What makes a new club popular?

This is a question that boggles the heck out of me...

What do people expect in a club? What makes one popular? What theme does the best?

I own the Pussycat Lounge in Skutter and have tried everything to make it successful, and failed every time....so please, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Ok, what makes a club popular among the majority I can't comment on, but here are some factors that would have ME come back:

- An interior that doesn't make me wanna gauge my eyes out. Well matched colors, no fancy strobelights or fog machines, or vendors/ads cluttering up the place.
- No gesturbating in main chat. (Kindly asking guests to keep gestures and chat spam to a minimum works if they are the culprits and not the staff itself.)
- Inclusive staff. Greet everyone, try to include people in convos. If they don't wanna chat, you can still make them feel noticed and appreciated for being there. (Last night a friend and I spent two hours in a club and noone spoke to us once. Friends of the staff/regulars were greeted as they came in.)
- Have a dance machine? Put good dances in there! I don't go to clubs to look like an idiot on the dance floor. Yes, I have a huddles that has ME covered, but not everyone does.

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Edited to add:

Ok, looked up your place in search and.. I may be gay, but hanging out in an "all male" club wouldn't be all that interesting to me, even if it states that my female friends may come - if they "behave" so to speak.. Whether this is relevant to your place I don't know, as I am well aware that women way are more subjected to harassment than men. Still, it was just something that sprung to mind looking at the group charter.

It was just another route I took to see how it ran....and that failed also! I am going to change the name and the colors for a more unisex look. So please don't run away just yet!

Your main problem is competition. Theres so many venues and SL is so spread out, people just wont know you exist.

So your biggest obstacle is getting people to know you are there. And letting them know what times the party is rolling.

Also as Darion said an exclusive type setting will hurt you on help you since it means you need to let that many more people know.

I don't know what makes a club "popular" but I know what *I* look for when I do feel like going to a club.

1. Something other than "dance" music. That pop dance, techno dance, trance and rap like dance stuff is in nearly every club and, to me, is the most boring, irritating sounds ever invented. Have a variety of music on various nights.

2. No revolving light, strobes, etc. over or around the dance floor. They impede camera movement and if I have to navigate through them to actually click on a tip jar or something, forget it. And that's beside the fact they make me nauseous.

3. Simple, matching, decor and colors. Most clubs are not in otherwise empty sims. So, once you get 10 AV's in a club, it starts lagging and if you have tons of "stuff" in the club that has to rez also... I have a pretty good computer and video card, if it still takes me 10 minutes to rez everything, forget it.

4. If I go to a club, I'm there for the music so I don't care if anyone talks to me or not. I also don't care if there is a contest. However, like someone else said, staff that at least greet everyone is nice. Constant gestures from ANYONE is annoying. "Woohoo" okay. Multi-line gestures, long sound clips, etc.- just annoying. And if your staff is hitting "welcome to whatever club, don't forget to tip whoever" every 10 minutes, that is even more annoying.

5. Events at times other than "prime time". Often there is less than nothing going on Saturday and Sunday during the morning through early evening. Sure, less people online in general, but during prime time of 6SL to 10SL there is way more competition. SL has people in every time zone in the world, consider having events at times that take more than the 4 US time zones into account and provide your staff with some good translators so they can communicate with non-English speakers. Also have someone translate your club info into several other languages.

6. And, anymore what I find THE most important thing: GIVE COMPLETE INFORMATION in advertising, announcements, event listings and on your "club group" page, etc. Name of club, and it should match what can be found on search, and specific location with the sim name and coordinates because "in the whatever sim or at the whatever mall" is not enough. Of course specific times of events. What kind of music is being played. Just saying DJ Whoever is not enough. I don't know what kind of music that DJ plays. Saying "rock" is not enough, classic rock? Alt. rock? heavy metal? goth rock? etc. Saying "dance" is not enough either, have the DJ be more specific, maybe even list a few of the bands/groups/whatever as examples. Also, stating that EVERYONE is welcome (gay, straight, RPers, furries, etc) is also helpful. If everyone is not welcome, say that too.

Those are the main things I look for when I do go looking for a club. I'm sure I'm a bit unusual though as the "popular" places seem to be the opposite of everything *I* look for in a club.

i prefer a club with a real DJ spinning his own mix.. compared to the thousands of list jockeys just playing their winamp playlists...

Club H2 Nagoya is owned by a RL Japanese producer... often other RL DJ come and play there too ... just for the pleasure of it.

The hours are often not in synch with SL time because its running on japan time a lot.. but i would rather be there than most other clubs..

Sands too is great... with a bunch of different DJ... the ppl there are amazing and its easy to fall in with the club banter...

Good music, good dances.

Occasional LIVE music events. Other than that, good DJs (whether a regular employee or a rotating crew).

Friendly crowd. Staff who welcome you. Regulars who welcome you.

And about those regulars...you need some. People who make your place their preferred hangout for fun and conversation. Contests, games, events...or some common interest to attract and keep a bunch of people.

