Setting up my own business... Advice?

**Sanj[UK]** · 22nd May 2012

Originally Posted by evilsatan

Regarding the website, I have one but have never had a job from it but I never intended for it to get me work. I wanted a site so I had an online presence for potential customers to have a look at before they decided to give me a call. I did this because I don't like to blindly call a number without doing some reading up on the company first. I do have a facebook, twitter etc. but haven't used it yet as I haven't needed to.

Really? So apart from networking how else do you advertise?

**evilsatan** · 22nd May 2012

I have one ad in my village parish magazine which only goes to about 200 houses but pretty much everyone knows me anyway having grown up here. Word of mouth is my main one, I get recommended a lot and my prices vs. the competition are quite a driver. I'm not at full capacity though and am not making a huge profit so I will be advertising more once I have found a reliable self employed person to put some work out to if I need to. I am trying to grow slowly to maintain my focus on service as, in my mind, once I establish a reputation/brand it will be easy to monetise. I don't have a family or anything so I have less overheads than most.

**Sanj[UK]** · 22nd May 2012

Originally Posted by evilsatan

I have one ad in my village parish magazine which only goes to about 200 houses but pretty much everyone knows me anyway having grown up here. Word of mouth is my main one, I get recommended a lot and my prices vs. the competition are quite a driver. I'm not at full capacity though and am not making a huge profit so I will be advertising more once I have found a reliable self employed person to put some work out to if I need to. I am trying to grow slowly to maintain my focus on service as, in my mind, once I establish a reputation/brand it will be easy to monetise. I don't have a family or anything so I have less overheads than most.

Thanks for the insight. ive read on a forum (posted here) about facebook advertising. I ended up creating a page and posting on 20-30 different pages around my area. Should be interesting to monitor..

**evilsatan** · 22nd May 2012

If used properly and you are liked by local people Facebook could be a very powerful tool. My plan was to have flash discounts to fill in empty appointments or if I was travelling quite far trying to get work in that area. Not needed it yet but still intend to use it.

**DejaVu** · 22nd May 2012

Up until December, I was doing well and have around 50+ 'regular' customers and 2 small businesses that call on me if needed.
However, it seems I might have done too good-a-job or people are feeling the pinch.
Even the office with 8 networked PC's seems to be running like clockwork!
I find it tough trying to get work from businesses. I think I need more practice at selling myself!

I might get the odd, "I can't install this software" or "My AntiVirus is running out" phonecall and sort that over the phone, but other then that, I am struggling.

I've cornered some work from the likes of Comet (3 of their stores, but keep it on the down-low), as the prices they charge for repairs are ridiculous and the sales guys don't like to recommended it because the shoddy job they do and they get 'comebacks' from customers.

I've been asked to build 2 systems, which ultimately would have become Facebook machines, so advised them to invest in cheap systems from the superstores instead.
Luckily, I did well the end of last year and will be OK up til around July this year, cash wise. If things do not improve soon though, I might be forced to consider other avenues.

I have just started advertising locally (shop windows/Tecso's customer boards) and am about to approach Facebook to try and get some thing happening.

My main concern IS competition as my area is swarming with IT wannabes that think they know what they are dong.

I wouldn't call my self a full professional as I'm always learning, but seeing what these other cowboys have done is scary sometimes.
Laptop power sockets re-soldered incorrectly are my favourite, fucking cakes of solder joining all the pins and I get called asking why their Laptop Chargers are getting hot even though they've just had it repaired elsewhere or by their 'friend'.

Or the 'Virus-Free' computer that's still got more viruses than a VD clinic.

**Sanj[UK]** · 22nd May 2012

you didnt include any kind of contract for the office work? no SLA?

**evilsatan** · 23rd May 2012

I hope to introduce SLAs this year so I can have a base income each month and a formal agreement with the businesses I work for. At the moment if I get a call from them I bend over backwards to move or cancel any plans I may have and sort them out. It is having quite an impact on what should be 'my' time and the stress is unreal.

I forgot to add, there is a web design team which I do work for. If they have a client who needs IT work doing I subcontract for them. Only had a few jobs through that but any work is good work at the moment. I know they add a lot to my invoices though which I'm not happy with because customers will have much higher expectations and rush you through a job.

I have been trying to plan expansion, after taking advice from this forum I purchased ComittCRM so I can track all jobs and employees. I have bought quick books pro 2012 to add on to ComittCRM and it all runs on a HP micro server in my office. DynDNS is setup and port forwarding so I can access the web interface from anywhere. I now only build custom machines for home users, any businesses now get OEM machines with 3 year NBD support from Dell.

**Little John** · 23rd May 2012

Everyone thinks the right way to get customers is to sell yourself cheaply, I used to do it that way �40 per hour is less than the �65 everyone else charged so i was getting the work quite easily and because of my low price I was keeping it either because I was good and my customers were happy with me (I tliek to think that is the reason) or I was cheap. But it becomes unsustanable and slowly you realise it. Fuel bills going up really crippled me at some points and it was a case of fuel in the car or buy food a few times. If I can't get to sites I can't make any money i am still paying off the credit card bills now.

