Recurring Revenue for Computer Repair shops

[MobileGeeks]

Hi everyone,

Just putting some ideas out there.

Currently Mobile Geeks is a business were we charge per hour to come to your home or office to fix IT problems, install new hardware ect.

That's pretty much it, we do a lot of volume however I am looking at ways to generate reoccurring income.

Im thinking of reselling Google Apps for Business / Microsoft 365 as a start.

However Domain name / management seems a lot of work with little profit.

What else do you guys resell? What works best for you?

This could be an interesting thread.

 

[Kitten Kong]

you could also do things like online backup - sign up with be an affiliate
Same with your fav a/v provider.

I use Nicks DMaint, to generate recurring revenue. I either offer it as a monthly fee, (similar to a mini tune up), I invoice it qtrly.

Then annually contact the client and get them to bring the machine in for its annual service, giving a %off for being a dmaint client.

 

[minc3d]

You should start out with affiliate programs for the products you already sell. Here are just a few of the recurring revenue streams we have for our company (and we are not pushing things we already didn't believe in):

- Affiliates with business class internet offerings
- Reseller of ESET NOD32
- Reseller of GoDaddy
- Reseller of HostGator
- Office 365 partner

We are currently looking for an online backup service to become affiliates with, knowing that our favorite CrashPlan has no interest in letting home level associates get commission from their service.

 

[oXiDe]

I'm a small business with a low level of volume at the moment wishing to do the same thing, but here are some idea's i've come up with.

- GFI Max, is a perfect revenue making system, also helps get more work as issues come in!
- Yearly Fee for Remote Service Tune-ups E.G ( 5PC's $70p/w )

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Recurring revenue for the home user market seems slim.
Recurring revenue for IT services for SMBs is HUGE.

MSP packages, server/workstation mainentance, monitoring, network monitoring.
Offer serveral tiers of offsite backup....from the simple backup of just files starting at 20 bucks a month, to medium levels of backup which include active directory and databases/Exchange server for 80 to 100 bucks a month, to high end business continuity/DR products which start at a couple of hundge a month and go up from there.

E-mail filtering...remove viruses/spam...we do this ourselves in house, a good steady money maker. Industry average is 1.50 per mailbox per month. Quite a few products which let you offer less than that.

For domain management, we do $250.00 per year...for the first domain, includes basic website hosting. Additional domains the client purchases we just pass on the registration fee plus a little bus fair for ourselves.

Antivirus of course.

UTM appliances (unified threat management)...instead of plain old NAT routers. IMO plain NAT routers for a business are no longer good enough, we highly encourage UTM appliances at the edge. Yearly subscription models...of course we're resellers, so some bus fair for us.

 

[TheComputerGuy4u]

I find for the home market that online B/U sells well, especially after they have crashed and burnt. Nothing like a lessened learned. My corporate clients really enjoy having piece of mind concerning remote and onsite on-demand support. The latter is a real cash cow giving you the ability to charge higher maintenance fees for onsite demand.

I'm not big on affiliates, only because the return for my advertising for the vendor isn't really there, and all it takes is one bad experience with a product and you could lose the customer.

Hope this helps

 

[DenverCM]

I have been offering off-site (or online) backup to my clients for years. I have a server I built that is connected to T-1. It's a monthly fee but I invoice in 6 or 12 month increments. Everything transmitted is encrypted. It's been great. New clients are almost always willing to sign up after a successful service call.

One big advantage over other services is that I'm local - I can quickly restore their data if needed, as opposed to the client having to wait 3 weeks to download their files from other services.

 

[lan101]

I have been offering off-site (or online) backup to my clients for years. I have a server I built that is connected to T-1. It's a monthly fee but I invoice in 6 or 12 month increments. Everything transmitted is encrypted. It's been great. New clients are almost always willing to sign up after a successful service call.

One big advantage over other services is that I'm local - I can quickly restore their data if needed, as opposed to the client having to wait 3 weeks to download their files from other services.

That sounds like a fun project to do. What kind of software do the clients have on their computer to upload/download files etc.

 

[DenverCM]

I use SyncBack SE by 2BrightSparks. Great software for doing backups IMO.