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.
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/po sts. I work exaclty the same as he does, and I have the most loyal customers of any business owner I know.
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;). 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.
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!
In my experience with ISO 9000 it does not matter how much detail you get into, you just have to document the procedures for a process and everyone must follow the documentation. For instance if you are writing up the process for buttering your toast the following works fine:
1. Scoop up butter with knife.
2. Apply to toast.
as opposed to:
1. Get butter from fridge.
2. Get knife from drawer.
3. Get bread and place in toaster. Wait until done.
4. Scoop up butter with knife.
5. Apply to toast in back and forth motion covering toast.
When they audit you they make sure you follow the procedures you have documented, and you can get into trouble if you really get into details.
I do this for a living (8.5 years) and those Freelance Tech Support articles explain exactly why I have all the customers in my neck of the woods. I see alot of part timers come and go, and they either look unprofessional by not charging enough (I charge $60/hr with an hour minimum, which is what the market is here), or they really don't know what they are doing and get no repeat customers. 85- 90% of my business is all repeat from a customer base of about 700 that I have built up over the years.
Just finished it today!
I liked it, but I think it would be an aquired taste, as in you have to like it when he goes off on a tangent. For instance the huge explanation of how Damascus Steel was made was pretty interesting.
I loved Cryptonomicon, and I thought The Diamond Age was brilliant.
I have been doing this exact thing for 8 years in Southern Maine, and I charge $60.00/hr with an hour minimum. I am in a rural area, but if I was in Portland, ME, or Boston, MA I would charge $75.00 to $100.00 because that is the going rate there.
I have about 500 business and home customers (about 100 steady), and I really try to educate them while I fix their computer so I don't have to go back often, and so they understand what they are doing. I also expose them the alternatives like Linux and Macs, and have actually converted some that were brave!
Most home customers repeat about once a year, and businesses are as needed with no service contracts to allow them to dictate my schedule.
I charge all my friends the same (well maybe a little off...) and since they respect the fact that this is what I do for a living, the requests for free support really haven't been an issue.
I GUESS I HIT THE SHIFT MORE THAN FIVE TIMES AND NOW I CAN"T GET OUT OF CAPS> I THOUGHT I HAD TURNED IT OFF BUT AS YOU CAN SEE I SCREWED SOMETHING UP> THANKS JOHN
Umm.....No....
I used to work in a CD factory (from 1986 to 1994), and this is plain not true. A pressed CD consists of:
disc label
protective coating (laquer)
Aluminum layer (sputtered on)
data layer (pressed into the next layer (see below) when injection molded)
polycarbonate injection molded disc
The data is not "manufactured by stamping the CD pits into a thin layer of aluminium."
It doesn't work that way.
50? I am an independant computer consultant in southern Maine, and my record is a home machine with 1200 objects!!!! That's right!!
I regularly see 500 and better. After about 400, the machine is pretty much useless.
Kids like to click stuff!
No, the laquer is on top, scratches affect the playability only when they are on the bottom (play side). Well, I guess except for extreme cases...
What you are probabably seeing is inferior pit geometry (i.e. at the low end of the spec) or other reasons, allowing scratches to have a greater effect. Machines nowadays make a disc in 2-3 seconds, as opposed to 14 seconds when we started, so they are stretching all the specs to gain cycle time.
I used to work in a CD factory (from 1986 to 1994), and this is plain not true. A pressed CD consists of:
disc label
protective coating (laquer)
Aluminum layer (sputtered on)
data layer (pressed into the next layer when injection molded)
polycarbonate injection molded disc
To vary from this is a violation of the Phillips spec, and you are not allowed to put the Compact Disc logo on the resulting product.
What you probably noticed was the laquer layer was thick when we started making discs, but over the years laquer has improved to the point that only a very thin layer is needed.
If you leave out the laquer entirely, the aluminum oxidates rapidly, rendering the disc useless.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahh, but David Bowie's character need to to all the way home.
It was pretty creepy seeing this today though...
I just watched The Man Who Fell To Earth last night and now this comes up.
Does Jeff Bezos drink alot of water?
I don't think Jonathon Frakes WANTS a job. He's married to Genie Francis.
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!
In my experience with ISO 9000 it does not matter how much detail you get into, you just have to document the procedures for a process and everyone must follow the documentation. For instance if you are writing up the process for buttering your toast the following works fine:
1. Scoop up butter with knife.
2. Apply to toast.
as opposed to:
1. Get butter from fridge.
2. Get knife from drawer.
3. Get bread and place in toaster. Wait until done.
4. Scoop up butter with knife.
5. Apply to toast in back and forth motion covering toast.
When they audit you they make sure you follow the procedures you have documented, and you can get into trouble if you really get into details.
