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Suggestions for a PC Home Tech Support Business?
RPGonAS400 asks: "I want to start my own small business in the evening and on weekends (after my day job) going into peoples homes for PC tech support. There has to be a need for this — I help enough friends out with their PC problems. I live in an area that has roughly 50,000+ people within 15 minutes of my home. The best business oriented tech support in our area charges $95/hour for hardware repair and $135/hour for software support. Options for home based PCs are quite limited here. Geek Squad (yuk!) charges outrageous prices. I am not sure what I will charge but I plan on having a minimum charge and then only charge for actual work done. If I have to learn how to fix something I either won't take the job or else not charge for my learning time. I am looking for suggestions for lots of things. Namely, rates, liability, insurance, equipment needed, waiver forms, tax issues, incorporation, local paper advertising, web site, etc. As you probably guessed, I have always been an employee and this is my first venture into small business. Thanks."
Arrange a meeting will a small business advisor at a bank?
Your local government or national government should have one.
In the UK that would be Business Gateway/Business Link:
http://www.bgateway.com/
http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/
Deleted
One option would be to join up with Nerds On Site (the outfit that inspired Best Buy's Geek Squad).
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I set up a free telephone listing in the Yellow Pages which went to my mobile offering computer repair. I charged cheaply and visited promptly, and I helped a few people out, but most calls I received were trying to sell my business something.
But this was a tiny ad with just my number. Offering cheap help and repairs is easy enough, and as long as you can take care of the tax side of it, is very simple to do. I arranged a business account and the bank would have offered me investment if I'd made a business plan, but I was starting University at the time, and didn't want the hassle. I'm convinced that it would be a profitable venture if I had the time and the resources to put out a slightly expensive ad, even locally.
It's something I will do again, but a few similar copycat services have since appeared.
I charged £20 for the first hour and £10 an hour after that.
Get your first number of customers from referrals of friends and family.
Give an estimate of time, and negotiate the charges up front for your first 10-20 customers. Use this data to decide on a pricing scheme that is fair to you, and that customers are willing to pay. Don't sell yourself too cheap, I'm thinking $30 an hour sounds reasonable.
Be professional (courteous, stand up straight, make eye contact and talk slower, lower and more relaxed). Tuck in your shirt. Be on time. Even if you charge a little bit more, these little things make all the difference, and most people will pay for it, as good help is hard to find. Only keep good customers, who treat you right and pay you well. Good luck.
Home support is life sucking. That said, you will want to incorporate. You will want to look at umbrella liability protection if you don't have it. If you have a soul, you'll feel uncomfortable charging what you're worth, mainly because in most cases, you're sitting around waiting on scans to finish... Don't give in to that or you're just giving away the farm. Find out what the average is in your area and don't try the "undercut" routine. Word of mouth will get you business if you know what you're doing no matter the price. If you undercut, you get the cheapskates and general troublemakers.
For equipment, having an assortment of liveCDs is rather handy. Having a computer you can pull an HD and stick into to make offline scans is also very handy but bulky. Can usually get by with a small assortment of tools, you'll figure out what you need quickly. There generally isn't enough reason to buy some of the more esoteric (and expensive tools) if you're doing this part-time. Instead, see if you can form relationships with people in the area who are specialists.
Be prepared to walk away if you find yourself stressed. Working in home, you're going to run into everything. I personally couldn't stand the smoker or cat houses myself. Be prepared to make recommendations which will be forgotten before you leave the site. Be prepared for bounced checks. Plan on a budget for advertising. Figure out how many visits you can make a week. SCHEDULE ONLY THAT MANY. Do not "emergency? Oh, I'll shoe horn you in." The busier you are, the more most people are willing to wait (if you're any good).
Good luck. Don't burn out. Life is too short.
I'm not dragging your idea down at all - while many have considered it, few bother doing it for real simply because of the effort and hassle any such enterprise requires to get going. If you have the impetus and the business sense to do so, you have my best wishes.
However, for my part, the main reason I decided against doing such a thing (and there is a demand) is because I pride myself in all of my work, and am loath to take on a job that I'm not confident I can complete to a satisfactory level. My knowledge of home-PC hardware is excellent (as is that of so many other people), and I can cope with most problems M$ throws at a box. However, if I were to come up against something I'd never encountered before, I would worry about being able to sort it out. If it meant taking someone's box home for 3 days, not being able to fix it on the first night, having a prior commitment on the second, and finally deciding on the third that it was something beyond my ken, I would feel incredibly guilty about having taken on the job in the first place. Of course I wouldn't charge, but that's not much consolation to the poor guy who's been without his PC for several days.
If you feel confident that you can commit enough time to the business (evenings and weekends fill up surprisingly quickly), that it won't significantly interfere with your work or personal life, and that you have the technical experience to deal with almost any problem a punter throws your way - however poorly specified - then go for it. Just don't expect to enjoy it as much as you might hope to... ;-)
Meta will eat itself
As for the insurance and stuff Slashdot may not be the best place try some more business based websites and not technical. But some parts of your business plan make it seem doomed for failure.
I am not sure what I will charge but I plan on having a minimum charge and then only charge for actual work done.
So if someone calls 15 minutes away it takes you 15 minutes to get there and 15 minutes back. So that is 1/2 hour so assume you are charging $60 an hour, so that is $30 in lost profit. Just for getting to the place. And assume you get there and they need a new part that you don't have you will have to go to the store get the part and sell it back to them at cost and that takes an other hour so that is an additional $60 of lost profit. Assuming that it takes you 1/2 hour to diagnose the problem and 1/2 hour to fix it. You made $60 in 2 1/2 hours so that is actually $20 an hour.
But wait there is more!
There is the cost of taxes/insurence advertising telephone and infrastructure cost....
Now you at $10 - $15 an hour. I would say don't quit your day job. There is a reason the prices are so high for the other people in the area or at least for then ones that are still in business. That need to charge (Directly/Indirectly) for non actual work because there are expenses that don't care if you are actually working or not. Even though you are trying to run an honest business there will be people who still don't see things the same way they will go $60 an hour is way to high, and that you are trying to rip then off. And they will say that you over charged them for the emergency replacement Harddrive because they saw the same one on ebay for cheaper. Then there is the problem that you miss diagnosed the system, say it was bad RAM but you reinstalled the OS because you though windows got corrupted. Customers espectilly home ones are the worse.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Although this is another question, and not an answer to the original post, I believe it is still on-topic: What would be the advantages and/or disadvantages of setting up a model where the first time you call to a person's house to fix their PC you give them the option of paying XX dollars for 6-month's remote support. You then give yourself an account on VNC/Terminal Services on the customer's machine, and for the next six months provide support in that manner (if possible - a house call may always be necessary, in which case you charge for a house-call).
Is such a system feasible? Would you get swamped in trivial calls because people say to themselves "Well I've paid for 6 months so I'm going to get my money's worth!"?
For most small home businesses, incorporating is a waste of time that carries legal costs, paperwork burdens, and provides no real benefit. The most common stated benefit for incorporating a small business is asset protection from liability lawsuits. However, with a business that small, it is relatively straightforward to "pierce the corporate veil" with the way most home-business corporations are actually run.
SirWired
Service contracts. Sell your time in blocks, recurring for small businesses. Sort of, "pre-paid user support." Everyone I've ever known who has done this sort of home support from home has been driven completely mad until they broke their time into larger chunks. It seems to instill a certain degree of respect as well as sanity.
A successfull service actually supports the customers, gives them the service they expect, so I would think about who you would be willing to help, do you feel you can fix any configuration? Or would you want to have a look at the ste-up first.
This last approach would allow you to get a subscription based thing going.
A combination of the two could be ideal.
I can't give advice on pricing without understanding more about the clients and the area you're in.
Get a gunpermit.
I have always wondered how to deal with this. Often, (with my own kids' PCs) the cheapest solution seems to be to backup the data and
format and reinstall the OS. Now, it's easy at home (I have saved OS install disks), but what would you do in a business situation, to guarantee a "MS/BSA-legal" reinstall of the OS from a disk you carry? (as not all clients will have their original install media)
You'd ideally want to use an OS install that allowed you to use the client's original Product Key. How do you order an OS disk to make this work, given the variety of versions (OEM, retail, VLK) of a given OS, all requiring different series of Product Keys? What about a PC with Win98 or another usupported OS? (though the client would be better advised to upgrade to current hardware at that point, I guess)
Seriously, I see this as the biggest obstacle to providing a service like this...how to do it legally and above-board without requiring every client needing an OS reinstall to purchase a new, retail copy of the OS.
