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Building Up a Small Computer Business?
Hogg asks: "I'm a senior in high school, and feeling very industrious over the summer, I started a home business. Basically, I go onsite and service computers and charge far less than what the 'pros' with the MCSEs and so on do. It's been going fairly well so far, but I wonder if Slashdot has tips, advice, or pitfalls to avoid?"
Always have a disclaimer form that releases you from liability should something go wrong. If my customer won't sign the form, I won't touch the PC. That way, the user can't blame you if he screws up and loses everything from his drive a few weeks after you've done your thing.
"All universal moral principles are idle fantasies." -The Marquis de Sade
With business', you can build up a really good regular customer base by demonstrating that you trust and care for them. Carry a set of spare components (hard disks, ram, maybe an optical drive or two, etc) with you all the time. If some hardware is acting flaky - and you can't fix it immediately - lend them a replacement and/or substitute. Most business' will be used to lazy, pushy & expensive IT guys, and the mere act of lending them a replacement stick of ram for a week or two will boggle their brains.
Who would you rather hire - some kid who knows how to muck around with a computer or an A+ certified tech? If you're going to do anything serious in the repair industry then you should get A+ certified. The test is dead simple, but very valuable. Although I've never found a use for it (yet, other than to pad my resume), I know that should Joe User muck up his computer 2 weeks after I fix it and he sues me that the judge will take my certified experience with a lot more weight than if I wasn't.
I know it sounds strange but be very strict about billing. Many small businesses are too trusting and too nice and allow other businesses to walk all over them.
Make sure you bill promptly and accurately and be sure to charge late charges on accounts. If a customer becomes past due do not perform further work for them. You can't work for free and make a living.
Also, don't charge *too much* below what the MCSEs charge. It's stupid but people will automatically think that you are of lesser quality. You have to have an air of confidence, and charging "high" prices shows that you feel you are worth that much.
Greg
There\'s no place like ~
I don't know how good you are with programming, but you can make good money doing programming for small companies/small towns who need computer work done. Lots of them would benefit greatly from web-based system that can keep track of their customers, or one for posting new bus routes online for when school starts. Things like that are easy to create, easy to maintain, and very impressive when whoever's paying you shows it to their boss. Just make sure you slap a nice color scheme on it!
I found a job doing slightly more involved work for a small startup here in NY about a year and a half ago, and now I'm trying to decide which BMW I want to buy. There's plenty of money to be made if you're competent and professional enough and willing to work hard.
If you do a good job and get repeat calls from the same businesses, offer to let them keep you on call 24/7 for a moderate montly retainer. Then, if you continue to do a good job you will be raking in big bucks from multiple customers for little actual work.
Make agreements with other quality people doing the same work in your area to cover for each other. Then if several of your customers have problems at the same time you can take care of them all with the extra sets of hands. And you will be able to go on vacation without losing customers due to bad timing of the latest worm release.
Vonnegut was right: Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been."
Oh brother.
Then again, mabe you're helping the industry along because after you screw something up that causes a business to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars and they've successfully sued your parents and taken away their home to cover damages, they'll spend that money on hiring qualified people to clean up your mess.
OBDisclaimer: Nobody pissed in my cornflakes this morning but this question has hit upon a personal pet peeve. Hogg may or may not be qualified, I don't know, but it's people like him that are making life difficult for those of us who do this professionally (as in we have mouths to feed and I'm not talking about buying Slurpees for all our friends) and care deeply about our reputations and the perceptions attached to private consultants.
My only advice is: don't be afraid to turn a customer that you feel will be problematic down. If you can avoid that small percentage of people who will cause a large percentage of your trouble, great!
Also, try to get a Reseller tax ID and accounts with some of the online distributors (techdata, ingram micro), etc. They can't always beat the online shops like newegg, but sometimes the deals are really sweet and they do actually have service.
I have been doing this for the past 2 years as a part time job, assembling PCs for people, repairing, antivirus use, spyware removal, windows reinstall, Internet software install and the likes.
Tip # 1: On slashdot NEVER call MCSEs pros. I know many people who got their MCSEs during the Windows NT4 days and dont know how to use MS excel. Maybe you meant A+
Tip # 2: Never provide a warranty, and make sure they understand that. They cannot come back 6 months later with a bad driver and ask for free service because you didnt fix it right.
Tip # 3: Do not service Pentium1 and lower computers.
Tip # 4: Do not hand out drivers and ghost images of the users data. Let them come back to you with future problems. Learn something from microsoft.
Tip # 5: Build a reputation. When you have to install firewalls and servers in office locations, use Linux or BSD. You can put that on your resume.
Tip # 6: Dont rely on it as a major source of income. Get a degree, get the real certifications and years of experience, then tell all your clients you no longer work for them.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
He will need something to read NTFS when a system won't boot. Winternals AdminPak is the only decent tool that works as well as it does
Knoppix (the bootable, CD-ROM Linux) - will read NTFS file-systems and allow you to ftp, rsync, or scp the contents over to another computer.
1) Insert Knoppix CD
2) Boot
3) Wait a few momoents
4) You now have a desktoip with the NTFS partition(s) as little icons.
5) Browse them.
6) Copy files over network.
The best thing is that the NTFS file-system is mounted read only - so you can't do any more damage than there already has been done.
(yes 'NTFS file-system' is redundant, excuse me while I go to the ATM machine)
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Start a retirement fund. Either a Roth or SEP if your business takes off. Compound interest plus 40 or 50 years equals Profit. I started an IRA savings account in the 80's and eventually moved into bigger funds. It adds up.
Play fair. Customer references are worth having, but don't be afraid to tell someone no. Either you can't do what they need or it would be illegal to install that same copy of Windows 2000 on 6 different systems. Offer to provide these OEM from your local supplier (with the appropriate hardware of course).
Forget It.
If you're in high school, go and do high school things. I'm not saying to go out and get some shitty job flipping burgers, but if you are planning on doing this stuff for the rest of your life (until retirement anyway), keep it as a hobby for now, do open source development, etc, enjoy your life. Then after college worry about getting a job in the industry. Believe me, rushing to sit at a desk all day under artificial light isn't a good idea...