The Who

This article is targeted to those who have a modest network server requirement, clients with modest server needs and computer repair individuals wanting to break into server networking.

The Why

– In over 21+ years of operating my company “Computer Fix It” and supporting all forms of networks, many clients have requested an affordable total cost of ownership server setup. Of course this is subjective to the size of the organization however; I am specifically talking about the MICRO businesses of fewer than 10 employees.

I would talk to these micro business owners before going through the time to spec out such a network. I hate to take the time to bid such a system only to have them decide that a server is not for their company due to the complications and costs. After all, you have consider server software starting at about $500, a server hardware platform starting at about $1200 for even the most modest hardware, time to setup and install the server and configure it with the users and permissions.

Then there is always a bit of time to train the employees how to access programs and files on this new system. Even with the most modest bid server implementation plan, complete can work out to many thousands of dollars when all is said and done. This price point often scares away micro business clients. Often these clients are 6-10 users in a service or retail industry but need to share an accounting file, payroll system, database, internet and other proprietary systems managing invoicing or inventory and have very tight budgetary requirements.

The What

Microsoft Windows Home Server. When I first heard that Microsoft Windows Home Server was intended for home user, was built on the Microsoft NT line of server software, particularly the 2003/2008 Small Business Server package with its NT security, the same security that the US Department of Defense uses, I knew there was plenty of oomph under the hood on this seemingly modest offering.

Microsoft Small Business Server is really a package suite of server products that most small businesses commonly use. This package sells for $2500 for the software alone (or bit less). So I knew the blood line of the WHS was pretty good. WHS software retails for $100 but can be purchased for $45 online. It allows up to 10 simultaneous users with Windows Server Security and it is designed to be installed on workstation hardware which can easily save half of the cost of a normal small server install. No need for error correcting code RAM, no need for SAS or other expensive hard drives and no need for a server motherboard and power supply.

So with a thoroughbred pedigree, a pittance of price to buy and with very low cost hardware requirements, I see the recipe for an elegant and cost effective solution for micro businesses. For these reasons I decided to evaluate Microsofts “Quattro” code named version of Windows Home Server to see if it is up to the task for my own modest network and therefor also meet the needs of many micro/small businesses and networks which I support.

The test machine would be any working system from my used computer bone pile. I purposely wanted to find a slower machine to see how it operates on what is specced out by Microsoft. The chosen test machine is a 7 year old Dell Precision 210L desktop system with a Pentium 4 HT 3.2ghz CPU, 1 Gig of RAM and a 1.5 TB Hard drive.

Windows Home Server installed in under 1 hour to my complete amazement. It was a simple, straight forward installation as easy as 123. I used just the laymen’s default setup as Microsoft intended it to be installed with nothing fancy requiring any of my MCSE knowledge. Once installed WHS quickly guided me through setting up all the functionality. It took 2 minutes each or about 10 minutes to go to each of four computers, run the connection software from the install CD, log them onto the server, and setup nightly automated backups to the server for each. It setup automatic downloads of Windows updates, not only for the server but for each client as well if I put a check mark in that box to select that option.

WHS backs up the operating systems of each computer, the drivers and the data. It has an intelligence so that it only backups up each file once, even if that files shows up on many separate computers. This feature saves space on the hard drive as many files are common to more than one system.

I chose to add my users next which took literally less than 1 minute to add 5 users. It put a private folder for each user similar to what it does with individual profiles in Windows Desktop OS’s. It has by default a public folder, music folder, videos folder, pictures folder and software folders already setup. While I was there I took an extra minute and added my own folder, I setup an Intuit Quickbooks company data file sub-folder in the public folder so all users could access it.

Next I walked through the 3 or 4 wizards which completely configured the server.

The user settings offer to:

• Turn on automatic updates
• Push those updates to the client computers on the network so you only need download each update once and share it across your network
• Configure your router to allow port forwarding to the WHS which could then offer additional services from outside your network
• Provide a family.homeserver.com domain name for the server
• Provide remote access files on the server
• Allow me to remote tunnel into my own computer on the inside of the network

I allowed it to modify my Linksys router and it was faster and easier from the WHS wizard than if I had logged on to the router and went right to the port forwarding myself. I did not need to know the ports or services or understand port forwarding as it was automatic. It took 3 minutes.

With router ports forwarded now I could press one button to turn on remote access. I then ran through another 123 wizard which setup the dynamic DNS required for the local hosting of my own tscarpelli.homeserver.com site without needing a static ip address. All that was needed was a Hotmail or Live mail account. With this turned on I could now test to see if I had access from outside my network to both the files on the server and the files/programs on each of the computers in my network. It worked flawlessly.

WHS also streams media to a media center which I have not activated yet but will do so soon.

After it was completely set up and I still wanted to play, I plugged in a second hard drive to see what it would do. WHS instantly recognized the drive and asked me in layman terms if that drive was for duplication or to extend the size of the data drive. Wow, how intuitive could it be? I didn’t need more storage space and I wanted to see how the duplication wizard works so I selected duplication, now I have a raid mirror. It was that simple.

During installation with a single drive setup, WHS takes about 100 Gb of your first drive for the C:/ partition and puts the operating system on it. The remainder of the balance of the drive becomes D:/ for data drive but this barely matters as it is seamless to the users. If I elected to add the second drive for expansion, it simply would run both drives as ‘just a bunch of drives’, but without splitting files between two or more drives. If there were a failure, you still had some data on the non failed drives. By selecting to duplicate my files, it automatically sets up a RAID 1 mirror with only 2 drives.

The system selects a type of RAID by the number of drives and whether you put turn on duplication or not. It will take 3 or more drives set without duplication to ‘just a bunch of drives’ configuration giving you maximum storage space. However, if you setup duplication then it gives you a striped set with parity RAID 5 but it does not use any terms like RAID, redundancy, fault tolerant, striped sets, parity and the like. I found this very cool.

So 1 hour and 20 minutes into this installation, what do I have?