I've tried this in the past... I had experience, credentials, references, tools and people skills. I was in a densely-populated area (upscale suburban/professional) and had several existing (happy) customers, mostly from my former office job. I built a reasonably slick website with advice from a pal in marketing, and made sure it got on all the search engines - local and global. I printed up cards and flyers, and pounded pavement distributing same.
I didn't have up-front money for real advertising. I got zero new customers.
I ended up with a pizza delivery job - steady income, sometimes free food, and no more watching Windows reboot all day.
Moral of story: have flexible goals...
Perfectly Normal Industries
I was in the same position as you were several years ago. I might have been very successful. Except for several things. Poor marketing. I was weak in my marketing. I don't want to tell you that I didn't go out and talk to people. I told everyone I knew. The problem was that I didn't market effectively. I didn't target the appropriate audience. Start up a limited liability company. The name is self explanatory. Your assets are protected if you do something really stupid. If the company fails, it doesn't nesecarily mean that you fail. I started as a DBA (doing business as). It was a hassle at the end of the year doing taxes and separating the neat gadgets I purchased for myself and the tools I needed for my business.
A friend of mine gave me some advice after I explained my failed business to him. He is a highly intelligent and successful businessman. He told me that my problem was that I had the employee mentality. What that meant was that I was still the employee although I was the manager, the owner of the business, I still acted like the employee. I didn't manage my resouces well. I stayed long at client's offices and homes because I wanted to 'do my best'. While that might have been well intentioned, what really happened was that I looked incompetent to the lay-person, fumbling around for hours fixing their problems.
Invest, invest, invest. Be professional. Have a separate office for your business. Don't play there (too much). Your office isn't a playground, it's a place to do work. If you have your 360 on your desk, you'll play your 360. If you start best practices now, you won't need to instill them later into future employees.
Get an account with a distributor to sell products. That being said, don't sell products retail. If you sell products retail, you'll lose money. You can't compete with Dell and CompUSA. Sell your services. THey're already paid for, and it cost dollars a day to replenish them. Your brain is your greatest asset in a service economy. Use the products as added value and to 'up-sell' IF you can be an effective salesperson. Say you charge more to offer local services with great service. Don't cut into our profit by selling goods below cost.
Research! Know your clientelle. Know your price range before you set it. Don't set it too high, but NEVER sell it too low.
I've got lots more info, but not more time. Good luck. YOu can make it successful if you want to. By the way. You've done a good job recognizing what your competitors do not offer. Find out what your competitors offer that makes them successful.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
Compu-global-hyper-mega-net, junior vice-president Homer Simpson speaking, how may I direct your call?
I can look at this from 3 angles. I do that kind of work on the side, and I have two close friends who have been intimately involved in the home/business tech support business...
I do tech support on the side, and find that it could in fact be incredibly lucrative, mostly based on being the only honest outfit in town. I'm also in a saturated market (3+ other franchises here), but being an individual, there's a lot of promise (no employees taking a chunk/no "head office" taking a chunk). I do excellent work (you'll have to take my word for it). I work by word of mouth only (no advertising fees), and I also work from home (no office rent). I give my clients my cell number (no secretary). I also charge on a sliding scale, depending on what the person can afford. I'll charge as little as $15CAD/hr if I'm visiting a client that obviously can't afford the service they need, but I often will be paid upwards of $65 CAD/hr from clients that can afford it. I do this by stating a per-hour fee up-front, and dropping it down to the appropriate rate. I also stand behind my work - if I make a mistake (don't fix something properly), I own up to it, and fix it for no charge. To date, that's only happened twice (one was an incompatible nv driver issue, another time I forgot to restore a backup). Nobody else has that kind of integrity.
I found that my client base started growing exponentially - I had to start telling people to stop passing along my name, except for computer emergencies. That said, it's not for everyone. I'd never become rich that way. If you're doing it for the money, I think that you have to go the "big business" way...
One of my friends moved 2000 km away to start a tech business the "big business" way. He charged $90+/hr because that's nearly what it cost him. An employee would take a small chunk, he would take a small chunk, and the rest went towards things like office, call center, gas, ads (yellow pages), franchise fee, etc. He ended up in the black after a couple years, but gave up on the business (he sold it) because it was just so much work to manage. 80 hour weeks were common, though it would have made him a lot of money had he kept it up. He's now trying it again in a different market (an entirely different country), and aiming more at business than home clients.
He's repeatedly mentioned that it's very hard to find techies that are any good. Maybe 1 in 100 applicants actually knows what they're doing. The rest just claim to have knowledge on their resumes.
If you're not franchising, I personally think you're way better off, then again, I've never really felt the need to make more than an average salary.
Another good friend of mine worked as a techie in a local franchise. It sucked. He was paid $15/hour, but charging $100/hour!..!? (100/hr pricing at this place was based on "services performed", but that was more or less BS.) They'd get paid double if they had repeat clients, but how many clients would ever call back when the bill is $250 for just over 2 hours?
Personally, I think the way to go is a small business that maintains a firm stance on honesty and integrity. People hate feeling cheated/ripped off like they tend to when they go to the bigger franchises.
Ah, where to begin...
I did this for a while. You will encounter (a) people too dumb to learn not to click "Sure, infect my machine" on every prompt; (b) people who think that $10.00 / hr is about the right wage for your service, (c) Packard Bell and WebTV boxes that people want to 'upgrade' so they can see the latest porn sites (and other technical impossibilities), (d) most insides of machines filled with dust monsters and cat hair; worst if it comes from a smoker's house, and (e) people who bounce checks, revert credit card charges, etc. People don't like paying someone younger than them, and not in a business suit, more than they make per hour.
With the price of an e-machines or low-end Dell, it doesn't take much in the way of billable hours to make it cheaper to just throw out the old machine and buy a new one. That's now what I council people to do. And as for training, if you spend a couple of hours walking them thru a 'Dummies' book, and telling them what a wicked world we live in (scammers, phishers, etc.) then you will have covered 90% of things.
Most people have one task they really want to do on the PC - one app that they want to know well (geneology, pr0n, games, PrintMaker, whatever). Get this one app working well and you are good to go - but often it is an old, old version that won't run on anything newer than a 486 / Win 3.1; and the new version is unavailable or changed so much they no longer know how to use it. And this is your fault of course. Blame the messenger is alive and well.
On the bright side, I made some good contacts doing this and still help out a couple of small businesses on the side, but not for pay, instead for trade. There is a body shop that owes me some free work on my car. They are grateful to see me when I can make it there, whereas if I was getting paid by the hour to clean Bondo out of their machines, upgrade software, and exchange fishing stories, they would (right or wrong) start to resent paying for how long it took.
In short, this is a job from hell because people with older broken PCs are mostly cheap and dumb. Sorry, but anyone who has tried this will say the same thing; some are nice guys and just ignorant but they are the exception. There is a reason the shops charge so much, it's easier to put up with someone who breaks open a 3.5" floppy and puts the inside disk on the CD tray at $95/hr - and the cheapest of the lusers will be driven away.
Sorry to burst your bubble but after 3 months you will be wondering what you've gotten yourself into and after a year you will HATE hearing the phone ring. Been there, done that, still have the T-shirt.
When I was young and naive enough to do this sort of thing, I started out charging far less than the other companies thinking that customers would seek me out. While I did have a couple calls, it wasn't until I raised my prices to be a little closer to the level of the competitors that I started to get more calls.
If you charge too little you run the risk of a couple of things. First, you're going to put your competitors on the defensive, something you don't want to do until you are established with a solid reputation and customer base. Secondly, prospective customers may look at the gap between your prices and those of your competitors and conclude that there must be a reason you're charging so litte, perhaps you're not as qualified or don't have as much experience.
tinfoilmedia
I've been doing this for a few years, and I've been getting less and less work as time goes on. Firstly, everybody seems to have a 14 year old nephew these days who is capable of fixing home computer issues, which results in less calls. Secondly, everything is USB now, so you no longer get calls from people wanting scanners or printers installed. Getting connected to the internet is also pretty easy these days. Probably the way to go is to specialise in spyware cleaning, and learn some Mac skills if you need to so you can help the switchers.
Unfortunately, as the computer industry makes everything easier for the end user, it means less work for people like us.
I was conned by an old man in a cloak. It turns out those *were* the droids I was looking for.
Been doing thise for over five years. Since home users will bug th crap out of you, I switched to small business customers only. With your working hours, you obviously can't do that. Here's some things that I thought of:
-Liability Insurance
-Establish relationships with at least three suppliers and check prices. Being that you're a little fish, they won't save you any money on expensive components, but can save you quite a bit on little things.
-Keep business and personal purchases SEPERATE.
