PC Repair Business - Hints and tips

motorguy

paulwf wrote: »

One thing you have to decide with your fees is what will you charge if your advice is "buy a new one"? Routers, printers and even laptops are now reasonably cheap items designed to last 2 or 3 years then be replaced.

Do you spend 2 hours fiddling with a router for £50 or get the customer to spend £40 on a new one that will work perfectly? That is a real world example as I've struggled with a router for a year spending many hours on it, eventually I walked up the road, spent £40 on a new one and set it up in 10 mins and not had a problem since.

I tended to keep a small stock of RAM, HDD's, power supplies, mice, keyboards, routers, cables, etc - all of which can be bought cheaply off ebay - that can be sold on to customers at a markup

paulwf

pgilc1 wrote: »

I tended to keep a small stock of RAM, HDD's, power supplies, mice, keyboards, routers, cables, etc - all of which can be bought cheaply off ebay - that can be sold on to customers at a markup

Excellent! And I bet it helped you out when you were fault finding to have spares on hand to isolate a problem. I've had things like a dodgy mouse or keyboard make the computer stall on startup but it is hard to prove unless you have spares.

talk2alex

Hi

I've been reading this thread on and off since it started. Setting up an PC repair business as a side project for extra income always appealed to me as I'm always the go-to guy for computer repairs and always need extra cash.

As the last update was in November, I am dying to know how nrg13 is getting on with the business. Are you still up and running? Has anybody else been inspired by this thread and what has changed over the last four years?

I've noticed that additional services that people seem to offer at the moment include Cloud Backup etc - I'm thinking of doing this on a resale basis, but I'm not sure of the pitfalls.

Great thread and thanks to all those who posted over the years

Regards
Alex

patman99

Cloud backup is just a fancy name for "with this service all your data/photos/music is stored safely on a secure server", However, the customer won't know that. Problem is, once they find-out, they can easily google the phrase and end-up setting-up their own account with Dropbox, GoogleDrive etc and cut you out of the loop.

If you offer this service to businesses, you need to check the regulations as there are rules in place regarding certain types of data being stored outside the UK by companies that are solely UK based. Cloud services tend to use spare storage space on company servers (the company gets an income for this, so it reduces their costs). Trouble is, you will never know in, or indeed over how many countries, a client's data will be stored.

You will also expose them to the risk that the owner of the server may only do a back-up once every 2 days. If their server has a HDD problem 23 hours after the last back-up, then your client's data may be lost. Now imagine the client also suffers their own server failure and needs the last lot of backed-up files. They will not be amused to find-out that the only data available is 2 days old. In that time, they may have added several orders or financial transactions to the system that are vital to the business and their loss may even cause the client to receive a large fine.

fishybusiness

Setting up an PC repair business as a side project for extra income always appealed to me as I'm always the go-to guy for computer repairs and always need extra cash.

That was my take on it, and turning it in to a business took local paper ads, Yellow Pages and some dedicated work from me. Two years and I had gone from one job a week to being flat out.

As things turned out, working from home became difficult, the more work I had the more space I needed, and the more deliveries of spares I had too. Eventually I moved to cheap premises to use as a workshop.

For me, I began to find a few pitfalls in the PC repair business. I charged £35 for the first hour, and the rest was negotiable. The first hour charge was always important to cover travelling costs, time and diagnosis. If you don't do that you can end up picking up customers that just want a free opinion.

Also, you start to pick up a few small businesses, which demand a different type of care, but they do pay well. Domestic customers have to go on the bad burner when a business needs help.

I found that to have a living wage I needed to fit 3 or 4 jobs a day in, plus deal with the virus scan jobs back at base, plus order spares, take deliveries, the odd return visit, phone calls, invoicing, money chasing etc.

At first it is great, seeing the money rolling in, a good feeling from customers, but it does grind you down, especially the old PC's that are like repairing old cars, fix one issue and another comes up.

The next step is to get in to the small business server world, perhaps that is where the ongoing support and money is. Certainly for me, the domestic market is a tough one to earn a good living from..........

Jemma130

mcgee wrote: »

Does anyone have any top tips on how to further generate business?

Try networking yourself online - get a simple website (there are lots of free ones out there), start a facebook business page and a Twitter account too. This could help with a bit more exposure online. Good luck!

LianneCarlaS

I would do online marketing but put a lot of effort into offline marketing.

Here's an effective method:

Start a newsletter sharing some basic tips make it branded but not 'promotional' and print several copies.

Snail mail it to local businesses in your target market along with a business card. Follow it up a few days later with a phone call.

Use the fact you have already sent something as an icebreaker so they are already beginning to know like and trust you. Trust is helped if you keep promotions and offers off that initial piece and make it all about the customer and show yourself to be an expert in your field.

The call serves 2 purposes 1 market research (find out what they use and any problems they tend to have) Secondly it's to build a list of opted in subscribers, if they liked the mailed newsletter, invite them onto your mailing list and take their e-mail don't just leave them to do it.

Even if they don't need you right now if you are e-mailing once a month with helpful advice and presenting yourself as someone who knows what they are doing then they are going to come straight to you rather than search for someone else.

fishybusiness

The call serves 2 purposes 1 market research (find out what they use and any problems they tend to have)

So very true.

So many times I would go to a job for a new customer, only to be bombarded with questions, and asked to fix other problems, or network their new printer that had been sat in a cupboard for 6 months because no one could set it up.

LianneCarlaS

targeted marketing as well. If you know what they use, how heavily they rely on systems etc then you can segment your marketing so you are promoting the right product to the right people in the right way.

Take 2 salons.
Salon A uses a pc to store documents, do the accounts and employer forms.
Salon B has full salon software online appointment setting and is on all the social media platforms.

Salon B is relient on their systems working so you could offer them a monthly retainer package with a quarterly system check up and priority response time.

For salon A the need for it to be always working isn't so critical so they wouldn't be quite so interested in spending extra on than package but they might be tempted to get a salon management system in the near future.

Relevant marketing captures the attention and converts better. You can't expect people to know like and trust you if they feel like you don't even know them.

patman99

LianneCarlaS wrote: »

targeted marketing as well. If you know what they use, how heavily they rely on systems etc then you can segment your marketing so you are promoting the right product to the right people in the right way.

Take 2 salons.
Salon A uses a pc to store documents, do the accounts and employer forms.
Salon B has full salon software online appointment setting and is on all the social media platforms.

Salon B is relient on their systems working so you could offer them a monthly retainer package with a quarterly system check up and priority response time.

For salon A the need for it to be always working isn't so critical so they wouldn't be quite so interested in spending extra on than package but they might be tempted to get a salon management system in the near future.

Relevant marketing captures the attention and converts better. You can't expect people to know like and trust you if they feel like you don't even know them.

I'd disagree with the above advice. A business that uses a PC in the way Salon A does, is vulnerable to loss of data if the HDD fails, or the PC gets stolen.
My advice would be to supply Salon A with a NAS system with 2 HDD's in a mirrored RAID array. This can be hidden from view,
Salon B uses online software so is less exposed to risk of data loss as their hosting provider will back-up the server at least once a day. They would be best advised to duplicate their website onto a DVD RW or other media at least once a month.