A few days ago I asked the Technibble readers to ask me a question about the computer business. Here are the answers:
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I often write about how to work on your business, your computer or your client; but in this article I will be focusing on working on ourselves. It takes a certain type of person to become successful in the computer repair business and here are 5 tips on how to become that person.
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Just recently on the Technibble forums we had a young soon-to-be technician who said he thought he was “pretty freakin good” at computers. Many of us told him that he was yet to encounter a job that makes him realize that there is a lot more to learn. Its quite a humbling experience when it happens and I would like to share with you one of my own “humbling experiences”.
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It is the dream of many computer technicians is to start their own computer repair business. This dream is a great one to go for but before starting a business, you will need to face the realities of the businesses startup costs. In this article I will cover some of the startup costs one can expect.
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There are many young computer geeks on the Technibble forums who are looking to make the move into turning their skills into a career. However, many of them have doubts about their knowledge so I have created a list of what skills I believe to be essential to a technician that wants to do basic residential jobs. This is a very general skill set that covers most tasks I have performed in the residential market.
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The question “Should I charge businesses more?” recently came up on the Technibble forums and the short answer is yes. Heres why:
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Every now and then some Computer Repair rip-off story shows up in the media and finds its way onto YouTube (1, 2, 3, 4). After the Technicians on our forums pick up their jaws from the floor at how unbelievable some of the techs in these videos are, the discussion always turns to regulation of the computer repair industry.

There are Information Technology certifications which are used to regulate those who are being hired by someone else since are used to show that a technician has a basic understanding of certain skills. However, it doesn’t actually mean that the certified person can actually fix a computer. I have personally seen well qualified technicians who were absolutely useless while non-certified technicians were absolutely brilliant.

If you are self employed, you obviously don’t need certifications to get a job since you are your own boss. So who’s going to certify and regulate the self employed and how will it be done? Should we even regulate the computer repair industry at all?
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One of the most important skills for a young computer business to master is advertising. I see it time and time again where technicians will ask “what form of advertising worked best for you?” only for the responses to be fairly mixed. One will say that their Yellow Pages ad brings in 90% of their clients while another business will say that he only gets 1 call a month from it.

I wish that I could give Technibble readers a silver bullet for advertising, but what worked well for me wont necessarily work well for you. What I can do however, is tell you the factors you need to take into consideration to eventually find what works great for you.
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A couple of weeks ago we had a young technician telling the Technibble forums about his recently founded business. He’s 19, the business is about 6 months old, he lives in a small town and he’s having trouble landing business clients. In his area, the largest employers are the only hospital in the county, the Board of Education and telemarketing companies. He says the problem is that all of these employers have their own in-house computer technicians and are unlikely to need his outside help. While I applaud him for aiming high, hes aiming at the wrong people as a new business.
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In my last article I wrote about how I couldn’t help one of my clients because I couldn’t open up a certain laptop model. In this article I am going to talk about the next step which is telling them where they can find the right help; and even make a little bit on the side by doing so!
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