When this thread started I was 7 years in to self employment as an IT engineer 3-4 huge years at the front and 3 quieter years at the back Picking up a few new clients a year was easy and brought enough money in but the last 3 years so many of them went to the wall, closed or sold to larger companies with their own IT department the one that broke me was a local company and really easy to service 5 minutes away and always wanting work done, they closed a shop then 6 months later sold to a larger company, I milked them a little on the hand over as I knew it was going to be the end of things. It then was time to do somthing so I started job hunting the number of others setting up and under cutting even my prices was crazy. I posted about my hunting and eventual job securing on here. in Feb 2011 I returned to working for a company I left in 1998 (I think) I left becasue I never thought they would last how wrong was I? and they havn't really changed their business model stick to what they knew and specialised in one area IT for Travel agencies, its mainly custom software with lots of different configurations between each other for transfer of data in to back office systems from booking systems blah blah blah, things have moved on from individual pop mail boxes, or simple pop mail servers everyone has exchange and 2003/2008/2011 servers ok 2 still have pop3 but one we host so we charge them for it. we have other stuff like offsite backups and mail filtering again all services we charge for monthly/anually. we sell Dell hardware no messing about with custom built let dell deal with hardware failures its easier and they are faster then we could ever be and the customers are happy to pay for the dell 3 year warranties and the 4 hour response on servers.

But its easy to sell stuff to businesses, they have larger budgets and understand the need to spend the money on their IT infrastructure well you would think we still get some who moan at �25 for managed antivirus per PC per year and then they moan when their norton antivirus from Pc world doesnt protect them well enough and we have to spend hours cleaning their pc.

Home users are now educated in saving money thanks to Martin Lewis so know that a hard drive costs �50 and new laptops cost �300 from Asda and moan when you charge them for your expertise and a new hard drive with its delivery costs etc. That market has changed, most people know somene who has had a computer for a while so they can fix it, what a nightmare they are. I went to a freinds the other week who informed me their laptop hadn't been working so they gave it to their son in law who works in the Tesco electrical department who gave it to the guy in the computer department to reinstall windows. The pc was running slow not knackered. The guy lost all their docs and photos didn't back anything up or anything and handed the laptop back without any drivers installed and charged them �40 for the pleasure. i have all sorts of ways of connecting drives to PC's so I can pull data off them I did one the other night 70gb of photos, music and docs but I refuse to loose anything. shame windows wont reinstall on it at the moment.

Anyway its tough and gets tougher, I gave up 15 months ago and haven't looked back it is miles less stressful working for someone else, good to hear occasionally that I am appreciated or that I have done a great job today/week/month. The benefits of self employment were fun and milking the system was great but to receive the same amount of money each and every month on the same day is incredible and allows you to plan for the future much easier. The past 15 months I have almost cleared my credit card debt which was quite significant, spent a bucket load off cash �3000 on a camera lens, �3600 on a camera �2400 on a present for my sister and going on a road trip in the US in a few months and thats paid up and I have a chunk to spend while there. Shame I pretty much now have a head of grey hair from the previous 8 years but never mind. I hope I havn't put any of you off.

**evilsatan** · 24th May 2012

The reason I went self employed was the fact I couldn't get a permanent job in this area doing anything I wanted to do so I was in and out of temporary work with the agencies which were all minimum wage for some quite demanding jobs. I did end up working in the toshiba warranty repair center alongside the Sony and tech guys contract which was minimum wage but I doubled it each month with my quality and output bonuses. Toshiba then took their contract back to Germany so I left to start my own business. The 'dream' is to build a sustainable company, have someone run it so I can go through more qualifications and end up employed in a decent position.

**daz73** · 25th May 2012

like eviljohn I was doing ok but then decided id had enough due to tight arse customers who think that even if you spent 5 hours removing virus after virus on their dell c500 laptop

then they should still only pay me �25!!! or moaning if i carge them for xp/ vista/ 7 if they dont have it and need a reinstall..

so now I just do the regulars that i have looked after for the last five years,, doesnt happen often but bit of extra cash here and there and loads less hassle...

I need to think of something else though too, something online probably

**Fon** · 25th May 2012

I used to fix these, then got so much grief for the money it wasn't worth it.

So I decided to only do friends machines.

Now the problem with friends is they think it should be free.

If I were to take my car to a friend who was a mechanic Id expect to give him a drink. But with PC's it seems to be totally different. People seem to think that as there is no manual labour involved, you should just help them.

After a load of friends machines, I gave it up all together. Too many new random problems occur after I have fixed something, and I seem to get the blame for it.

So fuck it, you want it fixed, take it to pcworld etc, or pay me at least �75 for the 5 hours of hassle ill have, or the rebuild time and updates etc.

Fon

**Little John** · 26th May 2012

LOL
I got an email the last month from a past customer I built him a PC in 2003, he contacted me to tell me it was running slow and was infected with somthing and asked me to call round and take a look 9 years later and they are still using the same pc and its running slow. He last contacted me a few years ago and I told him then to buy a new one.

Shame, I didnt reply to his email I think I forgot.

I also still have a pc here that a customer dropped off, custom pc with a knackered hard drive and no windows sticker on the side so I asked him to supply me the key for it which he couldnt I told him the price for it and never heard anything from him again.

I tried to contact him as well so I am thining about binning the pc.