Income estimates: Home Based PC Support

"We will be living in an area of about 500,000 people within easy driving distance. The population is highly educated, one of the top 5 technical industrial parks in the nation is nearby."

Um...pardon any moronic tone to this question but..if you are in such a highly educated area, that is one of the top 5 technical industrial parks in the nation....doesn't logic suggest that a home PC support busines might not be that well needed in such an area?

I mean I for one, as most of us in IT, we service and fix our own technology problems/equipment.

I think the better type of client for a support business are those that are LESS educated/knowledgable with technology (ie. Like people who use AOL for their ISP..LOL)

but the honest answer from me would have to be: It Depends.

It really depends a lot on your skill level and marketing ability IMO. To me the ideal is to have several (less than a dozen) clients on retainer in medium to large businesses. The going rates for knowledgable independant network people is from $60 to $125 an hour. The market is a bit flooded though, and many of those, including myself, rely on a primary employer for benefits and stable income. I know a number of people that have a cut of their consulting fee going to their primary employer even.

Contrast that with people who advertise locally at $25 to fix ANY PC problem, or there are a number of people charging $10 an hour. These are the people going after home PC users, and I started doing this some years back, found it difficult to get steady income and working a lot of extra hours just to get people to actually pay me. I moved on to small medical offices, which I found more realistic and better at paying me regularly. I also started to actually make 25-35$ and hour instead of the 2-8$ an hour I would end up making after all the extra time driving and dealing with people who all wanted a "break" or couldn't pay that month or bounced a check etc. Personally, after getting small business clients I never looked back. An understanding of HIPAA is essential for the medical crowd though, and looking back I should of charged more to start, I had way to many clients, and when you are charging on the cheap side you tend to not get the best clients, but it does get the word out and is a good starting point.

A specialty like CNC or Medical or Custom DataBases etc. helps a lot in my opinion.

The thing that is making it extra hard to give you any idea is what your skill level, experience, and training are. If you have a ton of certs and 10 years in a specialized area that is available there, you should be able to make a good living with average marketing\accounting skills or even hiring out for these. If you are A+ certified and have a working knowledge of how to do things in Network Neighborhood mainly then the going rate here will be about $25.00 per incident or 10.00$ an hour here. A good way to find out how much you could make in your area for home users is to hit up the bench repair guys in your area. Ask them how much their rates are over the phone to repair something, hourly and\or flat fee. Then go in and talk to them about being a bench tech. Here a shop that charges about $65 an hour starts their techs at about $7.00 an hour. You will find as you go in business for yourself that there are costs that make this not as unreasonable as it first appears.

I hope that is helpful. :)

Perhaps you are right, after some more thought...I can see another factor too -- if you are IT all day long, maybe you don't want to be bothered at NIGHT with your own stuff at home.

As for income that's a tough one -- but I'd do research into your regional area..see what the market will bare. Look up what established companies are charging for similar services, for instance if there is a Best Buy near you -- get a price list for their tech support services, or the prices of local shops..and where ever possible get a full description of what the services include. For example there's a place near me that on their pricing brochure they have a one paragraph description of all you get for that price/service. Including any warrany protection if applicable.

This way you can throw all this research together to find the "average cost", then you have tweak it to what YOU will offer (you offering any MORE or any LESS than these shops you collected pricing from? You offer things "they" don't offer? What about refund/warranty terms on your work or products you sell? Make sure your price includes all these considerations).

Also be prepared to offer discounted pricing at least in the beginning to catch clients (and hopefully steal them from your competition) so don't get too discouraged if you don't turn a profit for a while....many businesses count it a blessing to just break even after a full year.

There are too many variables to make a guess at your income.

Are you a good self marketer? Is your area saturated with people doing the same thing? Do you have some potentials lined up? Do you have a special skill you could market?

I agree with the poster who mentioned the challenges with a large number of small clients - they often don't pay on time, and chasing them to pay is time consumning. They also like to argue the bill, ask questions out of left field and other time eaters. I have been out of that kind of business since 91, but that posting brought back memories.