-Do not underprice your services
-Do not purchase inventory before you need it
-Do not build systems for people no matter how much they beg. When a customer screws up a Dell, it's becuase they (the customer) screwed it up; if they screw up a system that you built, it's because it wasn't a Dell.
I had a consulting company for two years and was making 6 figures when I closed. I only left it because one of my clients offered me a job I couldn't refuse.
The thing is, I refused to do home support. Only do businesses.
1) Most home users won't want to pay what you're worth. I won't even suggest pricing because markets are different.
2) A home user will break the same thing next week and blame you. Remember that spyware you just cleaned? Yeah, it'll be back, I'm sure of it. And it will be your fault. You can install ad-aware, spybot, firefox and more, but they'll never use them. Same thing with viruses. There's a term for it: Internet whore. Those are the ones who need help the most, but they also will never take responsibility for their actions. If you work on a computer monday, and the hard drive goes belly up on Friday, it's going to look like your fault.
Don't do it. Not for home users. That's why Geek Squad has a market - and get's bad reviews.
First of all, I work a 9-5 at a private university. I've been working on computers since 1976, and working professionally since 1993'. I've worked for several fortune 500 companies and have always helped out my friends and family doing tech support so to a point doing what you are saying is no skin off my teeth since I already do it at least in a limited degree. First thing I did was create a business with low overhead. I did what they call a fictitious name, so that legally *BusinessName01* = *MyRealName*. I was concerned about exposure and litigation, but since I was really small time, I thought the risk was small enough for me only to spend $75 bucks for the fictitious name, and about $25 bucks for 1000 business cards that I designed. Very simple and to the point. When I decided to start my business, I already had had about 5-6 years of in business computer/network experience. I also investigated a bit about computer consulting and basically discovered that consultants pay more per hr because they work on a very specific when where how who why type deal. It's not a constant job, but you are at some ones beck and call. So for that convenience + your technical experience they should pay $X amount. So, armed with a factious name, a set business cards, a cell phone that worked both personal/business calls, I set out to conquer the world. First thing I did, was ignore any forms of marketing that cost money. I used social networking; I went to every person I knew, and that I could ask a small favor from and told them of what I was doing, dropped them each 10 business cards and asked them, that if any of them would hear of anyone that are having computer/network problems that I would be the person to call. When I was at the grocery store, I put up my business card there on the corkboard meant for community info (like everyone else). When I met someone new, and I could steer the conversation into the fact that I provide *professional computer consulting services for small businesses and residence* I did. It started with one client; then two, and then one of my clients, recommended me to their friends, and they recommended me to their friends. It GREW FROM THERE. I've not had to pay any money for advertising. I've just focused on delivering the most customer services based support possible; just like another write stated, be punctual, look neat, speak professionally, and honestly care about them and their data. LISTEN to them. Listen to what they are interested and concerned about. Most of it is the social interaction and making them feel good about paying you and using you then you actually doing the technical work. I've built a SOLID, following to the point that I'm no longer taking any more clients, till I hire several technicians to do the work I used to. So, mind you, Its taken me about 10 years, to built my business, but I know receive calls, call my techs, have the techs go out, do the work, I act as 2nd level phone and remote support and I make $$$. So, what did I charge? Well, I started out at $125/hr. When people looked at me in utter horror, I told them, in this life, you get what you pay for. If you can only pay less, you will get what you are paying. I also immediately follow up with a completely honest statement that, "I can do in one hour, what other computer people can do in three, by using me you'll actually not only be saving money, but your time." BE HONEST THOUGH; do not lie, because you will eventually be found out. Competition started getting touch in the late 90's so I actually lowered my price down to $75/hr and feel very comfortable there. I have a setup in my home, where I can bring their pc, plug it in, perform whatever maintenance I need and get it back to the user very quickly. All while, I'm watching TV, eating dinner, playing computer games or whatever. If you know what you are doing, you don't have to baby-sit the machine, just make the critical decisions when it's needed. I'm considering raising my rates again, but only for me. So when I hire my techs in the
All the geeks get asked to fix other people's problems, but not all of them want the hassle. Print up a few business cards and give them your geek buddies. When they get asked for help, they give the lusers your card.
win, win, win for everybody
How much do you expect to charge to fix a $400 PC?
With the ever falling hardware prices, your service will always be seen very "expensive".
Be an electrician, plumer, whatever... the money is there.
Home support sucks hard, remember these are unmanaged PC's with everyone running as admin. I did it for awhile and decided the money was not worth the aggravation. People want you to fix their Windows ME P.O.S that they bought from Home Shopping Network and don't understand why when you tell them to upgrade. Stick with enterprise support where you can control Windows updates, antivirus updates, user account permissions, etc. and you'll live longer.
I would have to say "don't"... but that's a little negative.
You will probably be able to make a little bit of money out of this, if I couldn't fix a problem with my computer then paying £20 might be ok for it if it took an hour, so thats about $35. That seems pretty fair because for the most part the stuff you'll be dealing with will be pretty easy. Take USB and (dare I say it) floppy disks with useful software on it, a liveCD would be usefull.
One thing that I would think would sell well is offering to set up people's new computers, I think my mum has paid for that (because for some reason she doesn't like me going on her computer... I think she's affraid of me breaking it and then forcing her to use linux). Always try and think about what sort of thing your mum would be interested in as a service if getting a new computer or a system fault - that's about what your aiming at (appologies if your parents are old school H4x0rz who would fix this stuff manually with a hex editor) - but you get the idea.
Sorry if I rambled but some of it might be useful advice
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Home Tech Support sucks because people don't want to pay for it.
Fixing PCs was a decent business ten years ago, when computers were $2,500 and they hadn't really reached the mass market yet. Today, however, everyone has computers and their price has gone down to the $500 mark. Software is moving on and people aren't going to be paying people $100 to run Spybot or whatever.
If you fix computers on the side for $40-75/hr, you'll make some spending money and probably build up a small client base of small business people and gadget geeks. But if you try to make a living out of it, you'll find that hiring and retaining good techs is nearly impossible, and you'll have to jack up your rates to keep making money.
To make a living futzing with computers without doing anything deeply technical, look at doing services for small businesses... do computer work and resell other services (say payroll). Another thing you can do is get contracts with government & the local big company and be a body shop.
My business
www.robysolutions.com
Offers support to small and large networks. We started out with home PC's but tried to quickly move away from it. The way we had it was $60 an hours if the user brought there PC to us, and $80 if I had to go out.
The one thing I hated the most was going out to a customers house and all they had was perhaps spyware or viruses and what not, but when you start cleaning the hard drive you notice that the drive is infact going bad. Bad sectors and what not. This would then lead into further problems. What the customer thinks is "Hey my PC was running a bit slow but now it's just not running at all!" and they think you somehow caused the problem. We came across this many times and while you and I know that there hard drive was shot they think we are the cause of all problems. Allways make it clear to the customer that when you go in there may be more wrong then they think. It is something we learned to do but dont really worry about it now cause we have many businesses to work on and there eraction to problerms like that are not on the same level as a home user PC.
I might also recomend an external hard drive enclouser. When you go out you can pop out the hard drive and run external virus scans and perhaps even use a nice tool called RegeditPE http://regeditpe.sourceforge.net/ (Sorry my HTML skillz suck)
This tool is very helpfull for cleaning out the regestry while the hard drive is removed. This way you can remove any nasty startup files and what not.
Aside from that just make sure your customers know the potential problems that could be happening in there PC and build a good custoemr relation and your all set.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
One thing I would recommend is lookin into certifications, mainly CompTIA A+. http://certification.comptia.org/a/. It would be great for advertising for yourself. There are 2 tests, core hardware and software(os). It's the first certification in a line of them for this field. I wish you luck.
When I ran my business doing exactly this, about half my customers were older retired folks living in my apartment complex. They seemed to have money and often tipped, which is something younger folks don't usually do. There are many apartments that cater to the retired that you can target.
Believe it or not a good way to advertise is via flyers, posted on the bulletin boards in the apartment complex's laundry rooms. Just make sure you have those little tabs at the bottom with your name and number and business that people can tear off and take home.
Obviously you'll want to go to nicer, upscale places.
Be prepared for bounced checks.
Yep.
And you're gonna learn real quickly the Fundamental Maxim of Bidness 101: You can't sell nuttin' to people what ain't got no money.
People whine and bitch and moan about "the rich getting richer", but without the rich, all checks would bounce.
So find some people with some money who are willing to part with it in order to get their computers repaired.
Otherwise you'll be wasting not only your time, but whatever money you invest in servicing these creeps.
