To know your audience, be prepared to learn something about their demographics likes and dislikes, culture, their religion and basic information about them. By doing so, you will be able to write jokes or punch lines that would be appropriate and twice as funny to them.

Know your ability and be familiar with your own performance technique. Of course, you shouldn't write material that you think you can't properly execute. Know your audience and know your capabilities. Be humble and honest and accept your limitations as a performer.

Beware of being funny ahead of your time.  The first time I got up to do some of my original comedy I had hashed it and rehashed it until I thought I had it as good as I could get it. Then I tried the routine out on a friend. She laughed hard with genuine appreciation so I felt that my way was made. Best of all, she was in the audience when I stood up to give it for real. It came out perfect, and she smiled. Nobody else there so much as tried to smile.

Wounded horribly, I came down after a little more punishment and became part of the audience. After the show was over this one man wandered my way and said, “You know, that first joke you told was the funniest thing I ever heard!” I stared at him for a moment, then realized he was serious. “Why didn't you laugh then?” I asked. He was immediately affronted. “Nobody else did!”

The law says, when you are doing something totally new you may have to educate the audience when it is okay to laugh.

Brainstorm. Hold conversations with people. Observe people in the streets, at rest and at play. If you live in New York you can watch the bungled robberies, and if they weren't bungled then you can pretend they were and make a skit out of what might have happened.  Then there was the dark comedy skit where a lady comedian gets beaten up by her husband for the last time.  She waits for him to pass out then gets out her needle and thread to sew him up in the sheet.  Using a wire brush she brings him awake.  Her face fiendishly alive, she mocks him through threats, denials, whimpers and pitiful sobs. In the end she is crying too and asking "Where does it hurt honey?" Then she vigorously rubs the spot she guesses is hurting with her wire brush. 

Don't be afraid to eavesdrop shamelessly. Then turn the situation around. For instance, you see a drunk psycho-analyzing his wife in public. “Do you know what your problem is Louise?” Instead of crawling under the table you have the wife say, “I'm sorry Harold. Did I push your drip dry button again?”

When you are at parties, listen for laughter and tune in. You'll be surprised how often the stories being told will trigger your own memories and shape new stories. Learn how to build funny situations like others build castles in the clouds. There are many venues and experiences where you could base the material you are writing about.

Avoid offensive jokes. Sexist, racist and anti-religion jokes are taboos when it comes to comedy performances. These days about the only place a good Martin Luther King joke will go over is at the Ku Klux Klan reunion, and even then you are more likely to get an angry groan.

You can always recycle old jokes by modifying them or putting on new twists, use new characters or venues. That way, though a joke would seem too cliché, the audience won't easily recognize them and would be trapped to laugh at the recycled joke, without their full awareness. A stack of thirty year old Reader's Digest magazines could be worth its weight in titanium to you.