• I have a secure file server with 5 Users and Shares setup
• A personal webpage hosted with dynamic DNS service already setup and running
• A remote access point to all files on my home network to all the files I am authorized on the server
• Access to remote desktop on any computer on my network with those programs installed
• I have automated backups setup for every computer system and Blackberry on my network
• I have a shared printer(s) to all other network computers
• I have a mirror raid on the systems and data partitions

I can tell you that with traditional Microsoft server applications to get this far would easily have taken between close to 6-10 hrs. So this is amazing.

What else can I do? I installed Quickbooks Pro 2012 for my three companies and started doing all my accounting and bookkeeping from it as well. QB’s is a moderately heavy network usage program so this is a good test even with Gigabyte Ethernet.

I left the system switched on over night and when I checked the next morning it had backed up the computers on my network. I then moved additional data to the shared folders that I wanted centralized. Now I have the system setup completely, lets see what else I can load on this thing and see how it works.

I use the WHS to backup clients’ files from my computer work-bench. I store all my software tools so now when I forget my flash drive of tools onsite I can remote into my software folder and grab those tools right from my clients’ home or office without using the FTP protocol. I loaded 30 Gbs of Windows images, installation and other ISO’s in my software folder so I could burn CDs and DVDs as needed when my working discs gets scratched.

Although I purposely set WHS up on a 7 year old slow single core PC with just 1 gig of ram, a system that most of us would throw away, I can detect no deficiencies in operations as a server. I have only tested it with 3 users on Quickbooks and 1 remote access user and I see no degradation in speed or productivity in that configuration even though I am loading and pushing the uses beyond its intended and stated purpose. I have to say at this point I am pleasantly surprised by the bang for the buck that I am receiving.

We have been using this system for about 15 days. My wife Maria has 50 Gb of photography business client photos and she accesses her photos and uploads from her photo shoots to the server. We plan on our next out of town trip to access the files when we visit her folks in Florida, as well as upload up to 2 GB per batch to put our photos on the home server remotely from our laptop in the hotel.

The storage tool even uses IDE and SATA hard drives together and can use them seamlessly. So if you had 2 IDEs and a SATA drive you can still span them or duplicate them as it is all done in the software. For those clients who just want you to setup yesterday’s workstation you will find this sort of ease of use helpful when adding left over drives.

I see savings in the following ways:

First, you do not need server quality hardware which is a budget buster by itself with things like ECC RAM priced to kill, or SAS or SCSI drives priced at 2 or 3 times the cost of SATA drives, or server cases and power supplies costing as much as a typical modern stand-alone workstation.

Second, the software itself is $45 rather than $450 for server only software for 5 users. There is some freeware server software like Linux but then again very few people can support Linux.

Third, the system is designed with end user ease of setup and administration so the labor costs to completely set this up and manage it is on the same order of magnitude as the savings in software.

So here is the kicker. By saving your clients money, you could easily install it for many more clients who would not otherwise consider a server environment. You are raising the productivity and usefulness of client networks and with that they see the usefulness which leads to their logical willingness to add more information technology down the line as they both trust you and outgrow Windows Home Server. This savings will cement your relationship with the client which makes them willing to spend more money with you in the future as new technologies develop. They have seen the proof in the pudding so to speak. So I think this is a good long term strategy for tiny IT shops.

Not only can you bid and build new Windows Home Servers for clients at rock bottom budgets, but we all have business clients with excess older equipment but no real effective network or server. You do not need new server hardware or ECC RAM saving quite a bit of money but even more than that, this opens up the potential of using this technology to reuse old equipment.

I recommend anyone in the computer business to grab refurbished computer equipment and perhaps only adding a large new hard drive and use it in their own shop or office and test this system yourself. Obviously, if you are building a WHS for a client I would buy a simple new Duel Core or i3 system with modest memory and as many large drives as you can fit into a normal case. I would look for very low wattage systems to build WHS on new equipment such as IBX/ITX small 175 watt system that is small and can be put out of the way.

This system will use very little excess power and produce very little excess heat. This helps with another shortage in some SOHO businesses, shortage of space. Lower heat requirements you can even store it under desks in closets that are ventilated and other out of the way places. It is perfect for clients who do not have a server closet or room as it does not demand a server room. Clients may choose to shut it down nightly, accept backup nights, leave it on every night, or set it to turn off after backups are performed.

So In summary, Windows Home Server is an effective server network solution for 10 users or less and can be installed at a fraction of the cost of a typical business server. I am very impressed with this little software price for a big software program. If there is a drawback to WHS, it is that it scares me a little in that if MS made all their systems work this well and this simple I would soon have to find other work outside of the computer IT business.

There is a 2011 version with a free 2012 software update which allows it to perform remote connections with Windows 8 systems. Microsoft announced they will not continue it after 2011 but then they came out with a free 2012 update, probably to help sales of Windows 8 as the connection software on 2011 did not support Windows 8.

Again, this system easily beats hands down any peer server setup I have seen, it has NT security and it is more featured as well. Once setup you unplug the keyboard, mouse and monitor and it sits in the corner on an uninterruptible power supply and I manage it with remote desktop. This is a solution that Computer Fix It now recommends to our clients.

Article by Tony Scarpelli of CFI Computer Repair

Source: Windows Home Server Review - Technibble

1. Calculate

Sit down and calculate everything. Factor in any managed services you plan to offer or use yourself, from internet service for your business to web-hosting plans for your technician website. If you don’t skip this vital step, you’ll have a much higher success rate. Yes, it takes time and research, but groundwork is imperative.

2. Tools

In the computer technician trade, tools will range from PSU testers to Ethernet cable tools, from USB drive tool kits to operating system discs and repair/recovery disks. Get a head start by downloading and creating the disks for the operating systems you plan to work with, if you don’t have them already.

One of the best technician tools is a USB drive. You might find it useful to keep a folder of common network card drivers, some registry cleaners, malware scanners, and anti-virus tools on your USB toolkit. A separate USB drive could be used as bootable Windows installation media. Don’t forget to keep some networking tools in your toolkit as well, such as wi-fi network troubleshooting tools. Take the time to update your tools as well.

3. Business Name

Will you be going into business under your own name or a variant of it? For instance, will you be doing business as Smith’s Computer Services or have you already come up with a catchy DBA for your services? There are arguments for and against using your own name in your business name, and there are pros and cons for both.