PS: Far, far and away the biggest problem you will see is people who have installed TOO MUCH software on their computers [to include not only malware and viruses, but also plain old cruft that they never use, like Adobe, Real Player, and Quicktime update services that run in the background & hog CPU time]. Removing this crap is easy if you wipe the harddrive clean and perform a new install from scratch, but doing that will also wipe clean the programs that they DO use [and their bookmarks, address books, etc], and then they will be REALLY furious. On the other hand, removing this stuff by hand can take days on end, which means that an honest billing for your services will come out in the multi-1000 $$$'s, which gets you back to finding rich people who actually care enough about the data on their computers to want to pay you for your services.
PPS: Far and away your most common hardware problem will be dead power supplies.
From intro: "The best business oriented tech support in our area charges $95/hour for hardware repair and $135/hour for software support. Options for home based PCs are quite limited here. Geek Squad (yuk!) charges outrageous prices."
From khakipuce"But what I really found was there was not really enough work to make it pay, for every business there are half a dozen friends-of-friends who will do it for free, or a beer, or whatever."
"I would then explain the options and that fact I wanted paying - "But you haven't fixed it"; "Well I think the only way to fix it is to reinstall...". Getting paid on those calls was tough."
Sometimes when people want to start a small business out of their home, they think established businesses charge way too much and so come up with a drastically lower number and believe they'll do fine. I've seen a couple of friends do it, and I was tempted to do it myself a long time ago.
Established businesses charge more because they need to advertise to make sure there's enough work to make it all worthwhile. They need to pay for the vehicle and accountant and paperclips, expenses some small home-business people just absorb. Insurance can be costly - what if you knock over a vase or step on Fluffy's tail while opening up someone's computer case? Then there are the calls that don't/won't pay; the calls that do pay have to cover for the ones that don't, the good times have to pay for the bad times.
By going for very low pricing, you're turning yourself into a commodity and you're going to attract people who are more concerned about price than real quality or special skills. This is a difficult market to operate in, and a difficult way to make real profits.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
The home PC market is both rewarding and draining. Be prepared for all-hours calls from your new "friends" with unbelievably stupid questions. I was actually called at 3am one week to be asked how to blind copy someone. Dont undercut the competition too much since most people really do believe you get what you pay for. Just remember you cant please everyone, have a good disclaimer on your service tickets and look into insurance, inevitably someone will blame you directly for whatever problem they are having.
If you want to save yourself some grief try to skew your business towards the small office/home office market. Though you will still find uncooperative customers the "business" ones rely on the machines and are more likely to spend money when its needed. Some home users will tend to be a cheap as possible, many will already be irritated in having to call you start with and if there are any actual hardware issues that have to be fixed prepare for a battle over the cost of parts and labor. I had a client a few months ago who's computer would not turn on. His power supply was toast but I had a spare at home so I took one over and replaced it. After the machine was bootable again I noticed the machine was running very slow so I started a basic cleanup. I was about to download a few updates from MS and started the Windows Genuine plugin, the copy of windows turned out to be pirated. The client starts going nuts and is convinced that MS was going to come beating down his door and it was all my fault. Overall just be thick skinned and dont get too personal about it, friendly is one thing being friends is another. If you cross that line people will take advantage of you.
Don't focus on home users. You'll tire of it quickly, and you won't really learn anything of value. Focus on things that you can apply to you day job, so you can make more money during your 40-50 hours of regular work. OR, focus on getting one or two small businesses that will let you be their PC Guru that takes care of everything, and after you've built up some trust get the keys to the place so you can go in after hours.
:-), and some real router/firewall experience under your belt. Better yet, convince them to get a Cisco 800-series router, if you're into networking. Convince them to do an IPSec tunnel to another location (like the owners house, and do automated backups of their data to a server you build in the guys basement.) Or perhaps work on their Windows server (or not :-), convince them to install a Linux server, or help them to some database development or some funky Excel macros, WHATEVER floats your boat. Just think about what you like / what you're good at, and use your moonlights hours to extend yor skillset. Solo end-user PC support isn't worth much more $$ than beer and/or video-game money, and trust me it will burn you out in no-time.
/. with no sleep :-) I took the skills that I have from the day job (a job which I got from years of doing PC support, server support, SOHO LAN's, remote-access VPN's, etc) and was able to max-out and provide end-to-end support, and make more $$ than I would have in a week of one-off PC support. PLUS, they were open to trying out some new Cisco IOS features that I can't try yet at the day job (e.g. SSL VPN over HTTPS for road-warrior remote access) and got to learn a ton of shit on Certificate Authorities, PKI, etc. Now I can turn those new skills around at the day job, get ahead of the other guys by being knowledgeable (and experienced!) at a new feature, etc.
:-)
Fixing solo PC's sucks, and doesn't really get you anywhere. Start learning how to get systems networked, ditch their piece-of-crap Belkin router, get a Linksys WRT54G and throw something like OpenWRT or SveaSoft (or not
Yesterday evening I left my day job (sr. network engineer, 100+ routers world wide, dozen+ firewalls, IPS,etc), went to work at my next-door-neighbor's small business (10 users, one location, one server, expanding to another office with another 5 users) and pulled an all-nighter, at $75/hour, doing a ton of PC setup on the netork, adding them to the Win2k3 Domain , building a Cisco router to do an IPSec tunnel between the current and new location, etc. I made an extra $1000 in one night. (And here I am, back at my day job, posting on
Everything should be cyclical. One skill should beget another higher level skill, which should lead to more $$, which should lead to fame, fortune, and scantily clad women throwing themselves at my feet. (ok, its been 28 straight hours, gimme a break
Don't go incorporating straight away, first thing to do is canvas the local area with simple print-out's of your soon to be company name with little tear off strips with the phone number and name, do this until you start to get a bit of business, then just gauge how much your liking the work, I mean seriously don't incoporate UNTIL you've had 2 problem customers at least, trust me they will come, if you really like the work and the hassle then incorporate both with your State and Federal, once you have your business number then you'll be all set, in your local town you may need to get a permit to have an in-home business make sure you find out.
Things to be aware of:
if you take a customer PC back to your "LAB" be very carefull not to scratch or mark it, use an bench for all customer PC's keep them off the ground or wrap/cover them with old blankets.
always backup your customers HD, even if they don't want a backup, why? because most users think the screen power button is the off-switch, so do you really believe they backed up their pictures too?
an earlier poster said it best, don't undercut your competition, you'll just get the bargin-bin customers who want to get everything for nothing, charge what your worth and let word of mouth sell your service ( TRUST me on this, where i'm running my business i've gotten more business from 2 of my customers "word of mouth" then i have from my 1 bi-weekly ad )
Open-source is your friend, think NAS fileserver, firewall for your network, automatic patching for your re-installs, think free software for AV firewall spyware.
personally i couldn't be happier with making the switch from working for others to working for me, i just have a few ongoing projects that i need to take care of before i go full tilt into my own business.
Lastly I read this on lifehacker and it holds very true, do it all on the cheap, don't go over advertising, don't go and buy all sorts of new equipment and software, look to do things for free or cheap until your very established and making profit.
Good luck
Pebbles.
I work full-time in I.T., and juggle it with my consulting business, which I takes calls for on my cellphone and schedule weekend, evening, and sometimes even "during lunch break" appointments.
Initially, I tried to make a full-time business out of this because I was unemployed and the job market was pretty sluggish. But now, it's turned out to be perfect as a "side job".
I can give you a few pieces of advice, based on my findings. But your results may vary.
1. Don't waste money on big phone book ads! I mistakenly believed the Yellow Pages would be critical to my business, but I immediately ran into a couple of problems. First and foremost, my phone company (Southwestern Bell) refused to let me buy a listing in their Yellow Pages unless I owned a business phone number. They wouldn't allow me to publish a cellphone number in their book. I have no need for a land-line for this business, and wouldn't want to pay business rates on one anyway - so that was a no-go. Their competitor in my area, "Yellow Book", offers a clone of the Yellow Pages and *does* let you list cell numbers in it. (Plus, they have cheaper rates for ads.) I took a chance with them, but I'm stuck paying about $160 a month plus several hundred dollars I paid up-front, and I've only gotten 2 customers out of it in 6 or 7 months! If I was going to do it over, I'd just get a 1 line listing and that's it. People do call from the ad, occasionally, but they're usually clueless and asking for things that have nothing to do with my service. (EG. You don't happen to sell new iPods, do you?)
