Star Wars Galaxies: Club Promotion 101

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Long ago while playing Ultima Online, I had a wonderful pub. It wasn't just any pub, it was famous. Everyone knew the rule. Everyone was welcome, but no killing on the grounds. We had great parties there. Many times well known counselors and GMs would visit. It was simply the place to be on a Friday or Saturday night.

When Arra and I left UO, we went in search of a new home, and yes a new pub or place to entertain visitors. A few months ago we arrived in Starwars Galaxy. We knew very soon that we had found our new home. We made entertainers and made the decision to open a club for social events. This seemed like a simple enough decision, but as we have found out, there is more to it than constructing a building, decorating it and opening the doors, much more. We are on a journey to have the most popular club on the Sunrunner server and this series of articles will hopefully teach you a little something about opening a club.

We will back up a few weeks so I can share our first two parties and then each article will be what happened the current week. We planned our Grand Opening of Club Destiny about a month ago. We set the date of September 23rd. We notified our guild which is HGS the largest entertainer guild on Sunrunner. We started posting on the forums to let everyone now that we were going to have not just another party, but a bash you really didn't want to miss. We also found a great group of people running World of Roleplayers Radio. Arra spent some time talking with them and they agreed to come and do a live show from the club. These folks are just great. I just can't say enough good things about Bulldog, Cerr, Mina, Blu and In'mora . They are so full of energy and are great at keeping the ball rolling. We contacted the ingame support staff ad asked for decoration which rather got fubared but we are hoping for redemption at a future event. It seemed all was set, the vendors were full, the promos had been done and it was party time. We crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. We were due to open the doors of Wastelands newest club...Club Destiny at 6 pm for a two hour party. People started arriving at 4 pm and by many estimates we greeted around 200 people that night and the party was still going 6 hours later. We had success.

We basked in the glory during the week of knowing we had given a party that everyone was talking about. People in the forums had been there and had a great time. We started looking forward to the next Saturday. The vendors were again filled. Blue milk, food, instruments, props...all were made with the greatest of care. The promos were sent out again to all the forums. We thought we were ready for another night of high energy partying. Our DJ from WoR showed up and it was time to party and open the doors to our guests. The time to open happened but just a handful of guests arrived. Disappointment just doesn't even begin to say what I was feeling. We were aware that a few members of our guild were hosting another Grand Opening of a new club, but we didn't feel that that should have made that much of a difference I felt bad for our DJ but bless his heart he stayed positive and we just went ahead like we had a room full of people. Arra and I kept asking ourselves what did we do different? Why in the world did we have such a great turnout the first night and not the second? Sunday, after the party, we again talked over what we had done, what we hadn't done and what we are going to do this week to hopefully have a great turn out this next Saturday. We are going to work on building a client list which is my job. We are going to personally invite people. We are going to have great contests. These will be fun and the prizes are going to make people sorry if they don't come and enter.

If you are looking for some fun this next Friday night, come on over to the Sunrunner server. Head out to Wasteland, Tatooine. Club Destiny is the large guild house within eyeshot of the shuttle.
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