Using your own name for your business is a good option if you are fairly well known in the community. You’ve put your name on your business and it’s a reflection of your own reputation, and many respect that and might be drawn to your services because of your name’s reputation. On the other hand, some view using their own name in their business name as less than professional, or perhaps they feel their name is boring or doesn’t give their business name a nice ring.

There is much to be said for both sides. However, if you plan to use a DBA, make sure you fulfill the local requirements, such as filing a DBA with your local county clerk or other authority. It might only be $14, depending on the situation, but it’s something to make sure you get done if you plan to use a DBA.

4. Legal Requirements

I mentioned filing a DBA as one of the requirements, but there are other legal requirements in many areas. Do you need to register your business on a regional level? For instance, in the U.S., you may be required to collect Sales and Use Tax on your services and report it quarterly to the state you live in. I won’t list all the potential requirements as each region is completely different, but you should be able to easily locate government resources on every level to help you locate requirements you need to fill to comply with regulations.

5. Finances, Paperwork, and CRM

How do you plan to keep your books? In times past, simple spreadsheets using Excel or similar programs were an easy method, but now there are many finance software applications that make it a lot easier than figuring out what formulas you need to use in a certain field to get a certain output. If you need paperwork forms, check out the Technibble Computer Business Kit.

If you just need a simple billing software and records management, you might check out Freshbooks. The free version limits you to using 3 clients, which isn’t much, but the trial version will give you a taste of what is offered, and it’s a good trial ground if you’re still working out what your needs may be. For those who have their own web-hosting space and need an invoicing app, I recommend Siwapp. It’s a free and open source customer management platform that covers invoicing, recurring invoices, and keeps good records for you as well as tracking taxes and other information.

If you need something more comprehensive, check out the reviews on finance software, there are always new options arriving on the scene. While I can’t confidently recommend one over the other because every one I’ve tried has given me problems in one or more areas, I do suggest reading up the reviews to see what would work best for you. Every situation is different and depending on yours, what works for you may not work for someone else, even in the computer technician industry.

6. Advertising & Website/Blog

Hopefully by now you’ve already ordered your business cards and possibly started some form of advertising. There are multiple places to advertise online, both free and paid options, including Google Adwords, which many have had success with. Print up some flyers and meet one on one with business owners and managers. If you’re not sure where to start, check out Technibble’s ebook here regarding focusing on businesses and getting started in the business sector. Pass the word around about your new business. Call old acquaintances, friends, relatives, and just drop the word about the services you offer, without being awkward about it. It may be a bit slow at first but it will catch up.

If you haven’t created your website yet and you aren’t a web developer, you might want to check out Tech Site Builder 2. It’s an easy way to get a great technician website up and running in a few hours. Don’t put off starting your website until you have some business. The majority of internet users find services they need online, and that’s where you need to be to capture that potential business. Start a blog as well, search engines love them. Be sure to keep your web presence looking professional, up to date, and uncomplicated for your users.

The most important step of all is the first step, counting the cost and calculating everything. From there, everything else will fall into place. If you have some tips on starting up that you consider helpful, drop a comment below.

Source: Starting Out on Your Own as a Computer Technician - Technibble

Use Social Media

Social media networking has been getting a lot of focus lately as far as a method for increasing your business exposure. Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, and other networks are great ways of getting your name out there and promoting interaction between your business, your clients, and your clients’ associates.

For instance, to promote social media interaction, mention on your website, blog, or social network page that you intend to give something away once a certain interaction goal has been reached, such as 1000 Facebook ’likes’, 500 ‘tweets’, or 500 Facebook ‘shares’. This not only encourages client interaction, but everyone who wants a chance at your free giveaway will encourage others to interact as well, and your social network presence will grow in leaps and bounds. Be sure to follow it up with a new goal and a new reward when the initial goal has been reached.

Business Cards and Flyers

When you perform services for a client, hand them a few extra business cards at the end of your call, so they can hand them out to anyone who needs your services. You would want to use discretion when doing so, and discern whether or not it would be a good usage of your cards, depending on the tone of the service call.

Testimonials

Testimonials are a great way to encourage client interaction. You could even offer a future discount for services if they agree to write a short testimonial for your website or your online business presence, such as Google Places. Testimonials that are the genuine article and are written by the customer with their name and often a link to their account with the service is one of the best things you could ask for. Often, testimonials with just a name and a few short sentences on a webpage aren’t trusted as much as those that contain links to the customer’s account, proving it’s a real person with a real review. If you were looking for accurate reviews online, which reviews would you trust?

Do Your Best

One of the most important ways you can encourage your clients to recommend you is by doing your best on every service call. If you do a half-rate job, you won’t be very likely to get recommendations. What you might not have known is the fact that the individual at the last job you did had a lot of friends and family who were also looking for a computer technician for their computers, but because you didn’t impress your last customer with your work, you won’t get referred to all those friends and family that were waiting to hear back from him about your work. On the other hand, if you always do your best, you will often hear back from friends of your customers about the great job you did and how impressed they were with your work. That is a great way to get referral work.

Along with doing your best on the job, showing some attention to the social aspect of the work is important as well. It’s often known as showing personal interest. Often clients will ask how your week is going, and they’ll talk about what’s going on in their life, problems they’re having with repairing something non-computer related, such as car issues, home repair issues, or business related issues. Yes, you’re busy trying to fix what they called you for, but listen to what they’re talking about and take an interest. I will always remember the words of a supervisor when I was younger, who said ‘People don’t care what you know until they know that you care.’ Try to remember the names of individuals they talk about, whether it’s associates, family, or even pets, and build a rapport with them. This is a good way to build client interaction, as you’ll be known as a person who is not only great at what you do, but people will look forward to you arriving and working, because you show personal interest.

Referral Bonus

Another great way to get referral business is to offer referral bonuses. For instance, I make use of such a referral bonus with my web development business. If a client refers a friend to your service, and that friend stays with your business for a minimum period of time, such as a few months, offer a bonus credit to their account in proportion to the value of the new client’s account with your service. This is an encouragement for your existing clients to refer valuable clients to your service, as the larger the account they refer, the larger bonus they’ll receive to their account.