Ahh...what's the fun in that?
IE treats width as min-width, so your width entries are treated as a "suggestion" by IE.g e=1&cid=CC96C
Here's a great article that explains all the width quirks and ways to fix it:
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?pa
These are 2 books I have learned from:
Cascading Style Sheets: The Designer's Edge
The CSS Anthology : 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks
I also joined Community MX which helped loads in leaning all the strange browser quirks. Those people have it nailed and are very helpful.
Think maybe they will make the default domain list aphabetically instead of the order you input the domains?
Nahhhh....
I do this for a living (8.5 years) and those Freelance Tech Support articles explain exactly why I have all the customers in my neck of the woods.
I see alot of part timers come and go, and they either look unprofessional by not charging enough (I charge $60/hr with an hour minimum, which is what the market is here), or they really don't know what they are doing and get no repeat customers. 85- 90% of my business is all repeat from a customer base of about 700 that I have built up over the years.
As a person who has been doing this awhile, the following link was the best article I have ever read on this subject: http://whatexit.org/tal/data/techjob.html/
Oh my god!! That was hilarious!!!
Nice! Thanks!
Just finished it today! I liked it, but I think it would be an aquired taste, as in you have to like it when he goes off on a tangent. For instance the huge explanation of how Damascus Steel was made was pretty interesting. I loved Cryptonomicon, and I thought The Diamond Age was brilliant.
I have been doing this exact thing for 8 years in Southern Maine, and I charge $60.00/hr with an hour minimum. I am in a rural area, but if I was in Portland, ME, or Boston, MA I would charge $75.00 to $100.00 because that is the going rate there.
I have about 500 business and home customers (about 100 steady), and I really try to educate them while I fix their computer so I don't have to go back often, and so they understand what they are doing. I also expose them the alternatives like Linux and Macs, and have actually converted some that were brave!
Most home customers repeat about once a year, and businesses are as needed with no service contracts to allow them to dictate my schedule.
I charge all my friends the same (well maybe a little off...) and since they respect the fact that this is what I do for a living, the requests for free support really haven't been an issue.
Thank you!!
How did the EPA test it properly? There is no mention of them driving differently. That was asked above... Their results are on par with yours..
One of my customers:
I GUESS I HIT THE SHIFT MORE THAN FIVE TIMES AND NOW I CAN"T GET OUT OF CAPS> I THOUGHT I HAD TURNED IT OFF BUT AS YOU CAN SEE I SCREWED SOMETHING UP> THANKS JOHN
Jesus H. Christ.
Thanks for that link...always good to read things that make you think!!
I for one welcome our new nanotube overlords.
Umm.....No.... I used to work in a CD factory (from 1986 to 1994), and this is plain not true. A pressed CD consists of: disc label protective coating (laquer) Aluminum layer (sputtered on) data layer (pressed into the next layer (see below) when injection molded) polycarbonate injection molded disc The data is not "manufactured by stamping the CD pits into a thin layer of aluminium." It doesn't work that way.
50? I am an independant computer consultant in southern Maine, and my record is a home machine with 1200 objects!!!! That's right!! I regularly see 500 and better. After about 400, the machine is pretty much useless. Kids like to click stuff!
This is true, and I wish Phillips would enforce it...but what do I know...
No, the laquer is on top, scratches affect the playability only when they are on the bottom (play side). Well, I guess except for extreme cases...
What you are probabably seeing is inferior pit geometry (i.e. at the low end of the spec) or other reasons, allowing scratches to have a greater effect. Machines nowadays make a disc in 2-3 seconds, as opposed to 14 seconds when we started, so they are stretching all the specs to gain cycle time.
I used to work in a CD factory (from 1986 to 1994), and this is plain not true. A pressed CD consists of:
disc label
protective coating (laquer)
Aluminum layer (sputtered on)
data layer (pressed into the next layer when injection molded)
polycarbonate injection molded disc
To vary from this is a violation of the Phillips spec, and you are not allowed to put the Compact Disc logo on the resulting product.
What you probably noticed was the laquer layer was thick when we started making discs, but over the years laquer has improved to the point that only a very thin layer is needed.
If you leave out the laquer entirely, the aluminum oxidates rapidly, rendering the disc useless.