Be A Successful Guild Leader

If you are one of the many Neopians who desires a guild of their own, you’ve come to the right place. I am here to help you on your way to a successful guild. Let’s start with the basics, shall we?

1. Can I do it? Can you get on Neopets enough to run the guild? If you can only get on Neopets once a month, then you might want to reconsider. There are a ton of guilds created by people who have no idea what they are doing, and just want to be in control. Don’t be one of these people. You need to have experience before you can actually start your own guild. Make sure you have the time and commitment to run a guild before you create one.

2. What to do? So you’ve created your guild, now what? Well, first get a layout. I don’t really care if a guild has a premade layout or not; you don’t need to know html to run a guild. Just find one that doesn’t take an insane amount of time to load, and looks decent. If you want to make activities for your members, be sure to abide by the rules! Not following the rules is the best way to get your guild, and your account, shut down for good. If you only have one activity, a little activity section on the home page is great. But if you are planning on having several, keep it neat by linking to a pet page with all of your activities in one place. If you want a webbie, I would suggest using a pet page and list all of your rules and whatnot there, such as council positions available, requirements for them, and anything else you wish to include.

3. I need more members! You have your guild all ready to go, but no one is joining; why is that? Well, there are so many guilds out there. Many only have one or two members (or even none at all). While no one will join these guilds, it is very hard to search for a nice guild with all of those small deserted guilds in the way. You have to advertise! There are many ways to do this. There is the notice board, where you pay to have your ad on there. But this requires you to pay, and the best way to do it is to have a graphic of some sort which could be hard to do unless you have a neofriend who knows html. It isn’t the first place guildless people look. So I would suggest using the guilds section of the neoboards. You can copy and paste the same thing in every single “guildless” board, but if you really want members, try taking time to read the first post and do what they say. Stay to chat a little; that will let them see your friendly side and what a wonderful guild you have. You could go onto the trading post and look at the newest 20, and then send random invites, but then you never know what kind of members you will have.

4. Inactive members... Inactive members can be annoying, very annoying. There are ways to solve this, though. First, you can leave them be and they will just sit there and your number of members will go up. Second, you can make your guild private. This will require you to invite members so you have the option of inviting only the members you see will remain active for a long, long, time. Or you can delete the members every month or so who haven’t posted a single post in the past three weeks. Some people just join a guild so they can be in one and feel like they are a part of a cool club. They may not be interested in the whole chatting thing. Although the message boards are the first place people check to see how active their members are, that is definitely not the only one. If you find that you have a member that never posts on the message board (or at least they don’t post near as often as you would like), this doesn’t mean they are not active members. If you can see that they donate often in the donation shop, do guild activities, and participate in anything else your guild does, they don’t deserve to be counted as inactive and deleted from the guild. But it is up to you. You can make a requirement that every member must post a certain amount of posts a month or week; go right ahead.

5. It’s hard to keep up! So you have your guild, and it’s off to a great start. But the problem is, you are too busy with school, sports, band, or whatever you happen to do, that you just can’t find enough time for your guild. (I know, how is this possible!) Well, it can happen, and it can be solved quite easily. Try filling up your council, if you haven’t already, with reliable members who you know have the time to take care of a guild. Assign them each a job such as taking care of activities, monitoring the board, deleting inactive members, or whatever it is that takes up too much of your time. If they don’t follow through, find someone else to take their place. Nothing is worse than having your second position on council filled by someone who gets on Neopets every other month or so. Do not give everyone full admin power; that can hurt your guild, because if someone makes an honest mistake, your layout could be gone, members banned, and a whole lot of trouble. Only give the admin powers to the people who need it. If you still don’t have time, try adding a sub council. Find a spot on the layout or webbie to add a sub council. Give them jobs too. In the end, if you are still too busy, you may want to consider giving up the guild to your second council member. Then rejoin as an average member.

One more thing, if you decide that being a guild leader isn't right for you, please delete your guild instead of leaving it. There are a lot of empty guilds out there with no leaders, but they still take up space!

I hope my guide has helped you out with your guild. If you have questions, feel free to neomail me. Remember, every great guild had to start with only one member.