Maybe it went over my head but when you talked about white boxes and such, I suspect you were referring to building desktops and such. Is there anyway I could contact you and maybe get a little more info on this, been trying to get into retail and such with no luck so far. Thanks.

I have a policy that also helps. Building boxes is a bottomless pit. When you can buy a white box all inclusive for a lot less than you can build it, considering the time involved. You can’t really bill for the time to install all the parts and setup the software, it gets expensive and the customer see that there is a Dell available for a lot less.
Selling boxes is just the start as you end up being the owner of the box forever as anything that goes wrong ends up with you taking the fall for it’s construction, regardless of whether your right or not. I buy the box from a white box vendor and the client pays for my time, the vendor is the warantee.

I have another policy, I don’t service home computers due to not being able to charge what time I have to spend. Many people want you to do it on the cheap. Why waste your time when small business’s will pay you your hourly rate.

Also, I try to get small business clients to contract for a monthy retainer, which includes a specified number of hours at a reduction in my hourly rate. Extra hours are discounted. This will even your workload and give you a more steady income and you can budget your time easier.

I have been very successful using these ideas and have passed thousands of dollars in work to other consultants who are very appreciative.

Bottom Line:
Treat your customers right and most will respect you and recommend you. Try to cheat them and they will chase away potential customers. Golden Rule.

rich

They may be new or inexperienced but, I think people freak more about their hair or having their body cut apart, but you have to learn somehow. Often the best way to learn is hands on! :O

Once I’ve learned how to use a spellcheck that is! LOL

I had pretty much no startup funds when I started my business, I didn’t even have a permanent place to live and was sofa surfing at my friends houses. The only assets I had were a pushbike and an IBM 240X I got for £80 on ebay (which was virtually obsolete even back then) and while it took quite a while to build up I eventually managed.

On points 6 & 7 while getting in over your head is by definition a bad thing there’s nothing wrong with pushing yourself hard and I think your comments about learning on the job are dead wrong – I think somethings wrong if you aren’t learning anything from your job. As some of the posters above have pointed out there’s nothing unfair about it if you charge a commensurate rate and are upfront with your customers. If you do a good job for them and prove your trustworthiness most clients will not begrudge you spending 15 minutes figuring out something new on the occasions where you have to, all my regular clients know that if I don’t know how to do it the geek squad or the local shady computer shop certainly wont! As long as you’re up front about it there’s no problem and they appreciate someone taking the time to figure something out especially for them.

Of course there are a class of people who you can and should expect that flawless level of service from, they are called consultants, they charge upwards of £100/hr and tend to have very narrow specialties. Right now I’m a computer repair bloke, some day I may becoem a consultant, until then I’m a reasonably priced guy with broad skills who’ll have a go at anything!

One of the services that “made it big” was website design. At one point I had 5 websites to design, a couple of computers in the shop, and your day to day business tasks. At that point I realized I was in too deep. I was able to get all of the work completed in a timely fashion (It was a lot of work!!), but I learned a valuable lesson. Being a one man show you really have to focus yourself on core services. Till this day I no longer do website design and have never been in that big of a jam. Only take what you can, and make sure your not getting swamped. The money is nice, but an un-satisfied set of customers is not (luckily I had none of them, but it was a red flag for the future)

I have been in situations where I had to research problems(learn on my client’s computer,if you will) in order to come up with effective solutions.Without exception,I was able to find a solution to a hitherto unknown or poorly understood problem.If you have a good grasp of computer repair in general you will know when a computer problem is beyond your ken.

However,it is foolhardy to start a computer repair business without adequate training and/or experience.