I've been doing special offers with reduced rates for 1-3 days at a time a handful of times in the past four months and it never seemed to make a noticeable difference in the amount of busines I get. When it's quiet it seems to be quiet regardless of how little I charge.

Do other ladies find the same?

I did them last weekend and did pretty well. I think it was partly due to summer being over and my relatively newbie status though (not as much money means not as much loss if I had turned out to be not there cup if tea) several clients have already made repeat bookings, but i have had to turn them down for this week as I'm still sick.

Xx

I've had a special offer every Saturday for the last five months and have had a handful of clients take it up. 

I choose Saturday as it's my quietest day and I hate going out on a Saturday during the day, so am normally at home anyway.  And this way it was easy to see how many new clients it would attract.  It really hasn't made a difference, maybe one extra client a month.  The offer was ?100 for an hour, it's normally ?130.  I've had a few 30 min bookings or booking for the evening when the offer isn't on. But in general Saturdays are still dead.

Agreed, specials don't seem to do much , except make me less money.

At Xmas I do "Regulars" specials with an extra 30mins free, or 30 off the hour as a thank you to my customers.  But that is less about generating business and more about safe guarding and rewarding precious regulars who are the back bone of business. No one takes the discount and time is off less value to me as I don't do many a day so works out well.