Just Ask Graciously

If your mechanic did an awesome job on your car repairs and gave you a great deal, and then requested politely that you might tell others about his services if you were satisfied, I’m sure you would be happy to spread the word about his services to your friends when they mention car repairs and where they go. Personally, it probably has more to do with the fact that you want to help your friends out rather than the fact he requested that you refer people to him. However, that simple request is probably something you’ll remember if it was presented in a polite, gracious manner as a request, rather than a ‘tell your friends about me, ok?’ type of statement, and it’s likely to lead to more referrals.

The most important point to focus on is doing your best on every job, as it will lead to more referrals if people are impressed with your work. If you have a tip about client referrals, drop a comment below, we’d love to hear it!

Source: Boost Referral Business by Encouraging Your Clients to Talk About You - Technibble

Content is More Important than Keywords

Content is the most important factor with search engines. If the word ‘intelligence’ can be used in relation to search engine algorithms, they’re getting smarter and smarter, and they’re not easily fooled. Don’t try to outwit them. Provide them with genuine valuable content. Describe your services in all the useful appropriate words you can think of. Search engines will pick up on those terms, and will rank accordingly. Be sure to mention your region, as that’s one of the first things users search for when they need services. Include all the regions you cover so that you can be sure you’re ranked for those regions, such as counties, cities and towns, as well as the state.

Keywords are still relevant, but relevant in the way the content on the page contains them. Overuse of keywords might have a negative effect on your website rank in the search engines, so just provide high quality content and use keywords appropriately. If you’re not sure how appropriate your keyword usage is, have someone else read through it to make sure you’re not overusing it. If it sounds awkward or sounds like you’re trying to emphasize one certain word in the content above all else, it’s definitely overuse. In fact, using the keyword just once will suffice. Be sure to write content that can attract relevant organic links, more than anything else.

Readability is another important aspect related to writing great engaging content. There are a few tools out there that can test readability. WordPress has a good tool for it, but keep a balanced view of its results. Sometimes you’ll need to lay things out in a specific way, and if it doesn’t have that great of a readability score, don’t worry too much about it. Look it over and see if you can change anything to make it easier to read. Be sure you’re not using too many unfamiliar terms, keeping in mind your audience. Another thing to keep in mind is length of your body text. Try to write at least 900 words or more, but try not to overdo it. If you present a daunting wall of text for your readers, they’ll either just scan it, or give up and look somewhere else for what they were searching for.

Do you Blog?

Search engines still love blogs. Keep a blog section on your site and update it regularly, with high quality content. Write about subjects that are interesting, and that will attract people. Engage your viewers, entertain them, make them feel like they learned something new from your content, and that they benefited from visiting your website. Are your clients asking for your recommendations on tablets and smartphones? Write a short blog post about your recommendations. Is there a piece of malware in the wild that’s causing more computer repair issues currently than you’ve noticed before?

This is up to you, but if you write a post telling them how to protect themselves, not only will it help them, but they’ll see you as trying to help them rather than profit off their mistakes. Secondly, if you’re already busy enough as it is, it will save you those long tedious malware removal jobs and you can focus on other projects. Offer to protect their computers in your post, at a discount rate. Many people highly value their computer and when push comes to shove, they’d rather have someone qualified installing programs on their computer rather than risk messing something up themselves.

Balanced Linking

In times past, many have emphasized link networking as the best way to get a good page rank for your website. That’s currently frowned upon by the search engines, and it will probably continue to decrease in effectiveness unless you use it in a balanced way. What is balanced link building? Don’t post on random blogs with your website link. If the blog or website has nothing to do with your service, you most likely wasted your time, and gave your site a ‘-1′ in the eyes of the search engines. If you want to do link building, do it sparingly, and do it where it counts. For instance, can you get your services reviewed by an outside party? If they write an article on their site, and if their site has a good ranking with Google, and is considered relevant and important by Google, you’ll probably get a good rank with that search engine.

Social Media

This currently appears to be a very large factor in search engine results. If your online presence has a social media network following, such as a thousand or more Facebook followers, several hundred shares, and a few hundred tweets, you’ll be very likely to get some impressive results in the search engine results. You’re probably thinking that’s not possible for you. Actually, it is. It might take some time, but there’s no time like the present for getting started. Put links to your social media presences on your flyers, your business cards, your websites, and your blog. Offer free giveaways when you reach a certain goal on your social media network. Currently, search engines such as Google pay high regard to this kind of interaction, so if you’re not on the social media bandwagon yet with a high quality social networking presence, it’s time to get started.

In conclusion, content is very important. Linking is becoming less important, but links throughout your site to your core page are a good tactic for SEO in 2013. If you haven’t started using social media to expand your presence, start working on it now. If you haven’t got a blog, start one, and keep it updated regularly. If you apply all these tips, you should be on your way to getting good results with the search engines.

If you have some tips that have benefited your website, drop a comment below!

Source: SEO Tips for Your Technician Website in 2013 - Technibble

Its because of this, I am pleased to announce the Technibble podcast! Let us help you continue improving your computer business while on the road and make good use of this otherwise dead time. Even if you are just in the workshop, its a great way to learn while working on machines.

We have turned some of our selected written content into audio recordings and will be releasing them via a few channels. We also plan on releasing some podcast only content such as interviews soon.

You can listen to us directly from the site with the play button below the articles, you can download the MP3s or you can get the newest episodes automatically by subscribing to one of our feeds:

Our Direct feed: http://www.technibble.com/feed/podcast/
Our iTunes feed: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/technibble/id642396478

To subscribe to Technibble’s podcast on a mobile device and listen to us on the road, Technibblers recommend the following apps:

Android:
Podkicker (Free / Paid)
Onecast (Free)
Doggcatcher (Free / Paid)

iOS – iPhone/iPad
Pocket Casts (Paid)
Downcast (Paid)
Podcasts (Free)

Try us out!

Source: Introducing the Technibble Podcast - Technibble

If you’re an experienced computer technician, you’ve probably heard something similar one too many times. Maybe their cousin/nephew/aunt’s boyfriend is good with computers, but how much experience do they have? In this digital age, many of us find that computers are essential parts of our daily lives. They’re our international communications tool, our tax preparing tool, our business management tool, not to mention vaults of personal memories stored in digital format. Losing your computer or the data on it is a huge loss, considering all the above factors.