2. Whatever you decide on as your fee structure, make sure it doesn't make people "watch the clock", afraid of getting too big a bill. Many people who use your service will be "on the fence" about it in the first place. They're hoping they have a problem that can be fixed in 30 minutes or less. (Meanwhile, you get there and realize their 4 year old PC is so slow, you can hardly install a single piece of software on it in that length of time - much less remove all the viruses and spyware.) You'll get pressured by these people to do a "rush job" and make things "just good enough" instead of doing it right. You DON'T want that!! (This is a case where they don't know what's best for them. Those device drivers you just "decided to let them find and install later" to save time, or the trojan horse downloader virus you weren't quite able to get time to remove completely are going to make all the work you did pointless!) I like the idea I've seen some handymen use, where they charge $80 or $85 up-front, but that covers the first hour of work, and then additional time is billed at a much lower rate.
3. If you have a little money to invest in this type of business, buy 2 things. First, get an in-car GPS system! It's almost essential for quickly finding houses, or the quickest way to client #2 from client #1 that you're just leaving. Second, look into your options for wireless high-speed Internet access! There are *so* many times I wish I had broadband to my laptop so I could download large files a customer needed who only had a dial-up modem at their location. I've often had to drive back home, burn things on CD, and make a second trip back out there to get their all-in-one printer going, or to get all the needed drivers back on a system after a fresh Windows reinstall.
No one here seems to be addressing your real proposal. You say you want an evening and weekend job to supplement your regular career. That's what I've been doing for over 6 years and I have to say it's a real pleasure.
... I lied, actually. The FINAL final point is that you have to be VERY good with computers to do this job. You have to have a long history of breaking your own computers, experiencing heartbreak from lost data, understanding the gravity of failing, and keeping a level head while trying to fix this stuff. People do unsurmountably stupid things to their computers and important data. You have to do a lot of sleuthing and very careful forensic work, ensuring that you can diagnose problems without doing anything too risky. You have to be patient enough to know that a Pentium 90 is a DAMN slow computer and you shouldn't reboot the thing while waiting for IE to load. You have to accept that not everyone will be willing to run sensible software when they are happily using a virus-magnet like Outlook Express. And finally, you have to be able to FIX these ridiculous setups or be ready to walk away empty-pocketed. My best advice is to have a second computer available in case you need to search for info. Google is a PC repair tech's best friend.
My entire "empire" started with one man who found my resume on a job hunting website. He cold called me and asked if I'd be interested in fixing his computer. He lived right nearby so I happily accepted his invitation. He was so pleased with me that he recommended me to several friends. Those friends recommended me to their friends. Now I get between 0 and 5 repair jobs per month.
I started off charging $20 for the first hour and $10 for subsequent hours. This was my rate while I was in college. Before post-grad I bumped my rates up to $30 for the first and $20 for subsequent hours. Now I charge $40 for the first hour and $20 for subsequent half hours. I give my original clients a discount at $30/h, and sometimes they give me an unsolicited bonus for doing such a good job. One client mailed me a card with $20 inside, saying that I'd helped improve his life!
Most of my clients are elderly and this is the demographic I recommend you shoot for. The elderly tend to have a lot of free time and, while they may be apprehensive about computers at first, are rather sharp and have actually taught this 20+ year computing veteran a thing or two. They are also very pleasant to work with since they are talkative and apt to listen to your sensible advice. They sit with me while I do repairs and are genuinely interested in what I'm doing, how I learned it, and how they can avoid the same troubles in the future.
Find some retirement communities and apply to advertise in their newsletters. Offer a discount for the first consultation and reward them for referrals. Be observative and insightful while you work and recommend software you think they'd enjoy (Picasa always gets oohs and aahs, and Skype's free North American calling is irresistable - bring a cheap headset with you in case they want to buy it!). Remember, the more interested they are in their comptuers, the more often they'll break them!
Despite what many people seem to be telling you, scheduling is a breeze when you repair computers on the side. Your clients will usually ask you when you can come. Feel like sleeping until noon on Saturday? Tell them you're available at 2:00. Got a tiring work week at work ahead of you? Tell them you're booked solid until next week but you'll cancel one of your engagements just for them. You are in control so make appointments whenever you feel like it, but keep the appointment! Everyone has been inconvenienced and jaded by the cable or phone company and Dell so people are VERY appreciative when you give a definite time and show up on schedule!
Finally, be nice! Strive to be the kind of person your clients enjoy welcoming into their homes. Make smalltalk, ask them how they are, complement their homes, take off your shoes, pet their kitties, and accept their generous offers for drinks or snacks. It's a challenging and fun job so have a good time!
Honestly I think that home user support services will be the wave of the future, almost like a mechanic that can fix your car at your home; or in their garage:-)
Having said that, in my experience there is only *1* thing that will remain a riddle...pricing and payment. Personally I only take cash; nothing higher than small marked $20 bills, once you start messing with CC payments you kind of open yourself up to a new level of liability; with cash their are no mistakes or charge backs or allegations of fraud. On the subject of pricing the only important thing to remeber is "be reasonable", meaning "What would you pay for your services?" would you pay an arm and leg to run windows update, install/make an OS image, or get 500+ points in 3dmark 06? Also, CHARGE FOR EVERYTHING(down to the tie-wraps) and let them know your doing it(common sense still does apply) most people are only interested in cosmetics, i.e., 8 second boot-ups/ shutdowns, fast menu's pop-ups and task switching, IE page loading, application startup, etc. I find it's a good practice to TIME everything most commonly done by the customer in regards to the above said and cut it in half; they WILL see the difference and whether you have fixed their problem yet(if the above said wasn't already the problem)or NOT they will develop a level of comfort with your expertise and then they will inquire about more ways to get the most out of their machines(more $$$!!!)
The only other problem you will encounter is that people don't want to spend money on their rigs, period. And if they DO spend the money they expect it to transform into a spaceship...
I love this business!
PS.
Don't expect to ever become rich from this...just a decent pay and more control of YOUR life.
I too am considering a small business aimed at home/soho network setup & maintenance, rather than a PC helpdesk play.
One concern I have not seen addressed is how to cover liability for going into someone else's home/business and mucking about with their hardware and other property-based liabilities. I've noted plenty of the "be sure to back up their files" type suggestions, but is there any insurance or bonding specific advice that someone may offer?
Also, are there any good strategies out there for establishing vendor (eg. Linksys etc.) wholesaler relationships if you're a small fry? Their (and others) reseller criteria online doesn't look promising...
One suggestion: don't.
I'll reiterate what a few other posters have said -- small business customers are much better.
In my experience there are less surprises, less household-like drama (pets, kids, smokers..), and less likely to balk at high price of professional service (or if they do, they calm down when you remind them how much they play for plumbing or roof repair or other critical business needs).
Business customers are more likely to have updated systems, and (most important to me) they typically have at least one person like an office admin who can do routine tasks like check if mal-ware updates are up to date, or change backup tapes.
_______
2B1ASK1
Whatever else you do, don't offer phone support. People will ring you at the weirdest/most inconvenient times ("Have you just got a minute?") for something that takes half an hour to explain over the phone ("The Start button - It's the green one in the bottom left of your screen") and THEY NEVER EXPECT TO PAY - after all, to them it's just a few minutes of your time, and you couldn't possibly have anything more important/interesting to do...
I have been doing this for almost 10 years in a rural area in Maine and at this point have about 800 customers (about 200 regular). I have about 2 appts. every day and up to 4 when it is busy.o sts. I work exaclty the same as he does, and I have the most loyal customers of any business owner I know. ;). Recommend Firefox, AVG Antivirus, etc which are all free and will save them money. That makes you a hero to someone paying $49.95 to Norton every year.
Here's my advice:
1. Always charge what you are worth. $25.00/hr sounds fair until you realize you have to get there and the fact that 10 hours labor a week is only $250.00 and you have to make a living. I charge $60.00/hr with an hour minumum and 1/2 hour increments after that. If I lived in a city in Maine I would charge $75 to $90 because that is the going rate.
2. After you are sure things are going to work, incorporate. You need the protection from liability, and the break on taxes. Get a good accountant that's not afraid of the home office deduction (many are).
3. Yellow Pages are a waste of time, take a small ad out in a local weekly the same as you see plumbers, painters, and oil burner techs do. Commit to it, because people don't even "see" your ad until the 3rd time they read it.
4. Read this article, and the 2nd one: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/958885/p
5. The parts that the above posters hate, the people that don't pay attention, cluttered homes, etc...those are all the parts I like. I am out of the house meeting people and am the hired expert in the room. That's an ego boost for me! It's not THEIR job to know computers, it's yours, so do your best to make their computer as safe as it can be without making it hard to use. Explain things to them in plain english (or whatever
6. If you see that you can't fix it there (or you can't figure it out) stop, and take it back to your place. Tell them it will be a 2 hour flat rate no matter how long it takes. At home you don't have them looking over your shoulder, you have Google to look stuff up, and another workstation to clean the drive. I have yet to have a computer I couldn't fix, or at least know what was up with it (if it was too expensive to fix). Sometimes it might take you 2 hours, but mostly it won't and after awhile you will be able to fix anything given time as you gain experience. Last week I had 5 computers here, was fixing 2 at once (on 2 KVM switches) and while they sit there and scan for hours I surf Slashdot.