I used to partner up with a couple of complimentary consultants - I did all the hardware buying, fixed PCs, sold PCs. Another partner did networking -setting up servers and cabling etc. The third partner did databases - he would create them, set up dial in access and then do custom reports for people over the phone. There was some overlap so we could back each other up when needed. But together we were stronger than we were individually. I could bill $75 an hour for about 30 hours a week, and would spend about 10 - 15 hours a week on non-billables.

James

There is absolutely no way of predicting icome unless you have a ocal market study. It simply cannot be done any other way accurately.

You will ened to call a few local PC support guys with a birtual issue to resolve and get an idea of what's being charged.

In my area for example, we have MCSE's doing home repair for $55/hr, whereas I charge between $120 and $150/hr as an MCNE. I have had a customer who USED to use me, try one of the 55 dolar MCSE's and is now calling em again, her attitude, "why pay for a tech to spend 1 hr onsite then go home awaiting an email (for an answer), before returning for another hour or so to fix the issue?" : when I can do it in 1 hour or so onsite and it's done! So even though I charge almost 3 times what others charge, value is dependant on the guy doing the work and how long it takes to get done. Which you will achieve over time through referrals.

so get an idea of what others are charhing to set a competitive start-up rate, then as your clientelle grows you can easily add an annual increase to earn what you deem you are worth based on your reputation.

NOTE: One issue I ran into when starting a home based business, even though most work is done onsite, was PARKING ! Of all the things i considered, parking was not one of them as I was on the road working. In BC, for a small business in a residence you need to provide ample ONSITE parking, not streetside. I don't know how or if this aplys in your state but there's a lot of little things to address that you rarely consider.

Even as an MCSE you should be able to get $50/hr at least, I know you are in the US but it can't be THAT different there. Who would want to work for less anyway?

I've been doing computer support on the side for a couple of years in the Denver area. I work as a Net/Server/desktop support person by day and the pick up a couple of hours of support as needed. I've often thought about doing this full time, but my wife likes the bi-monthly paychecks... and this is a nicer way to do it as it limits the impact of those that don't pay or don't pay on time.

I don't do the work for less then $50/hr. Its just not worth my time especially with two toddlers at home and wife with special needs. I'm not an MCSE and don't see why you need to be one to do this type of work. What's important is your ability to adapt and overcome a WIDE range of IT issues from Viruses, Hardware, Software and mostly just plain ignorance and the right attitude to handle it.

What I was able to do that worked out pretty well was to find a small business or two that rarely needed someone for IT work and understoond that I could not provide support during the usual 8-5.

The issues I have with home support are varied. First if its not a rich neighborhood they will have a hard time paying for you. Second they may or may not know what to expect from an IT guy, especially if they have never been supported by one. You may end up with someone that expects you to miraculously make their Windows 3.11 work with the latest technology in 1 hr and then never stop bitching and harassing you when it won't. Third, I dislike going to other peoples homes, touching their stuff, etc. You never know what you are going to find or run into. I highly recommend doing this type of work with people you know or have worked with, and that you setup a check list that you check off when you go in and then verify as you leave (IE, Floppy works, CD Works, Network Works, Internet Works) and have them sign it. This helps reduce the dreaded "You did this, not that's not working, come fix it for free..." calls. Also People recommended by friends and co-workers are likely not to be running meth labs or the like.

Finally, if you do this work, make sure you keep a close track of your income and expenses. I highly recommend setting up a free checking account somewhere just for this work and depositing all profits into it, withdrawing all expenses from it (Documented of course) and then pay your self from this account. It makes tax time much easier and if you want to setup a spreadsheet to go along with it, makes tracking whether or not you're making money easier. There are several books out there on how to do this. When it doubt, look for ones for home (Van) businesses like plumbers and model after that.

Best of luck, there is a lot of need out there.
-Rob

I own a company that provides services to the Real Estate industry. Before it grew past me it was very close to being exactly what you are describing. Real Estate professionals are independant contractors who purchase their own IT services and have home offices. I also provide Home Office services as a way to fill in the gaps when work from my primary market was unavailable. I'm in a large east coast market as well. I would expect you to make approx. equivalent of a 48k to 55k job. Two issues you will have to deal with are that travel is big overhead. You probably won't be spending the day at a client only a few ours and the guy paying the bill is writing the check it's not company budget money. Also support on the home front is key. The first year will have a large learning curve and networking is the key to marketing. Direct Marketing attempts were not successful. Good Luck!