Most don’t realize it until it’s too late, and their cousin/nephew/aunt’s boyfriend has irretrevably destroyed their personal data by accidentally reinstalling the operating system or damaging either the hardware or software components of the machine. How can you convince your customers to make use of the services of a qualified experienced computer technician?

Beware of the Shady Craigslist Ads

Craigslist has gotten a lot of negative publicity lately due to the amount of scammers that abound on it. Yes, it’s useful for some things, and there are reputable computer technicians who have found it a good advertising medium. However, there are disreputable individuals who make use of Craigslist to take advantage of people. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that wherever free advertising is found, you’ll find those scammers in abundance. This is something you should point out to your potential customers.

Use an Illustration

If your client or potential customer mentions they’ll just find someone on Craigslist, or a relative who is ‘good with computers’, ask them where they would take their new car when it has issues. Would they take it to someone they’ve never met before, or someone who has obvious experience with car repair? Uncle Mike who hasn’t worked seriously on anything later than his old ’83 truck? Yes, there may be a huge difference in cost between the car and the computer, but the point is that if you value something, you’re not likely to let just anyone tinker around with it. If you’re not likely to let just anyone tinker around with your new car and the complex inner workings, why would you let just anyone tinker around with your new computer, which is just as complex and more easily damaged?

The Risk Involved

When advising your clients on choices of computer technicians, keep in mind their circumstances. If it’s a residential user, their computer is most likely their vault of precious memories in the form of pictures, videos, scrawlings, and other art. I still find that many residential users still don’t regularly back up their data, leaving it vulnerable to total loss. Is that something they’re willing to just hand over to anyone without any real experience?

If the client is a business owner, the risk in terms of profit and uptime are even more prominent. Business owners can’t afford to have their machines down for any length of time, and loss of business data and software programs isn’t something to treat lightly. Their customer records and billing information may also be on those machines. Is that something they just want to hand over to just anyone? Once an individual has physical access to a machine, there isn’t much that can’t be accessed, no matter how strong those passwords are. It’s more likely that if they truly understand the risks involved, they’ll opt for the experienced, trusted technician.

It’s Their Decision in the End

They may decide to go ahead and use their cousin/nephew/aunt’s boyfriend anyway. To be blunt, it’s their decision in the end, and you may be the one picking up the pieces later. Perhaps they’ve used this individual before, and while everything went fine last time, it may have just been a simple fix that anyone could have done. The next time, it could be a serious registry problem, or a failing hard drive, and misdiagnosed, and with a failed repair attempt, it could cost them more than the computer was worth in time and money spent on repairs, than if they had actually used the services of the experienced technician in the first place.

Make sure they understand that whatever they choose to do, you’re always just a phone call away if they change their mind at the last minute, or if they suddenly think that the individual they’ve chosen isn’t quite up to the task. If they do, the “I told you so” recrimination should be avoided. There’s no reason to rehash what you told them before. In a worst case scenario, if something did go horribly wrong, they’re already in a bad spot, so don’t rub it in. Everybody learns the hard way sometimes.

The Benefits of Using a Qualified, Experienced Computer Technician

When discussing the decision with your clients, make sure you’re focusing on their benefits, not yours. The main issue at stake is their assets, their memories, their business data, or their livelihood. You would want to avoid statements that make it sound like your only reason for recommending an experienced technician is because you are that experienced technician. Hopefully, they make a wise decision, but you can do your best to inform them of the risks and benefits of using a qualified, experienced computer technician.

Do you have any tips on the topic? Have you had similar experiences? Drop a comment below!

Source: Encouraging Your Clients to Use an Experienced Computer Technician - Technibble

I worked with the Small Business Administration as a consultant and have helped many businesses start and grow. So I will share some techniques that I have found to be helpful to me and others.

If you are truly a one man show with no wife or girlfriend to handle calls, receive mail and send invoices, then it’s a greatly different operation than if you have a receptionist, office manager or girl in on a Friday. It is even more critical you’re setup to be efficient and effective from the get go. You must streamline every process since sooner or later you will be successful and have to work more hours than there are in the day.

Time Management

Getting a good $10 book on time management is highly recommended but the basics are to write down all your information in one organizer, put a to do list in there, calendar items, objectives, goals and all your contacts. Smart phones are great but always have a written copy in case you lose the phone or it breaks. Besides, paper needs no battery.

Then prioritize your activities based on how they affect your long term importance; Write everything down and track your performance which helps you learn where the “time black holes” are and avoid them. Learn to say no to time wasters and how to delegate.

Administration

Easily one third to half of your time could be spent with administrative duties. This cuts your time to make earnings in half right off the bat so we need to find an efficient way to perform every support task that does not directly make income. We call these duties Administration and include accounting, customer tracking, business process such as work orders, invoicing, payment receipt and cash flow management.

Accounting

Learn and use a simple program like QuickBooks which costs about $149 for single user. In my opinion, Quickbooks has the edge in easy to use computer invoicing and basic customer resource management. The second way is to outsource this to someone familiar with accounting, if you can this is a good investment. The third way is to use OneWrite plus a checking system which records your receipts and deposits, expenses and checks as you write the check.

As you write the deposit or check and tear the check, a carbon copy is made on the business journal or ledger. Later, you can also locate this amount to the correct column under the proper headings: Marketing, rent, payroll and purchases. Later those columns are totaled for the month and become your basic profit and loss statement for that month. Nothing beats the simplicity and elegance of this system. As good as Quickbooks is when I am really bogged down, nothing beats OneWrite for speed.

Customer Management

Again Quickbooks does a good basic job of recording who your customers are and what you did for them by keeping an electronic version of the invoice or work order. Other more enhanced ways to do this are using a CRM like ShopManager or CommitCRM. It takes time to learn and to enter each invoice, record receipt of each payment, deposit each payment, write each check and balance the checking account. If you do not have time to do these activities in a timely and accurate way then perhaps you might decide to use New England Business forms. For about 37 cents per invoice, the NEBS Contractor invoice is just the ticket for our industry.