Well, that's all for now! Gotta go, I have 3 appts. today!
With a new computer of moderate performance costing about $300, the price for fixing a computer should be much less. Though, businesses don't have that option, so small business support may be the best, assuming they ahve not signed someone up yet.
For home help, the issue aof liability can loom over your head, and then the complaints over who lost what data. And, being you enter their home, there are a host of issues that come into play. Or at least, that's what kept me away from doing something similar.
Have you read my journal today?
ever hear of the "Enter" key? your post is like looking up your mothers butt. it's got some interesting bits and pieces but i cannot keep focused due to the twitch that's developing in my right eye.
jesus, 1 'o 1 business starts with being able to communicate CLEARLY.
10 years or so ago I worked for a small VAR. We sold a fairly expensive software package to do mapping. We also sold the hardware. Or rather, resold Dell machines. The reason was back then you needed pretty specialized equipment to make the app run well. A decent video card, speed, memory, etc. It'd be less of a problem today.
But since we sold the hardware suddenly we became their lifeline. Anything that went wrong with their computers, they called us. How to use a mouse, how to format a floppy disk. It got really annoying.
I'm glad I no longer do that, work for a big company now and can tell people to call the help desk.
I made the mistake once of helping a guy I knew who owned a little company that sold software and training to realtors. They wanted something more, and so he volunteered to sell them a server and desktops. Oh my fricking lord, what a fucking mess. He charged $2,000 per desktop, and then bought them $500 emachines. I felt so bad for them. Plus he bounced a $500 check on me.
Similar to your own experience, I've had many a time where a coworker will ask me about a computer they have at home. They want to do something with it, blah blah blah. Oh yeah, it's a 200 Mhz Pentium-II, but they want to be able to run XP on it and have their kids play modern games.
I'm always having to tell them to scrap it and buy a new one.
I no longer will help people with their computer problems. I'll help my parents, and that's it. I'll give friends advice on what to buy, but won't help them install.
It's way too painful.
If I tried to start a company, I agree. It'd be $100/hour minimum. And that would be to keep the non-serious customers away.
K, straight to the point. I worked for several years as a kid fixing computers at home and at my parents company. In college I worked for the dorm system repairing students' computers. I won't tell you how to run the actual business cause I'm not oriented well that way, but I'll give you pointers on how to fix the computers and what types of services to perform:
1) I agree with other posters, it's not advisable to work on their comptuer at their place unless you know exactly what the problem is and how to fix it. Virus scans alone on a cluttered hard drive *CAN* take up to 2 hours. That's a lot of time to sit there with the client over your back wondering why he/she is being charged for you to watch the system work. Have the client fill out a form with all the information about the computer and the condition it's in and have them sign it and then take the computer back to your office.
2) You will be most successful if you can fix problems without formatting people's hard drives. These people can't fix their own computers because they don't know what they're doing. And if they don't know what they're doing then you can bet they haven't backed up everything they need. Almost any problem in Windows CAN be fixed without a reformat/reinstall if you know what you're doing. Google can help you here and I haven't found a problem yet that couldn't be fixed with a Google search.
3) Don't install things that weren't on the system before. Users are particular and are used to the way things are working for them. If they've been using IE for 8 years they might not want Firefox on there, and when you bring back a system with new software on it they may wonder what else you did that wasn't at their request that they've now paid for. If you want to install Firefox and Antispyware software, advertise an additional service package that you can bundle in for some price ($40?). If they take the bait, then you can modify their system settings, software, etc. But if you're asked to remove a virus, don't send them back a computer with a different browser.
4) It'd be my suggestion to offer different support "packages". Write these up in a nice looking sheet and send a sheet back with every computer along with their receipt. Offer things like Backups to CD, Performance Boost (defrag, spyware removal, etc), Software/Hardware Upgrades, etc. These would be in addition to the call-by-call fixes you would already do, but they might remind your customer or someone they talk to of another service they've been wanting to do.
5) If you determine that the problem ultimately requires the machine to be wiped (hard drive failure, unrecoverable partition table, etc) absolutely DO NOT modify their hard drive without their permission. Call them and tell them, in the simplest words you can, what the problem is and why it will require them to lose everything they have. Remind them that there are other options (date recovery centers that charge several thousands of dollars) if they want that. If they still say to format it, then have them sign a form agreeing to it.
6) Don't install any commercial software that they haven't bought. It may seem obvious but it's worth stating, don't install your copy of Windows, Adobe Photoshop, blah blah blah. If they can't find their OEM CD's then offer to contact the manufacturer on their behalf (your billing them for time anyway). Ultimately though if they need to buy a copy of Windows then you can offer to buy it for them.
Grant Barrett wrote a couple of articles a few years ago with excellent advice about getting into this business. I heeded a lot of it, and am now doing a business like this full time. It's not for everyone, but I tracked down the original articles on another blog... Grant has moved on, and his old website doesn't exist anymore:
l
http://www.koozie.org/2004/10/freelance_tech_.htm
-R
First of all, I work a 9-5 at a private university. I've been working on computers since 1976, and working professionally since 1993'. I've worked for several fortune 500 companies and have always helped out my friends and family doing tech support so to a point doing what you are saying is no skin off my teeth since I already do it at least in a limited degree.
First thing I did was create a business with low overhead. I did what they call a fictitious name, so that legally *BusinessName01* = *MyRealName*. I was concerned about exposure and litigation, but since I was really small time, I thought the risk was small enough for me only to spend $75 bucks for the fictitious name, and about $25 bucks for 1000 business cards that I designed. Very simple and to the point.
When I decided to start my business, I already had had about 5-6 years of in business computer/network experience. I also investigated a bit about computer consulting and basically discovered that consultants pay more per hr because they work on a very specific when where how who why type deal. It's not a constant job, but you are at some ones beck and call. So for that convenience + your technical experience they should pay $X amount.
So, armed with a factious name, a set business cards, a cell phone that worked both personal/business calls, I set out to conquer the world. First thing I did, was ignore any forms of marketing that cost money. I used social networking; I went to every person I knew, and that I could ask a small favor from and told them of what I was doing, dropped them each 10 business cards and asked them, that if any of them would hear of anyone that are having computer/network problems that I would be the person to call.
When I was at the grocery store, I put up my business card there on the corkboard meant for community info (like everyone else). When I met someone new, and I could steer the conversation into the fact that I provide *professional computer consulting services for small businesses and residence* I did.
It started with one client; then two, and then one of my clients, recommended me to their friends, and they recommended me to their friends. It GREW FROM THERE.
I've not had to pay any money for advertising. I've just focused on delivering the most customer services based support possible; just like another write stated, be punctual, look neat, speak professionally, and honestly care about them and their data. LISTEN to them. Listen to what they are interested and concerned about. Most of it is the social interaction and making them feel good about paying you and using you then you actually doing the technical work.
I've built a SOLID, following to the point that I'm no longer taking any more clients, till I hire several technicians to do the work I used to.
So, mind you, Its taken me about 10 years, to built my business, but I know receive calls, call my techs, have the techs go out, do the work, I act as 2nd level phone and remote support and I make $$$.
So, what did I charge? Well, I started out at $125/hr. When people looked at me in utter horror, I told them, in this life, you get what you pay for. If you can only pay less, you will get what you are paying. I also immediately follow up with a completely honest statement that, "I can do in one hour, what other computer people can do in three, by using me you'll actually not only be saving money, but your time."
BE HONEST THOUGH; do not lie, because you will eventually be found out.
Competition started getting touch in the late 90's so I actually lowered my price down to $75/hr and feel very comfortable there. I have a setup in my home, where I can bring their pc, plug it in, perform whatever maintenance I need and get it back to the user very quickly. All while, I'm watching TV, eating dinner, playing computer games or whatever. If you know what you are doing, you don't have to baby-sit the machine, just make the critical decisions when it's needed.
I'm considering
...And, it can be fun and rewarding ($), or it can be a living hell.
:)
.com. If you think there's a need for web hosting, or having a computer-related forum or some such in your area, then cool, but don't plan on it.
If I was starting from scratch again, here's what I'd do:
Incorporate. Look into starting an LLC, and get some liability insurance. If anything, your insurance carrier can hook you up with a lawyer when somebody decides that the pictures of your dog that they didn't tell you about when you went to back up "anything that they don't want to lose" are worth $50,000.
