Comments on: Are You Charging Enough?

By: multi

multi — Sun, 24 May 2009 02:15:47 +0000

This may be obvious, but it’s a wise idea to do some research before arbitrarily setting prices based on competitors.

For example, open excel and create a budget. It needs to include all expenses, such as advertising, education, insurance, etc. etc. It needs to include some fudge factor, and a salary that you could live comfortably on.

Next, calculate how many hours at what rate do you need to bill to meet that budget.

Compare your numbers against what the competition is charging. Factor in the quality of services and the type of work you’ll get based on that price perception.

Finally, have an accountant go over your numbers and offer any relevant advice.

Anyway, that’s a starting place.

By: Bob Kanji

Bob Kanji — Thu, 21 May 2009 09:51:16 +0000

Oh, for rates.
We charge 95 Euros per hour (128 dollars) per hour in the shop and 120 Euros for onsite work (162 dollars) for baseline prices.

By: Bob Kanji

Bob Kanji — Thu, 21 May 2009 09:45:53 +0000

@Remote Computer Repair

Thats my point, you don’t always get what you pay for. The reason the bigger shops charge much more than me is because they have a store front, more advertising, and employees to pay. The work that comes from them is sub-par I’d say 30-40% of the time and is over priced 100% of the time. C’mon, $350 to replace an 80 gig laptop HD? $150 for virus removal? Thats insane I don’t care who you are. These are just some of what people have told me they paid.

Very interesting question. I myself seem to be on the dark side of the force here ! I currently run one larger software company and three computer repair shops in Europe. The shops have between 3 and 8 full time employees. Monthly bills and salaries (in Europe) make up for roughly 75 percent of charges, leaving approximately 20 percent profit before taxes. 5% go for keeping current software licences etc.

$350 for changeing a laptop hard drive, including data transfer from a corrupted drive (otherwise you wouldn’t have to change the drive, right?) is a good bargain, at least if it’s done correctly. I would be tempted to challenge you to do a REAL virus removal (rootkit + several nasty trojans) for less than $150. Taking a mean time of 3 hours for this job you would be clearing $50 bucks an hour (at 20% before taxes this means a $20 net worth !! in your pocket after taxes)

For being sub par, I believe that most of the repair work done on a personal computer can not be done on site today. From our repair logs, mean intervention time per machine in the shop is just less than 3 hours (this is calculated every year for my three shops from several thousand repaired computers). It’s just not possible to do bill three onsite hours if most of what you do is sit around and wait for completion of your third virus scan on a 250 Gig drive full of music and divxes.

By: Bellingham Web Designer

Bellingham Web Designer — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:29:32 +0000

This is often the case for real estate agents. They get asked how much are they going to spend to earn a certain commission, when the real question is what is the total cost of doing business.

For my web design business, I charge $50 an hour on paper, but I am efficient so I always finished well under my estimated time. In the end, I make very close to $50 if not a little more.

By: paul

paul — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:40:33 +0000

I find that I usually spend way more time than I could doing jobs. I think it’s because I like to take things slow and thorough to make sure I do a good job. This means scanning a computer with multiple virus scanners, defragging and cleaning up temp files, disabling misc startup items, blowing out the case with compressed air and generally going the extra mile to show the the customer the difference between a professional and the geek squad. I have never had a complaint about this extra work.

One more thing is that I usually only charge for the highest fee when doing multiple services. For instance, if a users hard drive is bad and I need to reinstall, I charge them for the reinstall, but not the changing of the drive, that takes about 2 and a half seconds. Then, I let them know that so that they think that they got $80 in free service when it really only cost me about 5 minutes of time. When I do that, there are almost ALWAYS more jobs for me from that customer and their friends. It turns out that I get more work than I can handle sometimes.

By: Warenwirtschaft

Warenwirtschaft — Sat, 24 May 2008 16:22:36 +0000

I think a big problem is charging one hour but working 2 hours or more. Many technicians charge 75$ per hour when they are at the customer but they charge little or nothing for all the work that is necessary at the office preparing for the job, setting up a system, monitoring some hardware or similar jobs.

By: gunslinger

gunslinger — Fri, 23 May 2008 05:10:31 +0000

@Remote Computer Repair

I understand what you are saying Bryce and agree that perception means a lot. My way of doing things may cost me a few snobby first time customers, but the ones I do get are loyal for life. Mainly because they see how bad they have been getting screwed by the other guys.

By: Phil Benwell

Phil Benwell — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:00:57 +0000

Working this out was always a problem. I din’t know what to charge for and what to leave off, what to include in my expenses and in the end couldn’t work out if it was profitable or not.

By: Remote Computer Repair

Remote Computer Repair — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:45:17 +0000

Mmmm perception… what a wonderful thing! It’s really true though. I’ve raised my prices a few times and it’s rare that anyone questions it. Maybe a couple times a month… but people realize that you get what you pay for!

By: Anton

Anton — Sun, 18 May 2008 14:11:54 +0000

I think that we should charge a fee of 25% of the value of the software, hardware or other stuff that we install on the customers computer.