The day you sit back and relax and think that the audience will turn up is the day you get a nasty shock.

I can think of quite a few organisers who had that nasty shock in their wallets over the years.

Getting the punters in takes a lot of graft but isn't complicated. The hard part is getting them to come back. It just takes just one little thing to put a newcomer off for ever.

The main points have been covered here and there are well established sites on the web discussing these issues as well. One little thing that I always valued when I ran a club was the raffle. It was something I tried to do myself as it meant that I had a natural icebreaker for talking to every customer in the room. The extra money was nice too of course.