is it profittable to open a server now?

if you are sure for this and you have money to spend in this game, yes, you can win a lot of people

About selling:

Its hard to get donations if youre having a legal server that follows the EULA.

The EULA are the rules of a server set by Mojang. Its says that youre not allowed to sell ingame advantages..
this being said, why would you pay 10$ for the prefix [vip] or why would you pay for some trails etc.
it only allows server owners to sell cosmetics (and its never worth buying cosmetics)
So you would have to find a way to still sell ingame advantages without breaking the EULA


About the players:

I found why players don't come back to small servers -> players come to players, no players on youre server? noone will come.
So i suggest you trying to make youre server only be avaible in weekends, so the playerbase has to join in a small period.. (so they will Always see eachother)

Also, friends help.. having about 5 irl friends playing minecraft won't make it.. you would easily need 20+ friends that are active on minecraft & youre server.
That being said -> give them helper rank or something, (not all of them because if there are like 20 players online, all 20 helpers.. is strange)
because they are "helper" they feel important and be online and check if everything works.. They will most likely tell their friends that they got the staff rank at youre server and want their friends to play there
so they can show it to them..


So i think having friends is needed to start a server (so it won't be dead in the first week)

I opened my own server last month and so far, I've earned nothing what so ever. I also know a server that over a 2 year period earned next to nothing (Like $20)

Advertising is the most important thing to start a profitable server, but you also need a good team to develop all stuff and to don't be just like all other servers.

I dont think so because there are already so much big servers - you wont get any money with servers.

Its profittable now in russian
My friends have 600.000+ rubles every month
On server with 500 players online without any minigame (only faction like suvival)

I have had a server for a while ago and almost no one played. it was open and I didn't do it for profit. this game is dead now !

The game is dead, not worth the time , since as we all know TIME is MONEY.

You can make a profit, it just takes time. I would recommend advertising like crazy for the server.

I would say Yes & No! Since you gona need a Team for Protecting the world aswell as Developers to help create new Mods and Plugins this could be Tricky. However you will see it once you start. You can start small and incrrease if needed.