I write down the details at once and keep the manila last page as hard copy for my permanent records which may later be put into a computer CRM or Quickbooks. They have a tear off equipment receipt to give the client at check-in and another copy to attach to the computer. The customer can sign the ticket which has a legal contract on the back of it which protects me if I ever have to go to court with this guy. I’ve never needed it but it has some useful verbiage such as the defendant paying court costs and other expenses above the invoice in the case of winning in court.

I use the 2nd ‘yellow’ copy as work order which I attach to the computer, so I may better keep track of what I am supposed to do with each item, like backup or no backup, and all contact information if I need to call them from the work bench. I write notes as I work through the repair which I later add to the invoice and for my records. This is particularly useful when time passes between check-in, repair and pickup. All documented. It is dead simple to use.

Purchasing

I use Pricewatch.com to find new vendors. Once I find vendors I like I try to use them as much as possible. It is helpful to process warranties if you know that each item came from only one of two or three vendors. This brings up administration of inventory. When your shipment comes in, print out labels for each invoice from a vendor and then put one label on each item purchased. It has the Invoice number, vendor code and date. This helps me find the invoice when making an RMA six months later and I am too busy to search for this nitpicky stuff. I have found if I do not do RMA’s immediately they sit around getting dusty until it’s too late to collect my credit for the defective part. So make it easy to process immediately and get a good part back.

Communications

You’ll need a cell phone or smart phone with the work number forwarded to you at all times when you are out of the office. You don’t have a secretary so you answer all your calls. Marketing calls and family you can call back when you can. Handle new business inquires as quickly as possible and promise a follow up call when you get out of your current clients office. After all, your current clients doesn’t want to pay you $120 per hour to talk to other clients.

Making Money

No matter what business you are in, it’s not your money until you actually perform the work and get paid for it. For this reason I hate to book appointments for later. I prefer to do the job as soon as possible. Just in time. I cannot tell you how many appointments I’ve seen canceled never to be re-setup. Then I wish I had taken them immediately.

The customer is hottest when they make the call. Better if you can say I will be there in 45 minutes, or tonight after 4pm. Even if you go there just to take a look and tell them you need to take it to your shop to work on it where your tools are and makes the job faster and cheaper for them. I would rather work until 10pm any night than set an appointment for two or three days from now and risk this fish getting off the hook.

Follow up

Thank you post cards printed from online printer are easily ordered and cheap. About $100 for 1000 cards color. No job is done until you follow up with each client to ensure that they are happy with the work they received. It’s nice if you can call every client. You can and probably should hire a part time college girl to do this but until you do, sending a nice thank you card is the minimal follow-up that you can get away with in my opinion. This is also a time saver over calling each client. I send thank you cards a few days after they pickup their computer or after I perform the work on-site.

Since I am sending a thank you card what else can I accomplish with this? My thank you cards tell the client that they are appreciated and that they will receive a $25 gift certificate when this card with their name and address is brought in by a new customer. This helps my word of mouth referrals. Some of my clients get me 2-3 referrals between their services. Of course, I take extra good care of them as they are my promotion champions.

Automate backup

I would love to have an automated backup system for all my client backups and I am about half way there but until that is perfected using either gigabit networking to set and xcopy the backups to my backup server, or when that is not possible, I’d use a 500GB USB drive which is also a good fast alternative.

Automate installation

Using Acronis Image Copy is a fantastic way to do a reinstallation in 15 minutes rather than 2 hrs. You still have to load drivers when you finish the image. Setup the image with all your branding, freeware, antivirus, malwarebytes, freeware office, and such, when you are happy you can make a source image.

You must do this for each OS that you will use. For example, XP Pro, XP Home, Vista Home, Vista Business, Vista premium, Media center, Win7 Pro, Win7 Home. Since you are busy, you don’t make them until you are already setting up a client’s machine. Once each client’s machine is perfected you use his system to create your master source image and copy it to your server. Since the Universal restore doesn’t care about hardware it doesn’t matter which system you use to create these images. Eventually you will have one of each OS in your library so future restores are all a few minutes each as if they had a F11 restore key.

Do not give away service

One of the most important and difficult things to get a new entrepreneur to learn is “Do not give away service.” It does not do what you think it does. It does not cement relationships, it creates mooches. It does not create loyalty, it does the opposite. To make matters worse if you are already very busy, you must make something for each and every productive hour you have. Get paid for your time and send them a $5 coffee mug if you feel you must cement relationships with gifts.

Being Busy and Growing

If you are always busy to the point of not keeping up, going home tired every night, then it’s a good time to hire an assistant. If you cannot find the right assistant you can at least consider a slight rise in your base prices. The raise does two things for you. It increases your cash flow and profits. Since all your bills are presumably already covered, the raise goes straight to your bottom line and your personal checking account. A side benefit is that it should help reduce your busy work a bit.

If after a price increase, you notice your schedule starting to slack a bit, that is good as that gives you more time to prepare for your customers and regain some needed perspective and regrouping. Once you are busy, never be afraid to lose clients especially the less profitable ones. You cannot be all things to all clients so as you grow you might well outgrow some clients, particularly the clients who demand the most and pay the least. We all have them. They get in the way of getting new clients that represent your current state of operation.

You need slack time for training and learning new things. You need slack time for improving your processes. You need slack time for performing warranty work. You need slack time to think about your business and come up with better ideas. You need slack time to be available to pickup new clients. You need slack time to pickup more profitable clients. You need slack time to rest and recuperate from all your hard work.

Once you are busy, money should not be a problem unless you are completely undervaluing yourself or giving out credit. Both of these are critical errors for a small business owner to make. If so, please reassess this situation and increase your prices immediately. You can afford to lose some dead beat customers or some marginal ones too. Look at it like this, you need to let go of the unprofitable clients so that you have time to take on some more profitable ones. Unfortunately we sometimes have an emotional connection to our first, small clients who are now holding us back.