Somebody at Best Buys apparently thinks there's a buck to be made in the to-your-home tech support business. I don't know what they're charging, but I'll bet they make a fortune off it. I mean, somebody has to be making some money on supporting the technologically-challenged. All those gazillions of computer owners can't have IT-savvy relatives they can sponge off!

I Live in a similar area and have been doing in home repair as a contract consultant for rescuecom part time while going to school. they charge $98 an hour to go to people homes and do the repair work. I get $30 an hour . 90% of the work is cleaning spyware and virii not hard but time consuming.

I do this full time and it is isn't easy getting enough clients to make it turn a good profit. You need to invest in advertising and spend time networking in business organizations. Home users are not a good source of business because it is usually a one shot deal and they balk at having to pay for your time. In many cases, they can probably do it themselves for less.

I've been doing this for over 5 years now and it's a pretty iffy. When on a sevice call I never seem to have what I need, there'll be drivers, a drive, and etc. It's also hard to bill at a decent rate while you are setting there waiting for a p133 to format a 60 gig harddrive and stuff like that. It is also hard to find help to answer the phone that has enough knowledge to correctly screen calls. What worked the best for me was a soho shop offering pickup and delivery services. I send a person out to the client, fix it there if it's a 123 job or bring it in if it's not. I bill at $100/hr but also do a lot of freebies for major customers.

At any rate income was slow for a long time until we landed a major company on a retainer plus basis. We landed this after we began building boxes and sold them a few.

Try to start part time and build it up to the point that its income exceeds that of your day job, avoid price chopping. $50/hr sounds good, but you have to compensate for slow times, reworks, and the thousands of other things you can't charge for. Good luck!

Started a business like that a year and a half ago! On a tiny investment. Got the business fillings, the shop space the phone the connectivity, the suppliers etc.
It started right off, slow. But I have gained a good reputation, I stand behind my work, I try to help them not get into the same problem again.
Its currently paying its own bills but I surely am not Raking in the dough. If you enjoy diagnosing other peoples problems and helping them it does have potential to make money. Access your competion! And be sure to beat them in every area you can. How many machines are you going to work on at one time? Its hardware, software or both, and the software takes the most time. Have fun, and ,make a lot of money. Jim

Try doing this the other way around. Figure out how much you need to get by and multiply by three. This is the gross you will need to survive. So if you can survive on $30,000 pa you will need to bill at least $90,000. If everything was perfect, that's $45 per hour - every hour. If you lose 25% of the billable hours, then you need to bill $60 per hour to net $30,000 pa.

I to have considered this as a way to go. I am not even looking for "big bucks". In today's market people and businesses can buy a pretty decent machine for $600-$800 with a three year warranty. If after three years it breaks the machine owes them absolutely nothing. They go buy new. Where is the business. It is indeed a tough road. Been there in the past. May still give it a shot. Who knows. Best of luck in your endeavors.

Brad or somebody in this thread,

If it is right under my nose, forgive me for being so obtuse. But could you guide me to the thread on starting a PC support business? Thanks!

I dove into computer consulting with a guy that had been doing it for about 10-15 years (and was very succesful until the recession) in the LA area. He had a good rep, a very nice office, lots of equiptment and software. We even had a very big client to get us going. We tried everything we could think of for about 1 1/2 years. The first year I made $14k. The second year (when the main client was lost) I made $6k. It was VERY hard to get clients. Companies just didn't want to spend money on technology. They wanted to spend a few hundreds bucks a year to limp their existing systems along.

We avoided home users like the plague; we only did house calls for very important business clients. There just wasn't enough money with home users: they want to spend about $50 - $150 per visit reguardless of whether the project takes 1 hour or 12. But companies drop a grand like nothing if they NEED the work done. How much can you make? Guess at about $100 times customers per day. Remember, often you have to drive to their place...

I've known people who do this and they say it is feast and famine; but they do it as a labor of love.

Don't abondon your day job for this stuff, do it in your spare time and go from there. If you do it this way, it should be easy to convince your wife. This way you should be able to make at least a few extra hundred dollars per week which is nice. I get requests once in a while but I just don't like that sort of work.

Go for it, just take it slow and be careful.
Good luck.