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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?
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.
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.
Get a gunpermit.
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'
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
Use UltraVNC-SC. It creates a stand-alone VNC server executable that is configured to connect back to YOUR static IP address (a reverse VNC connection basically). I have mine hosted at help.mydomain.com.au. I just tell anyone who I need to assist this name which they type in and run and voila, i'm controlling their desktop. No firewalls to configure (except yours) and no hassles on their end. Best of all it's free.
http://sc.uvnc.com/index.php?section=12
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 did Home Support for a while and several conversations went like
"I need to reinstall Windows"
"will I get all my stuff back?"
"have you got the original disks?"
"what disks?"
I saw machines that were so old that drivers and the like were no longer available - no use reinstalling if you can't get the hardware going.
I would never use my own disks for an installation, if they didn't have disks, and the machine could stand a later version, and the customer had disks for their software, then I would buy a copy for them and install it.
Now, I'm sure some one out there is thinking that it would be a good chance to spread the Linux message and replace windows with Linux - Don't. I know of someone who nearly ended up in court being sued because he provided linux when the customer was expecting windows.
Chris
Art is the mathematics of emotion
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.
It isn't, it's just that AC had nothing useful to contribute nor understand that your links could help someone contemplating this where you are.
..where retired business executives volunteer their help for small startups.
In the US the Small Business Administration...
http://www.sba.gov/
And it's non-profit affiliate, SCORE:
http://www.score.org/
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!
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...
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.
This does not match my experience. I work with plenty of people on government assistance who never bounce checks and manage to save enough money to buy a used computer and pay for its support. Sure, there are scoundrels out there, but a successful business has to be wary of scoundrels at all income levels, not just the among poor. You can't seriously argue that a rich customer will never try to rip you off!
Yes, serving customers at the low end of the income scale requires a different business model than serving customers at the high end. But just becuase it is a different type of business does not mean there is no business there at all.
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!
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.
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