Parts

Here is a massive profit opportunity and a tremendous time saver for you at the same time. Imagine every time you need a hard drive, floppy, cable, power supply, video card, network card, cable, case, keyboard, mouse, UPS surge protector or any other adaptor, you can snap your fingers and wow it’s there. Wouldn’t that be great? Onsite you would recommend larger hard drive, upgraded memory, wireless mouse, UPS or surge protector when you see the client doesn’t have one. Or a wireless mouse and keyboard when you see the mess it is getting to their computers under a tight desk. Or a 50 foot cat 5 cable when you want to move the wireless router to a more suitable location.

It could be that easy. Now think of all the time you take during jobs to run back to the shop or to a store like Wal-Mart or Best Buy to pick those items up? Most of us start out buying inventory “Just in Time”, or as the Japanese call it “JIT Inventory”. That is a killer waste of time. So if you have a few bucks, it is a very good time to order enough inventory to keep you a month or two. Yes I know there are batteries that you cannot inventory, there are laptop parts you cannot inventory as there are hundreds of options none of which you should carry in inventory. But when it comes to workstations and servers there are only 12 to 15 parts that are mostly standard and which you need every day or week.

How do you decide which parts to carry? I’d start by carrying every part needed to build a computer. Then I have every part which might break on a client’s computer. Also, it would be nice if I got a chance to sell a custom computer that I had the parts in my van and could build it on the spot if need be. What does it take to build a PC? Case, Power supply, Motherboard, CPU with fan, RAM, DVD/CD, Floppy, Hard Drive, Keyboard, Mouse, Memory card reader, OS Home and OS Pro.

OK, its more complicated than that. You need an AMD system and an Intel system. You probably also want to have a PS2 keyboard and mouse as well as a USB keyboard and mouse. So now you may have $400 worth of parts at wholesale prices sitting in a plastic storage pail in your truck. If you don’t like the sound of things sloshing around, pack shipping foam between the boxes. You will see your onsite sales double just from the recommended upsales you make while on site.

OK, so now you have a store location. You have to have parts to fix most workstation contingencies. Buying from Evertek or Pricewatch with shipping is cheaper than any local supplier, particularly if you can buy 3-10 at a time of each item. But this time you have probably already had and delivered a custom order of 6 workstations. So take up to a few thousand dollars and order the entire inventory which you can reasonably expect to use over the next two to four weeks. Look back at your sales for the last 30 days and that is what you should order.

You spend so much time stopping to order one power supply, one set of RAM, one Hard drive, so order all the things you need to build a few new computers and carry that inventory in a tool box in your trunk. You should fit enough inventory to build one if not two complete computers in your cars tool box, minus the computer cases. A case can sit in the back seat of your car. I made a rack for my van to hold 3 upright towers to move client’s computers without denting them and I keep a new case in it for sell.

Avoid trips locally to buy parts as you pay too much for local sourcing and more importantly it takes too much of your very valuable time. Learn to value your time as an asset. You can always make more money but you can never make more time. So value yourself and your time.

Get Help

By this time (if you have not already) you should find a small business ad agency or locate a graphic artist to help you. Sit down and figure out your brand, image, logos, looks and who you are. Put that same image into all your customer contacts: website, Yellow Pages, thank you cards, around your store if you have one, flyers, PDF’s that you email out or newsletters.

If you are a professional making $60-80 on the bench and $100-120+ per hour on-site, and you are busy then you certainly can afford to pay an ad agency, graphic designer, accountant and the occasional temp girl on Fridays to help do the things that need to be done but do not directly make money. This will allow you to focus on making more money. So long as you do all the work yourself you just have a job. It might be a well-paying job but it’s a job. Even at $100 per hour you can still only bill 1200 hours a year. However if you push yourself to learn to work through others, now you can make 10 times that. The first step in learning to work with employees is to learn and experience working with companies or contractors to do things for you.

I can fix computers and networks faster than my accountant can. He can do my accounting faster than I can. So I prefer to do computers and take a bit of that money to pay him to do my accounting. I can also design a lousy website. I charge an appropriate amount for my time so I can afford to hire website guys, same with accountants, lawyers, bill collectors, word processors, a Friday temp girl and sign makers.

Employees

It is true that I have to take some time away from making money to hire, train and supervise my employees but it is also true that I can make more money eventually with employees helping me. Don’t dive into hiring if you are not used to it.

I say start delegating to businesses to perform your marketing, advertisements, design, accounting, phone service and such for a reason. Delegating to other business owners is much easier than supervising a new employee. This is mainly due to the fact that they are already motivated, trained, experienced and responsible to make theirselves a profit. So they are self supervising to a point. So get used to depending on your business network. They still require supervision, just not as much as an employee. Later you will develop those supervisory skills into supervising employees as you grow.

Billing

One last thing. I referred to bill collectors. Bad, Bad, Bad. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice and shame on me. Get away from any billing. Get used to getting paid at the time work is performed. It is the new way of doing business. I have 5000 clients and only about 5 or 6 of them are allowed to carry a balance with me from month to month. That is only because most of them are people I barter services with. The only way I will get stuck with an unpaid bill with them is if one of them dies.

There are some points to making ‘paid as you go’ easier to do. When selling and installing a computer or small network, mention at the time of ordering that computer that it will be cash on delivery. It’s ok to say “I have a lot of money out on equipment right now so I had to go to cash as we go”. Then fax or email the invoice to the client or to his secretary before you deliver the computers and call and ask that a check be made out before your get there. You can make this sound easy by saying “I wanted you to have the exact amount so you can prepare the check; I have to get it into the bank by 3pm tonight to cover an order I have to make tomorrow”.

The main thing you need to change is your attitude about doing work without pay. The rest follows.

Never be ashamed of telling your client you need the money when service is performed. End of story.

Any customer who doesn’t understand that should be willing to pay $20 or more per hour billed for that privilege. Back when my rate was $100 per hour for three or so years, any clients that asked to be invoiced were automatically invoiced at $120 per hour. There were a few of them and I gently let them know that their charge was to cover my additional costs of managing the accounts receivable, possibility for loss, opportunity cost of not having the money I earned; they get the message. Some will offer to pay you cash, like green backs, $100 bills. Never turn cash or prepayments down.

Sometimes we get the feeling we have bad customers but the truth is we train our customers. It starts with our own belief system and then we relay it to them. We turn our customers into freeloaders. So work on yourself and your attitude, the customers will follow.

