Hello! So, yeah, commercial projects, I've had a few experiences with it, one succesful and one not so much, so, lets start with successful.
Succesful one is a Minecraft Geo-Political "POLITIME" (And yes, it's not inherently my project, but, I took part in it's history), so why is it successful? Cause the server is built around the "donate privileges", where you get early access to events, easier start/just playing the game (all the kits) and etc, and believe me - it's not purely cosmetic, and the donate swords - oh my! This is another art of P2W.
And then my project which I was leading single handedly, and I have such moral principle, that if there's any donate, that it's purely cosmetical, no OP swords, just the looks, and a few problems arisen
Lack of interest. Believe it or not, I lacked the interest to do anything for the server after a few weeks. This resulted in planned systems not being written, and planned models - not being made.
Lack of playerbase. With POLITIME, they've already had established playerbase, and sure, there were a few cavieats, such as, we got to "refund" our past members their donate privileges for like a month, but then, they started paying each month to keep their previleges, and this was their main money flow - they already had players who were ready to pay for such services.
And this is pretty much it, like, sure, this blog entry might seem more like crying than anything meaningful, but, it's my blog, so it is what it is.