Qualified computer experts making more money..

phildamb

Has anyone here who is a qualified computer technician managed to make any extra money on the side providing home support or something like home network setup?

Just curious as I'm tempted to try doing it to make a few extra pounds on the side.

kinglewis121

its not such an easy thing to get into these days mate you really would have to try getting advertised too , not to mention paying to train sorry if its a bit bad news ive done this myself and it was harder to get noticed really but i still make a few quid here and there

phildamb

kinglewis121 wrote: »

its not such an easy thing to get into these days mate you really would have to try getting advertised too , not to mention paying to train sorry if its a bit bad news ive done this myself and it was harder to get noticed really but i still make a few quid here and there

thats not too bad I wasnt really looking to make a fortune just to add a few quid here and there. Im fully qualified so I suppose advertising but I was thinking more along the lines of repairs and setup rather than training.

Idiophreak

Been a number of other threads on this in the past and they always say the same thing - it's much more effort than it's worth. Once you fix someone's computer, you're apparently bound to it forever - whenever anything else goes wrong they'll be on the phone asking if it could be because you've changed the fuse in the plug...and so on.

savemoney

I have to agree with Idiophreak. Some people expect you do things for next to nothing and then hound you when they do something wrong and want you back often at unrealistic times or jump to attention and get there straight away

Too much aggravation, for too little money

The only money to be made and thats from my friend who is in the trade is virus scans/reinstalls

Mr.Generous

As stated above - best bet is fixing them. If they have a problem before you get involved and its ok after I dont see how they can blame future faults on you. I do repairs / upgrades / virus removal. As you get established you get work from word of mouth. You learn all the time and meet loads of people. I paid for a weeks holiday in Lanzarote last year from profits from repairs side line. I saved it up in 6 months. I dont advertise but I work with over 100 people and wife gets me jobs from her work. Biggest problem is you have no idea whats coming & when. Nobody wants to be without a pc for more than a day or so and I have to keep a few parts in stock (mainly hard drives). Great hobby though, I like fixing PC's and it earns a few quid.

competitionscafe

There is guy in Edinburgh who does this but as a full time business, he is on the uk business forums site and seems to be doing quite well. His site is:
http://www.easypcscotland.co.uk/ Not sure if he gets most of his work via people finding his site (I am sure terms like pc repair edinburgh are quite easy to rank for) or via word of mouth or other methods, for example he does leaflet drops as that is how I first found out about him. Gumtree is another place to advertise by the way as I know someone who put ads on there and earned extra income in the evenings by doing basic stuff for people like setting up new pcs or wireless home networks that sort of thing...

dollydiva

You could utterly waste your talents and sign up for Teletech and do troubleshooting for eu's who don't know one end of a computer from another...

:-)