Growth Job Sector: Freelance Technical Support

An anonymous reader wrotes: "Over at World New York, they've posted excellent advice to the geek masses: If you're out of work and know how to use a computer, you can make a killing doing freelance technical support." Update: 07/25 20:00 GMT by M : The author has asked that we link to the article on homepage.mac.com due to server overload. :)

Comments

Liability

[DigiShaman]

It's too much of a liability. Trust me, I know. I almost got sued because some ladies drive physically crashed after I worked on her Windowz problems (spyware locking up PC). So even if you have them sign a before and after contract, just the rigamaroll of having to go through all that is a pain in the ass. No thank you, I would have to be incorporated with a few other people. This is NOT something you want to do by yourself.

Mmm, freelance!

[Emperor Tiberius]

I used to do this for almost two years, before I started working for an ISP. I charged a nice $20 dollars an hour deal, with extra charges for hardware replacement, software installation. My little business was able to "boom" simply because I was cheaper. All the freelance techs out there now think, "Hey, I'm so 'elite' I can charge $75 an hour!" Wrong.

I would see signs/ads, everywhere (literally), begging to have people hire them at prices that reached into the hundreds per hour. I'm a simple guy, without too many expenses, I buy a ton of games, and for me, $20 dollars an hour was great. I got to choose my own hours, and make myself profitable.

As for the "idiots to techs" ratio question, some people obviously haven't worked in the tech field [long enough]. Until the day they make a computer completely crash/idiot-proof, there will always be a need for a technician.

My two cents...

Everybody is already doing this

[poffenvis]

With so many thousands of fellow geeks out of work already for the last couple of years, this market is already saturated.
Besides, people aren't willing to pay the amount of money it takes to take care of stoopid Windoze problems- a reload on an average system can take 4-6 hours (with backups, new drivers, etc.)
Hard to get more than a couple systems a day through, then you've got to figure on all the time and energy spent on trying to get clients.

I'm making more money (sadly enough) as a convenience store manager than as a geek nowadays.

And now, as well, with even programming jobs being shopped overseas, the market for geek skills is even tougher.

Changing careers may be a better option than chasing after elusive (and non-existant) tech money.

peace,
r.

Ive been doing this for quite some time.

[222]

Im sure the majority of /. readers have done something like this, but the difference is that my spare wanderings supply the *majority* of my income. Simply by bringing up computers, or speaking to people at bars of cool technologies, ive found myself doing work for a reasonably large crowd. Once you've done work for someone, they almost ALWAYS have a friend that needs something, and that friend has a friend, and so forth. While its not the most stable work in the world, i always seem to do alright. (I would put it on par with waiting tables, the numbers always seem to end up partially in your favor). The best part? You can charge $50/hour showing some nitwit how to install kazaa, and hes all the happier. And they love you :)

Re:Free Lance Technical Support?

[zulux]

Isn't that what boobs that are a few credits short of a Community College degree and badly printed business cards have been trying to do for years?

That's me.

Except that some of my clients have grown, and my business has grown with it. In 7 years we went from

Me - fixing windows 95 CD-ROM drivers.

to

Me and four other people - making accounting packages with PostgreSQL and XUL, installing OpenBSD firewalls/WAN, FreeBSD file-servers, making KDE apps that are served with Linux, and all sorts of other fun stuff.

All the while making a shit-load of money.