Don't spend too much on advertising. I've gotten good customers just by printing a flyer and pinning them up at the local grocery stores. If you live in a mostly blue-collar area, then chances are that the local restaurants have ads on their menu, and folks really do read the corkboard ads at the local Safeway.
Be nice. Don't wear a tie, but be clean and presentable. If you have a shirt with your company logo on it, good. Don't try to educate them on what they did "wrong" by installing the bonzi buddies out there. If you think they want or need some explanation, do it slowly, use car and highway analagies, and make them as comfortable with you as they would be with a plumber showing up to fix the toilet. Tell them that this sort of thing happens to everybody eventually, even you (no matter how dumb they are, you still want their money).
Use write-protected media. this means no regular usb keys, and no external hdds, unless they have a read-only switch. Burning Cds every week gets tedious and can be wasteful if you don't go the cdrw route, but remember the type of customer you're dealing with.
Expect lots of calls from aol users who think that their dial-up service is too slow, even though the computer is only 6 months old. There are several ways to deal with this, but I find it profitable to attempt to get them on dsl, even if its still with aol.
Work from your garage as much as possible. If you're charging $75 for a virus/defrag/spyware/OSS install (more on that next), you can set up a workbench with a kvm switch and multiply your profits/hour. I just bought a house and this is the first thing that i'll be setting up.
Value added services. I've found that lots of folks really appreciate an offer of "free software". Naturally, I'll offer to install openoffice if they aren't running any real office suite, firefox, gaim, etc.
Document the non-trivial fixes that you perform. Even though you read slashdot, you don't know everything, and eventually you'll run into a problem that will stump you at first. Don't immediatly re-install. Work the problem out at home in your shop, and document it. You'll eventually run into it again, and it'll be a no-brainer that time.
If possible, get somebody else involved for overflow work. If you end up being successful, you'll have times when you get burned out. Have somebody you trust come over and do some of the work for you. Pay them about 1/3 of what your charging. They'll enjoy the extra money, and you'll enjoy getting paid somewhat while you aren't really working. Thats how business works
Have a website, but don't be a
Since you presumably don't know what to charge, I'll chime in on that too. I feel that I'm no more or less skilled than my brother, who is an electrician. Or my other brother who is a plumber. Folks pay plumbers $75/hour to fix a $75 toilet or garbage disposal all the time, so don't fret that they are using some $400 e-machines and are paying you $350 in services. I do a flat rate for virus/spyware removal, a different flat rate for backup/reinstall/restore, which is much more expensive. As an aside, Don't call it a re-install. anybody can put the cd into the drive and reboot. You perform a comprehensive data/settings backup and restoration that their 15-year-old nephew can't do. You provide a copy of their data on CD. People like hearing that. Anyhow, After that I charge a nominal amount, aroung $60/hour for general work, networking setup/repair, software fixes, etc.
Good luck! I needed it, got it, and love not having to work as a waiter part-time anymore.
If you have techie friends let them know what you are up to. Every IT person gets asked by non-IT friends and family for help regularly - most of us don't want to deal with random home users though. When I was doing freelance work I got a lot of referrals this way. Now that I have a full time job I give out a fair number of referrals to a guy at work who does freelance stuff. I'd guess that if you offer $10 or $20 per referral you will get even more of your IT friends passing people to you.
(1) Incorporate. The main reason to do this is for liability purposes. But if you incorporate as a Type S corporation, this could also be beneficial for tax purposes. Do some online research or talk to a financial advisor. Also, be sure to trademark your company name and logo if you come up with something brilliant.
(2) Keep your day job at first. Start off doing jobs for friends/acquaintances during nights/weekends. This way you can get your feet wet without making a big investment. You could start by posting flyers at your job, your church, your son's boy scout troop, etc. This way you get some small exposure without significant advertising costs. As the first few months go by you should see your client base grow by word of mouth. At this point, you can quit your day job and start advertising.
(3) Market heavily towards the doctor/lawyer client base. These people have the mentality "I know exactly what I want and I don't care what it costs." They are willing to pay the premium for better service. If they like you they will definitely recommend you to all their doctor/lawyer friends.
(4) Go after small businesses as well. An office with only 3 computers still needs a network, high-speed internet, printer(s), etc. all of which require maintenance/support. You could even get them to sign a monthly service contract; for example, $250 per month gets them one 4-hour visit per month and a certain level of phone/email support. Then they pay extra for anything they need above that. This strategy also works for small non-profit organizations and small private schools.
(5) Don't forget you can make a little bit of money on hardware. If the client needs a Linksys router that Circuit City charges $50 for, but you can buy it online for $25, then buy it online for $25 and charge them $50 for it. Or alternatively, you could buy it online for $25 and charge them $40 for it, then point out that you just saved them $10.
(6) Going to the client's house to perform the service is all well and good, but there are certain situations where it just makes more sense for you to take the computer home. You don't want to sit at a client's house for 5 hours while backing up their data, formatting their HD, reinstalling Windows, and then reinstalling their applications. At $60 per hour that would cost them $300, and they could almost buy a new system for that (albeit a shitty one). Alternatively, you could offer this service for $150-$200 if they let you take the system home. Then you can work on multiple systems at once, or work on the system during your leisure time. This rule also applies to locations with dial-up internet. You don't want to hang around someone's house while waiting for a 5 MB driver to download on their shitty AOL dial-up.
(7) Word of mouth can spread a long way. If you find someone more than 20 or 25 miles away that requires your services, make sure you charge more for the extra distance (but be up front about this).
Or work from home, either way, but no house calls to private homes / apartments. I started a business like this and ran for about 6mo before I finally snapped and threw in the towel. Number 1 reason, I think, was people's houses. Maybe there's a correlation between cleanliness of a home and how well cared-for the computer is, or maybe I just got unlucky, but the number of creepy / filthy homes I ended up going to was just mind blowing.
Number 2 thing I would recommend, that I did after a month or two and it made things a billion times better: Formal contracts stating costs and expectations and the like. If a person's computer is riddled with spyware, it's a fair bet that 1: even if you do a clean install, put antivirus and ad-aware and firefox and whatever else on it, and then burn up 2 hours educating them about all the new software and why they need to use it, the computer will still be riddled with spyware all over again in a couple months. When you go to look at it again and open Firefox, it will be immediately obvious that it has not been used since you were last there. The customer will, at least 50% of the time, insist that the problem is that you failed to fix the problem the first time around, and further insist that they should get a discount / refund / free service. (While this is technically accurate, I recommend against informing the customer that the problem is their own glaring stupidity.) This will often be brought up only after you have arrived or even after you have fixed the computer.
Forcing the customer to sign a contract / waiver before you work on it goes a LONG ways towards shutting down that sort of stuff, but in retrospect I think that having my own place to work instead of doing house calls would have made that critical difference. Not only could I have avoided the barking dogs, screaming babies, mazes of clutter, people dressed in a way they would never go out in public in, and unidentifiable smells I'm sure I never want to know the source of, but taking somebody out of their home and into a business usually causes them to act a little more respectably.
Anywho, my 2c.
Unpleasantries.
I would suggest that you don't do it. Seriously. Next thing you know you'll get blamed for killing their PC even though it's full of spyware or they installed a COOL SCREENSAVER and now you deleted it I want my money back....etc....etc....
If you do decide to do it anyway, charge ALOT for cleaning spyware infestations. They DO take a while to clean, if they can be cleaned, and the more people charge, the more they will start saying hey how do I stop this crap??
Gorkman
You can appear on your friendly local public radio or TV station or public-access cable channel as a guest on a tech oriented show, to present your skills in an entertaining manner. Eg cook up a program on fun x10 stuff, alarm systems, computer driven surveillance etc. And in the context of such an avocational program, push your skills and your service and maintanence vocation.
As someone who did soho tech support, I hope you do better. The problems I ran into were:
1) They don't want to pay you.
2) They expect you to show up, fix all problems, and only be charged for fixing the one they called you for.
3) They expect you to make things work in a way they were not made to work.
4) They lie about what they have done to their machines to avoid additional charges.
5) When something hardware breaks after you fixed something software, and the reverse, they blame you and want it fixed for free.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I did it just for you, thanks for the feedback that it worked correctly. cheers!
...and does well.
He replaced a messed-up keyboard on my company ThinkPad for little more than the cost of shipping it to and from OSTG HQ in Fremont, Cal.
Since then I've sent him several other customers, and I have a Toshiba with a dead CD/DVD drive I'm going to take to him soon.
