Failed to get anyone to join a Meetup.com group

It is important to write about how plans can go wrong, perhaps so that others can learn from my errors? This is my Meetup.com fail.

I have used meetup.com before to join a few groups and I used it to create a basketball group a few years ago (and people came from day 1).

However, I created a ‘business hacks’ group at the end of the summer and scheduled a total of 4 meet-ups. Over the course of these 4 events I met absolutely no-one despite building up a group size of 75. The events ended up as me in a pub, with a pint and a notebook! On the bright side I did get some work done.

I seriously cannot understand what went wrong with the event organisation. Was it inconvenient timing/location? Did I look scary on my profile pic? Did no-one want to discuss business hacks?

In any case, after meeting 4 I cut my losses and closed down the group.

An outsider might think that you would be able to form a group and advertise an event on this type of site for little or no cost. Unfortunately this isn’t the case: at £25 a month, or £300 a year it certainly isn’t cheap. From my perspective I feel totally fleeced at this stage. And given the pricing I think there’s a slight gap in the market.