do you think this is a good idea!

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Hi there guys, i have nearly finished the mike myers A+ 6th edition and have been doing the hands on at home and am fairly confident. Do you think it would be a good idea if i was to do advertise myself to do a little bit of private work based on what i have learnt. I am currently in a full time job but wouldnt mind the extra exsperience in my spare time to gain confidence. Hey it may even get me a bit of spare cash in the mean time to pay for my exams. Please let me know your thoughts. Many thanks

Jimbo

 

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It sounds good. The problem is with things like 'public liability' and tax. If these people are not relatives then you need things like that and also proper book-keeping for the tax-man.

There is quite a bit to setting up a home business.

On the other hand you can do 'black-market' work for people, but this makes it hard to claim it as 'experience' later!

Harry.

 

cheers , i wouldnt want to do anything illegal, if i new i could get some decent work out of it i would declare it. I might make up some cards just to see what response i get then go from there. I have started making my own website as well ( http://www.freewebs.com/jimbo0282/index.htm) but aint got a proper domain or web host yet supppose i could use that as a bit of promotion to get some work if i finish it. thanks for the advice.

 

are you A+ certified?
On your site, it states that you are and on your profile here it states "WIP"?

p.s.
Your Fees page
All prices are plus parts if they are needed. (for example if you need more RAM or any other component the cost of this will be added on top of the final price).

Rephrase that as it is a tad confusing....

 

you could be lucky and get a few simple jobs,or unlucky and do jobs that will take you many hours,i wouldn't charge anything just now and just get more experience,working for relatives even.
I never charged anything when i was learning about pcs,never done a single bit of damage either as i knew any slight mistake was going to cost me big money,at that time a motherboard was always £100,ram was £100 for 1gb,dvd rewriter was £200 so i had to be carefull.
The more practice you get the easier it is to come to a quicker solution to the problem,the diagnostic side taught in the A+ is fairly basic,and doesn't cover as much as you can learn yourself.
I don't think they even teach stuff like shorting and mistakes made while assembling a computer.

 

I have done a few things around the area were I live such as virus removal, hard drive installation and RAM upgrdades. Aswell as a couple of complete system builds with OS installations and I have charged £50 per hour

Like cheeks said are you certified yet? as it would be wrong to state you are if you are not.

 

im not certified yet, if i were to advertise this website before i was certified i would definatly take off the A+ certified logo and not advertise myself as this. The website was just a practice for mabye the future, but hey, i may rearrange a few things and use it before i get certified. Many thanks for the help guys!

jimbo

 

I think it's always a good idea to get real world experience but setting yourself up as a business is full of pitfalls as has been said before you need to declare everything for the tax man and have some sort of liability insurance. Personally where I am the home pc repair market is saturated and there would be little point in even attempting to start up a business. personally I would keep it and friends and family (I used to get a lot of mates rates jobs some years ago whilst working for the plod). I either didnt charge them very much or they bought me beer. Everybody won as they got their pc fixed cheaply and I got experience.

 

I'd agree about real world experience first,you've already set out your rates of pay,but if you get bogged down in a job,and hours later you are still trying to fix it due to lack of experience,you can't really charge people £100+ for a job that someone else with more experience could do for £20 in half an hour.
That is my opinion anyway,and part of the reason i took the A+ was to speed up on repairs,there were a few jobs i did where i charged nothing and would have been totally wrong to charge money as i took far too long over it.
But since then i've learned to do these jobs much quicker,i know where i went wrong,and what slowed me down,and i feel i've reached the standard where i can charge per hour,but i started on this road 10 years ago.
Regarding pc builds,i think the shops themselves are reasonably cheap for this type of service,as they are selling you the hardware at the same time,so it's hard to compete with a shop on this.
There is tax and liability insurance to pay as others have said,and also working out what type of company you want to become.

 

You can... but don't be surprised when they don't call you back. Thus, this advice is spot-on, as is this advice:

That's happened to me a few times as well. When it was in my control to do so, I'd discount the rate, or I'd drop the number of hours it took to provide the service.

Good stuff!

 

hey jimbo,

i took a look at ur site, recognised ur telephone number. i too live in torbados lol, sunny ole paignton
small world.

best of luck with ur computing ambitions

 

cheers to everyone for their opinions youve been a lot of help!!

jimbo

 

I don't know about how the laws work in Europe...but for anyone stateside I recommend incorporating yourself, usually an LLC. That way if something goes wrong (even if it's not your fault), the customer can't so you directly and can only sue you for assets or money held by the "LLC". I would also come up with some kind of contract that you are not responsible for data loss. It doesn't happen too often, but some customers will bring in a unit that was already broken and you find that the hard drive is not working and no data can be recovered, short of sending it to a clean room. Then they try to lay blame on you and say it was in working condition, blah blah blah and try to sue you. Always protect yourself.

 

If I were you I would do voluntary work first, just to get some experience, because even after being certified A+ you may come across something you have not done and make a mistake. Then legal action will be taken. Try volunteering for maybe a month after you pass and see how it goes after that.