Drowning In Debt

AzimScot

Need some decent debt advice.

I am 5K in debt for 8 years now and it gets a little smaller then jumps back up again on my credit cards. I currently earn 200 per week after tax at work with no overtime available. In my spare time i try to improve me skills in website design using photoshop etc but i find this time consuming and question if I will ever get extra work in this field due to so many gurus out their already.

I am good at fixing computers however I dont have a huge budget for advertising and finding it hard to attract clients.

How do i get out of this debt and get a decent amount of cashflow coming in?

Jimby509

Well done for posting. Fill in the SOA and then copy and paste here. http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html it will help us see exactly what is going on.

How many hours per week do you work?

tbourner

Agree with above, you're focussing on your job and earning more, rather than all the other ways you can save what you spend each month and acheive the same goal.

HappyMJ

AzimScot wrote: »

In my spare time i try to improve me skills in website design using photoshop etc but i find this time consuming and question if I will ever get extra work in this field due to so many gurus out their already.
You are right the market is crowded. Too many unemployed IT people with the same skills but more experience.

I am good at fixing computers however I dont have a huge budget for advertising and finding it hard to attract clients.
Yep, I'm good at it too. Fix a P.C for someone once and you'll be their 24/7 on-call phone support forever for free. Stay away from it. Do it for companies but never individuals.

How do i get out of this debt and get a decent amount of cashflow coming in?

By decreasing what you spend without adversely affecting your lifestyle but living within your means and increasing what you earn again within the time limits of a reasonable working week.

mostlycheerful

You’re talented and hard working and keen to develop, well done.

Various possible cheap and free ways of getting clients :

1 ads in shop windows, generally about 20p a week so affordable

2 ads on noticeboards in supermarkets free I think or if not then cheap

3 knock up a website listing all the jobs you can do and to save money use a free host such as http:// atspace.com which has no adverts and a free .co.nr domain name or a cheap .com or .co.uk which at www dot 1and1.co.uk is currently £8.99 for a .com and £2.49 for first year for a .co.uk then advertise and promote your site everywhere and anywhere

4 get the remote software so that you can fix people’s machines online wherever they are without leaving the house which my friend has done for me via skype a couple of times then set up your own free myspace and facebook accounts with a big long list of all the computer jobs you can do, and join in with as many techie discussion sites as you can find and including the one on this site and also put yourself on the referral’s board here

5 business cards : either print your own if you can make them look good or even just cheapo plain paper is better than nothing or get some professional ones printed which with a bit of hunting you should be able to get for just £5 or £10 for a lot then hand them out everywhere and give any friends and relations a handful each and ask them to hand them on to everyone they know

6 design an intelligent professional looking well laid out A5 or A4 size leaflet and print it yourself and list all the computer jobs you can do and the cheap prices eg you can offer a no fix no fee and just, say, £12/hour which is quite cheap and then deliver them through letter boxes in all the streets all around you and then further away as well once you’ve saturated the local area

7 contact a load of other computer fix individuals and companies and ask them for work and in particular any overflow work that they can’t do and at the same time be realistic about the level of job that you can do so ask some of the experts if they’ll take on any particularly difficult jobs that you get that you can’t do and any extra work that you get if you get inundated. My friend who does this sometimes has 6 jobs at once all wanting doing urgently and so does 36 hour shifts which of course is not very healthy or enjoyable. He also recently took on a very complicated website job and then had to learn a lot of complicated advanced stuff fast which, being talented and hard working he did, but he said that the round the clock all day every day effort and strain of this job for weeks and weeks on end was enough to make him want to go back to simply fixing machines and not do any more website building. However I used to know someone else whose friend got a £20k website job and paid his friend £5k to do all the actual work and therefore made £15k profit just for managing the job which was a fantastic success and really, if you can do it like this it's the way to go. Imagine having a couple of jobs a month like that, that would be amazing, wouldn't it.

8 schools and colleges tend to need a lot of computer fixing all the time, well, pretty much all businesses and most people at home do these days so you probably only need one job connected to a college or school or business and if you do it well and they like you then it could open up a lot of repeat business when word goes round that you’re good and cheap and a nice chap to have around.

Once you get inundated with work you can put your rate up. Also consider offering a variety of rates with cheapo for friends/community and charity organisations/people on benefits and another rate for business and corporate.

As another poster highlights, watch out for the needy clients who don't want to pay but will sometimes endlessly keep phoning you up for free advice at all times of day or night. How you deal with them is something for you to decide but at a certain point you'll have to start getting tough about it otherwise you'll be wasting a lot of time endlessly being helpful and talking about boring stuff but not earning anything out of it.

Definitely plan for how to deal with suddenly getting a flood of work coming in, y’know, you wait ages for a bus and then three come along together, and so do get in touch with some other professionals as it would be shame to overwork yourself or not turn work around quickly enough or have to turn work done. Be careful who you get to do your overflow work, my friend has twice got other people to do some and one of them turned up to jobs drunk and the other one was rude to clients so parcelling out work to other people can go wrong. If you are giving out work to other people then you can do it for free and in return for favours from them or you can charge 10% or 15% and in a sense then be an agency getting the work in and parcelling it out. If you work at this and get it right it can be very lucrative but it requires serious hard work and the ability to deal with heaps of people and situations and so you can get rather overwhelmed and out of your depth very quickly. But, hey, you only live once and if you want to try to go in this direction it’s probably well worth a try. If you get it right you could earn a lot and have a big thriving business. It depends on how ambitious you are and whether you have the management skills to make a venture like this happen and then stay on top of it and deal with all eventualities arising. Very exciting if you pull it off or alternatively a total headache and nuisance and hell on earth if it all goes horribly wrong. But some people do it so why not you? There’s only one way to find out if it’s doable for you and that’s to give it a shot. Nothing ventured nothing gained, no pain no gain etc. Go for it, tiger!

Well, I could go on, but that’s quite a lot for now. Hope this is of help. Let us know how you get on. Good luck.

Rodin

Definitely plan for how to deal with suddenly getting a flood of work coming in, y’know, you wait ages for a bus and then three come along together, and so do get in touch with some other professionals as it would be shame to overwork yourself or not turn work around quickly enough or have to turn work done. Be careful who you get to do your overflow work, my friend has twice got other people to do some and one of them turned up to jobs drunk and the other one was rude to clients so parcelling out work to other people can go wrong. If you are giving out work to other people then you can do it for free and in return for favours from them or you can charge 10% or 15% and in a sense then be an agency getting the work in and parcelling it out. If you work at this and get it right it can be very lucrative but it requires serious hard work and the ability to deal with heaps of people and situations and so you can get rather overwhelmed and out of your depth very quickly. But, hey, you only live once

suoerb stuff