The guy says he makes a good living -- and I believe him.
If you need laptop repairs in the Sarasota/Bradenton (FL) area I heartily recommend Johnny - www.suncoastlaptops.com/
BTW, I found him on Craigslist... http://sarasota.craigslist.org/cps/197019984.html
- Robin
I currently own and operate an onsite "PC Repair" (home client) /"IT Consulting" (business client) business. I started a little over 5 years ago. I handle home users and small to medium businesses in the greater Seattle area.
First and foremost: you are not thinking of starting a computer repair business. You are thinking of starting a business that helps customers resolve the problems with their technology. This may seem odd but the customer service aspect is what will get you repeat business. Many good techs fail at this because they think of the computer before the client.
Second: network, network, network. I'm not talking about computers; join a Chamber of Commerce or something similar. Your face time will get you customers; maybe not right away but eventually, you'll be the guy they think of first. This is critical. No other form of advertising has paid off like personal networking (and I've burned a lot of money on it over the past 5 years).
It's true that there are a lot of home users who may bounce a check and so on if you're working on the low end. I've never had that issue with a home user; the only bounced check was a business and 2 other businesses ended up refusing to pay. All of these have been successfully prosecuted as appropriate. I feel this is mainly because I do not accept plastic of any kind. Credit cards are subject to all kinds of hassles; this keeps most of the "budget" crowd from hiring me but that's fine with me.
Charge a little bit less than the average in shop rate. This shouldn't be the cheapest but not the most expensive. You also aren't going to have the huge overhead of a lease; that's how you undercut the competition while not being the "welfare computer helper". Contrary to what many feel, I don't see a need to charge for travel time; why should anyone get paid to drive to work? Nobody likes the plumber or locksmith charging them to just knock on the door. Charge an hourly rate and bill by the quarter hour. The effective minimum is the first quarter hour. I find that operating this way, I have plenty of work to keep me busy full time. People don't hesitate to call me and I've had referrals from 65% of my customers to date.
Have terms and stick to them. Make sure when you first set an appointment you cover your rates and such. This way they know what to expect. I personally never offer an estimate until I've seen the issue. When the issue's fixed, I use a two part Invoice form from Staples. I stamp a URL which contains my terms on it, having the clients sign that. I print terms and provide them on request. A critical item to include is "All labor is fully earned". This means if you aren't liable for refunds you clean spy-ware from the PC and it gets re-infected. If you do this long enough, you will think you fixed an issue and didn't. If you screwed up, don't charge to fix it. If you didn't screw up explain why and bill them.
I also don't mind customers watching me work. They almost never comprehend exactly what I am doing anyhow so it just makes them that much more comfortable with having had to call me in. In many cases, I think they just want to see that I am doing something other than reinstalling a program but sometimes that's all you need to do. Explaining the basics without too much techno-babble is one of the most difficult aspects of this. Just keep it simple and explain sometimes it's not what to do but the order in which it's done that matters.
One thing I find works quite well is work shirts. Wear Guard (Google them if you like) is a company I sue that embroiders my business name on button down or polo shirts for a reasonable fee. People always relax when they see you're a "real business". It sounds silly but it's a major part of what separates the successful business from the "friend of a relative's neighbor" that is so common. Make sure you're running a business, not playing around. The only "real business" tool you don't need IMO is office space. Set aside a portio
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
After having only customers who were friends or my wife's associates, and paying more in taxes than I took in because the Schedule C didn't give me gas credit like it should have, I've given up on the home computer repair business (or as a business). People I talked to when I was getting started said they only did business support because there isn't as much money in home support, and less return business if you've done your job right (or their computer isn't a complete POS).
Suggestion is to have a client list drawn up before you start and to advertise wherever you can. Just being told that there are X-thousand users locally and they need help [my wife, who works at a library near our home, told me regularly there were "10 people a week" who came in looking for computer help and they could not recommend anyone... and apparently never recommended me either] doesn't mean they'll beat a path to your door. Also, be aware that you're not the only fish in the pond, no matter what you think. I didn't find out who my "competition" was until I put up my shingle.
Mush -- ex Geekery Ltd.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
It's true, the customer service aspect, and helping people with their technological problems that will get you a good rep and long time gainful employment. I charge $300 per machine, though everyone qualifies for a referal or multiple machine discount of $50, so the net is $250. Seem high? Not really, when you consider that it includes a year of support. After the initial fixup of the machine(s) and resolution of all issues, they pay a minor gas fee for an actual visit. How to I manage to make a living and survive? I fix the machine right the first time. Might take several days in my office, depending on how infested and crappified the box is. I've been doing this for over 20 years, so I got the chops to fix almost any problem that might arise. Then most calls are questions on how to accompish some task, like emailing a photo or such, or some new problem or infection. I don't advertise at all. All clients are given my card directly, or refered from a current client. It took a while, but I have no unsatisifed clients, and have never had a bounced check. I do not take credit cards. I do help people asking questions in stores and such if I happen to hear and can help, and then give them my card. Step one is to Ghost or TrueImage the drive or drives, and make sure you can boot from the backup. Then you can always go back and start over or retrieve data if necessary. An additional benefit is that you'll find out if the hard drive is starting to go bad. Don't talk down to them. Make an analogy that they can understand to explain. And never get angry or short with them, no matter how annoying they may be. It's not their fault that they are stupid about computers - and you are making it your job to help them, so be as kind as possible. Even when they call you as your hot dinner hits the table, or just as you get into the bath.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Done this for a couple years. Looking desperately to get out. I know I'm reiterating what's been said here, but I feel the need to put my own spin on it. Some random thoughts:
Most small business owners are petty tyrants who are too used to having power in their own little worlds. The only reasons they can imagine that their word is not instantly done are a) stupidity, b) laziness and/or c) maliciousness. They are HELL to deal with.
On any given account: start small and careful. You don't want your first project for someone to be $8000 worth of work which they then refuse to pay until you come back and fix one printer attached to a machine that you didn't even see, let alone work on, which broke at the same time. (True story.)
For any bid, get scope of work in writing and signed off on. Make sure anything else is noted as time and materials. Recommend three year hardware warranties, also in writing.
Accept that any small business customer will be underdocumented, over picky, and will have at least one nasty cobbled-together trap waiting in their environment from a previous tech who made it look good and then got the hell out.
Also accept that you'll never convince them to pay you to get their environment running correctly and supportably.
Also also accept that you will get blamed for things out of your control.
God help you if you have to deal with a company that also maintains a connection to a mothership company. Even if whatever is wrong is at the parent site, and they already know about it, and you can do absolutely nothing from where you are, you will still get blamed.
Home users are hell too. They never keep backups. They don't keep original disks and then yell at you when you can't just install your copy.
The machine is always crawling with spyware - they install every program they can find, they click on every ad, and little 13-year-old Johnny or Jenny surfs porn at midnight while the 'rents are asleep. (And watch out if one of the kids thinks they're a leet hacker and downloads password crackers or something like that. Hoo boy.)
You clean the spyware, it comes back next week, they demand you come back for free. [I've had some success with the car wash analogy - but only some.] And yes - most of the time for an onsite is spent sitting waiting for a scan to finish. Yes, you can pull it back to your workshop, but it's still only profitable if you have built the volume to be doing three or four of those at once.
Speaking of your workshop. Especially if you're working from home, separate everything. Get a separate IP address and a whole different network for work stuff - you don't want something nasty jumping the wall into your personal stuff. Get an older computer that you can ghost-and-reimage strictly for Google searches and working on customer hard drives. When you can afford it, get a laptop just for onsites. Get separate email address. Get a separate cell phone. Occasionally turn it off. Get a four-port KVM and a good CRT. Get a NAS. To get utilities onto customer computers, find a USB key with a write protect switch or burn CDs. Keep an eye out for the latest and greatest utilities. Back up every last thing on any hard drive you're reformatting.
Get a version of UltraVNC SC done. It will save your ass. Hell, you could even use it to remotely run spyware scans, if you're feeling lucky.
Whenever you buy parts for someone, get a deposit up front.
Document, document, document. Keep a call log, keep a job log, write down any password that crosses your space. Any time you fix something, write down the symptoms, what the root cause was, and steps to fix. A week later you'll remember without that, but six months later you might not.
God help you if you have to hire help, even so much as an accountant, a secretary, or a courier. If it's another tech, all bets are off - very few people can do the job for what you can afford to pay them. Most of the rest surf along on chutzpah and shoddy spit-and-baling-wire work. Oh
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
Good call on putting up notices and networking. Having a website is nice, but when someone's computer is hosed, he/she isn't likely to be able to find your shiny new site. :)
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock