Tournament success or fail?

Our tournament online had some ups and downs. One down was that, with only three people signing up, it had to be cancelled! Unfortunately, chess.com states that there has to be a minimum of five. On the upside, we had Tomasz, Cam and Dave all coming along to play games with each other and I had a few with Dave who is definitely very eager to learn. On top of this, we've also had seven players joining the club thanks to the attempt;  Gothener (Kryzysztof) ; Astraea (I think Lisa Cosker, a facebook member who contacted the club); LuterKing (Tomasz); usernamecheckmate (M?); nofaceleon (Leon); davejohnlucas (Dave); Cam927 (Cameron); and IeuanBrew (Ieuan). In this sense its ironically been supremely successful!

On the night, Ieuan, Lucas and Lisa did want to play, they just couldn't make it. The main issue we have is obviously the few numbers playing in the online tournament (3 playing, 2 wanting to play, and 3 not making it for other reasons). It seems the main way to solve this would be to open it to our lower graded club members. Yes this might make it difficult for newcomers to win, but with 2 or 3 others of their level playing, they'll learn a bit and still have the chance to win a couple. Under 1300 would allow Greg, Byron, Kris and Josh to take part (in addition to the new players) making it easier to make the 5 person entry minimum target with 12 people who can take part.