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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?
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.
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 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.