If you own other properties, you may be able to provide mutual support. Discounts or special events that coincide with shop sales. Special nights for a tenant's group. Treasure hunts around the sim with the club as home base.

-Be different, visiting as many clubs as you can, see what the recurring theme/layout is for about 75% of them, and rule that one out. Even if they seem to be running well.
-When visiting other clubs, keep an eye out for their camping/botting materials. Those can give you some estimate to lower your estimate of how succesful such places actually are. There are probably less succesful places than you think. And some of the best are actually fun projects, and not made to make money. Money is just a nice extra to keep the project going more easily.
-Be consistent in theming your place.
-Ask your friends to come visit too
-Place yourself in your customers' mind. What do you think your customer will think when he enters your place? Is it easy to navigate? (enough room between tables & seats, no annoying lightbeams and strobes blocking the view, ceiling has to be high enough), is it laggy? (add enough scripts, and even with only 1 visitor, the place will lag), does it have nice music fitting the place?

I'm supporting a friends' club, and I can tell you, it's hard, even if I mostly take care of the building/designing part and don't get involved much into running it. Sometimes she breaks even, sometimes she earns a bit, sometimes she has a loss. But it's definitely important to have some active people around, just to help whoever visits, even new SL residents, to tell certain types to detach certain items while in public (you definitely want to keep an eye on that one, allowing those attachments freely may well cost you your best customers)

This is just my personal take on visiting clubs in SL...

- Most annoying thing at a club...When a host on the chat stream in a club is constantly asking people for tips (3 mentions of tipping in 5 or 10 minutes), I leave right away, no matter how good the dj is. No one wants the main emphasis of the chat to be 'tipping in a timely manner', and no one wants to think that they were only invited to the club for their tipping ability. If there's one a thing a club patron does NOT want to feel is pressured into tipping. That just ruins the fun. If a dj is good, and a club is good, then the people who respect will tip without anyone asking them to. People who aren't going to tip won't tip whether it's mentioned or not.

- For techno/electronic music clubs - #1 factor - No trainwrecks...i.e. - professional djs don't mess up their beatmatching/transitions from 1 track to the next, it's a skill and certainly not something all djs are capable of doing. If I hear a dj trainwreck more than 2 tracks, I'm out. If you're a dj and can't match beats, then stick to playlisting. Don't even attempt to match 2 tracks together if you don't know what you're doing, unless you want to clear out the club.

- When sending out club anouncements, don't use caps, and don't use inside jokes, because to the people that don't understand your inside jokes, it makes your announcement seem retarded. Try to be creative with your announcements, and by all means, don't forget to include something(attachment, landmark,etc) in your announcement, and then send out another announcement with whatever attachement was meant for the first announcement, because that appears to be careless; you never get a second chance to make a first impression - as trite as that statement is, it's true, and club announcements are the first impression for many. If you send out an annoying or careless club announcements, you create the potential of missing out on 100's (possibly 1000's) of potential patrons. Put some thought into your announcement before sending them out.

- And of course, what everyone else has already mentioned, remove all lag-monsters. If a club is laggy, I don't even have to think about my next move - I intuitively teleport home and search for the next thing to do. Lag is not tolerated.

- Lame freebies are well, lame...but a cool freebie never hurt anyone. Also, to bring in the n000bs, you might think about geting a money tree .

Just one guy's general opinion of what doesn't work for clubs in SL,
~Chipleh

all the great people that replied to this thread to come and check out the club, and tell me what you think!

I've gotten a great deal of suggestions here and just want to know how I've done with the club....honest positive or negative feedback will be appreciated.

Here is the url...

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Skutter/78/199/81

Hope to meet you all soon,

SeXXXy

and thank you for starting this thread... grant it it was months ago but thanks anyway.

I've managed in two clubs and its not easy... getting and keeping people there. And it has nothing to do with the amount of Linden's you give out cause both clubs gave out a lot.

Anyway I read what you guys said and again I wish you much success SeXXXy and will take the advise posted here as well if you dont mind... to help make the club I work at now successful

I have managed 9 clubs sofar, and all of m were totally different, also the visitors were totally different, my own lounge does have the strobes and stuff and people who come in like it anyway, but i think thats mostly of the music that i or my dj plays , we rarely use radio streams, we make our own playlists and stuff and that makes our visitors come back. As is said, my lounge DOES have the lights and the strobes but they keep coming back, so its not the reason why ppl come or dont come back (at least not in my case).
I do think that the setting of ur club needs to be adjusted to the surroundings of the land or parcel ur on, so ppl dont feel like they are walking into a totally different world by entering ur club.

Oh and walking around with a tag above ur head that makes it obvious u own a club mostly will have ppl asking u about it, so u can talk about ur club without spamming.

I hope u will have loads of fun with ur club, and remember, there are ppl on SL who help clubs that are in need of ppl who know how to run m.....

Have fun and i will be visiting ur club for sure......