All hardware should always be COD or prepaid for special orders. You cannot afford to invoice, bill, wait or chase your customers for payments. Get paid up front or get new customers. You can train customers to be lazy, lax, late payers or even mooches. Turn that around or you are just in a go no-where job, stuck never making any real money. There will always be that one client that takes you. Next year it’s another one, and the year after that another. Wean yourself and your clients off billing. CASH is KING. You can always choose to give a refund later if something goes wrong.

Ask yourselves, especially if you are busy, how do I want to spend my time next week? Finding new customers? Making more money? And getting paid daily? Or calling and chasing clients who owe me money? That is the worst thing in business. You work for your money twice, once to earn it and twice to collect it. That model makes no economic sense. Try getting out of Sam’s club or Wal-Mart with an IOU. “Bill me, I’ll pay you as soon as the invoice comes in, you can trust me.”

These are the critical success factors in the Computer Business as I see them. Managing cash is the most critical. Of course I didn’t touch on keeping skills current and being proactive. First you have to do the above list. This is all 100% a reactionary list. Next you work on the proactive list. The proactive list gets you from where you are to where you want to go either by growing or becoming more free personal time wise.

Article by Tony Scarpelli of CFI Computer Repair

Source: Streamlining Your Computer Business - Technibble

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To those who didnt win but are still interested in obtaining the Computer Business Kit and Business Clients book, I want to give everyone (even if you didnt enter) a 20% OFF discount for BOTH products for the next week. The Computer Business Kit comes down from $79 to $63. The Business Clients Book comes down from $37 to $29. Offer expires on Thursday 25th April, Midnight EST so grab it while you can!

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Source: Technibble Reader Survey Competition Winner and Discount for All Readers - Technibble

Why Should You Expand Your Tech Services?

Depending on how you busy you are right now, branching out may or may not be a good idea. If you’re already swamped with work, I’d recommend against it. If you can barely handle your workload now, unless you want to completely switch your service offerings, you won’t be doing your existing business client base a favor. However, if you’re not as busy as you would like to be, and you consider yourself proficient, consider opening up new avenues by offering your hobbies or other interests as services to clients. What services could you offer?

There are many opportunities for technicians in fields other than the usual computer repair and diagnostic area. For example, many of your clients trust your knowledge and experience with computers, and they haven’t had any success finding a reputable web developer. You might be the first person they would ask regarding building a website for them, but if you offer it first, they’re that much more likely to ask you about it, so if you feel experienced enough to offer it, don’t hesitate. You might even find the other avenue of work more enjoyable as a break from your existing services, and getting paid for doing something you enjoy doing makes it that much more worthwhile.

What Services Could You Offer?

For many technicians, the amount of experience they have alone in the field makes them an expert consultant. Consider offering consulting services to local businesses, or offering advice to residential users on new computer systems, hardware, and software. Most of us know our way around a plethora of software GUI’s, so you could offer assistance with software you consider yourself proficient with, which might be rather vast. Windows 8 itself offers an opportunity for many technicians, as there are still a lot of consumers upgrading from Windows XP and finding themselves completely lost in Windows 8. Consider offering computer classes at a discount rate from your service calls.

Web development is another avenue many technicians could expand to as well. After all, depending on the project, for many clients, web development could be as simple as putting up a site on a platform such as WordPress, and most technicians should be able to find their way around the interface of WordPress. Of course, sometimes it’s a bit more complex than that, and that’s where debugging code and programming skills come in, but for most of your clients, it probably won’t be that complex.

Do you enjoy putting videos up on your blog or on Youtube often? Depending on your expertise, you could offer your video editing and production skills to local businesses to market their products or services on Youtube, Facebook, and other social networking and business networking sites. If you find a local business wants to advertise but doesn’t have the expertise to put a radio commercial together, if you’re proficient in audio and video production and you can produce high quality commercials, offer to put one together for them.

The list of possibilities is fairly endless. If you’ve fiddled around with Photoshop or other graphics programs since you were a kid, and can produce great logos and graphics, you could offer those services as well. If you’re a photographer, you’ll find web developers and graphics designers are often desperate for just the right picture, and they often don’t have the gadgets or the environment to get that perfect shot. Consider offering your photography for hire, or offering your current photo selections to developers. As I said, the possibilities are nearly endless.

How to Expand Your Tech Services

Before you go about expanding your services, you need to consider your rates. You don’t want to be so low that potential customers look at you and think the job you do must be pretty poor at that rate. On the other hand, if you’re too high, you won’t attract any business at all. Find some reputable businesses who offer similar services, and find out what their rate is. Take into consideration the size of the local community and the potential demand for your services. If there is a metro area within a driving distance of an hour or two, factor that in when considering your rates.

Remember to add your potential offerings to your current advertising media, such as newspaper ads, commercials, flyers, or online marketing media. If you’re not sure exactly how to offer it, take a look at other ads that offer similar services, and work up something similar, but be sure you make it unique. If there’s something specific you offer that you notice the competition doesn’t offer, whether local or distant, be sure to emphasize it.

Final Tips

If you’re already somewhat busy but you really want to branch out into other services, perform a test run. Mention to a few of your clients or customers that you’re offering some new services, and that if they know of anyone who needs them, let you know. That way you can spread the word and ease into it without worrying about handling all the extra calls from people who need your services when you can’t handle the incoming workload, if you had otherwise officially advertised your new offerings.

Do you have any tips on offering other tech related services? Drop a comment below, we’d love to hear about it!

Source: Expand Your Tech Services - Technibble

We are also looking at reviewing some more paid technician products and services in the future. Of course, there are thousands of these out there and we dont want to waste our time and your time reading about bad products, so we want to hear your opinion on what the best paid products are in this industry.

As a little extra incentive to help us help you, we are giving away a copy of our Computer Business Kit and a copy of our Business Clients Guide to one lucky winner who filled out the survey.

The winner with be chosen randomly on Friday the 19th.

You can fill out our short 3 question survey and enter the draw by CLICKING HERE.

Source: Technibble Reader Survey – Win Computer Business Kit and our Business Clients Guide – Worth $116 - Technibble