I do sympathise, this is me about 8 years ago. I hand delivered about 2500 leaflets (as I had nothing else to do lol) then went home and waited for the phone to ring. Well I had a long wait! I think 1 person rang that week . . . but it was a start!
Someone here mentioned listings in Yellow Pages and Thomson and I would totally recommend this, these two sources brought me quite a few clients and you will be entitled to a free lineage ad (ie name, address & phone no) in both publications and the best bit I find is that this automatically includes you on Yell.com. It tickles me that I pay nothing, yet if you type into google "nails" and my town, mine is the first in the list!
I hope your friends and family are paying you ... that way you can offer them 25% discount (or whatever) off their next appointment for every person they introduce to you, I find this works very well as people love to get money off!
Just make sure you remind them at every opportunity.
After 8 years I still have some of the clients that came to me first, and along the way have done their sisters, neighbours, friends, mums, etc, so once you start you'll probably find it snowballs a bit (although times are harder now with everyone being so short of cash)
At least 50% of my client base are ladies of about 50/60 +, and they are such a godsend. They may not be funky/trendy (well a few are lol) but they are reliable, friendly and polite, they never forget their money/chequebook, and best of all they have more disposable income for little luxuries such as their hair and nails etc, so while some of my younger clients have to have a break from nails for a while due to lack of funds, the older ones keep on coming as regular as clockwork! It might be worth particularly targetting this market?
Anyway chin up, it IS difficult at the moment, no two ways about that, and I hope this year brings you lots of new customers xx