How To Make Money Fixing Computers

do you consider yourself pretty tech savvy and thinking about making a career out of I.T if so then today I'm going to share some tips that'll hopefully help you start your own computer repair business stay tuned [Music] so you click this video because you want to know how to make money fixing computers I've been a computer tech for 22 years and I've been working for myself for about 12 of those years I originally started my business in 2010 after losing my job the idea was simply to go fix some computers so I could make some money and pay my mortgage you know because paying your bills is kind of hard when you don't have a job but you know it didn't take long before just a source of temporary income became my full-time job I had tried starting my own business several times and was never really successful that was until I had no other choice but to jump in head first and make it or starve so to make it easier on you I'm gonna share some tips that got me started so maybe you won't have to make the same mistakes that I did now these tips are directly related to the computer repair industry but they might help in other Industries as well however I don't work in other Industries but I do know that these tips worked for me now first off I got to get this on the table right away you don't need a ton of money to start your own business in fact I started my business with a thousand dollars that's literally all I had left out of my last paycheck since I didn't have much money I had to be careful how I spent my money to get the most out of it and you know I didn't always make the right decisions in fact some of the decisions that I made were just downright stupid now the first and I think the most important tip is to be good at what you want to start a business doing however there's this saying that if you really want to be good at something then start a business doing it you'll get really good quick or fail but if you want to minimize the chances of failing then it would be a good idea to at least have a general understanding of the thing you want to start charging people for but at the same time I started my business I had been a computer tech for 10 years and I had a bachelor's degree in network security so I knew a little but I didn't know nearly as much as I thought I did but regardless of your knowledge level you need to be confident in your ability to perform tasks that people are paying you to perform you definitely don't want to come off like you don't know what you're doing so if this is something that you really want to do you need to have knowledge of the subject matter in fact share in the comments below what you do for a living and were you good at it when you started or did you learn as you did it the next tip is one that I don't think a lot of people starting out follow trust me this one is extremely important this tip is do not be the cheapest in your field this one might be a little counter-intuitive to some people but hear me out it'll make sense after I explain it because here's the thing you might be tempted as a new business to want to drum up as many customers as you possibly can and the most obvious way to do that is to undercut everyone else in your field the problem is if you do that two things are gonna happen first off you're going to attract people that you simply don't want as customers trust me the people who want to pay the smallest dollar amount possible for your services also want the highest level of service imaginable in fact it's kind of an ironic concept but it's true these people will have a computer that's 15 years old and expect it to run like a brand new computer but there they're not willing to pay you more than thirty dollars and they will call you constantly and expect you to support them for free since you know they already paid you you might think I'm exaggerating but I'm really not secondly many people will avoid hiring you because when they see how cheap your price is they will think you're just not very good at your job trust me on this one people are willing to pay a fair price for Quality Service also people willing to pay you a fair price are absolutely the best customers in the world they have realistic expectations they will trust you in your suggestions and best of all they understand and expect to pay you for future problems they don't believe that paying you once gives them lifetime tech support yes this really happens by the way this tip is going to take a little bit of research you need to know how much other techs are charging in your area and sometimes techs are a little weird about quoting their prices over the phone but but that's exactly what I would do call up text in your area and simply ask them what their hourly rate is and like I said before you don't want to be the cheapest but at the same time you also don't want to be the most expensive either what I would recommend doing is falling right in at about 80 percent if the most expensive Tech in your area charges a hundred dollars an hour then you should come in at about eighty dollars an hour but whatever you do don't be the twenty dollar Craigslist Tech if there are people in your area that are unwilling to pay more than twenty dollars an hour then let someone else have those customers you really don't want them and you know what share in the comments below what you look for when hiring someone to do a job for you do you always look for the cheapest person or will you avoid the cheapest person in fear that the job might not be done right the next tip is another important one and that's advertising the only way you're going to find customers is by advertising this is going to cost you some money but if you spend your money right you can get the best bang for your buck here some people might recommend to take every advertising opportunity possible however this is stupid some advertising works better than others in fact sometimes the most expensive forms of advertising might work the least for you and your business I can only give you my experience on this subject and what's worked for me might not work for you this is entirely dependent on your area but hopefully through sharing my experience can help you save some money first off I'm gonna tell you right now that the absolute best form of advertising that I've used and still use today is flyers on bulletin boards across town it costs almost nothing to have Flyers printed up I use those flyers with the little pull-off tabs with my name and phone number on them every time I get them printed it cost me about 20 or 30 bucks and they last for quite a while I typically pick a slow day and just drive around my county and hang up Flyers if I had to make an an educated guess I would say I've gotten roughly half of my business from advertising through those stupid Flyers also when I first started I printed out a bunch of flyers and just went door to door I didn't get much business but some of my best customers that I still have to this day I got just by walking into their business or knocking on their door and giving them a flyer so don't be shy get out there and start knocking on some doors ironically though when I did that it was an unusual number of people that didn't even own computers but that was 12 years ago hopefully it's changed now or they might have just been saying that to get rid of me who knows another advertising method that I've used and had extremely good success with is Google Places when you search for a business you're probably doing it through Google and Google advertises businesses for free so make yourself a Google Places account and do your best to optimize your submission as best as possible this one's going to take a little bit of trial and error and there's not a lot of guidance that I can give you on this one now your goal here is to be in the first three places this is because they're the ones that show up in the search results if you're below the third place then no one will see your business unless they click on the more businesses link so just do what you can to put as much information in as possible also when you do start getting clients ask them to leave you reviews the more reviews you get in Google Places the better you'll start ranking but I have to warn you here don't post fake reviews you might think you're the most Sly person in the world and you could totally get away with it but trust me Google knows also the customer searching for you knows too if all the other texts in the area have like five reviews over several years and your big business pops up out of nowhere with 140 reviews it's likely those are not legitimate reviews I have seen people do this in my area before and their listing never ranks it falls below the fold every time so just make sure you're asking your customers to post legitimate reviews because here's the issue people typically don't post reviews when they're happy with a service they almost always post bad reviews when they're angry with someone and you're not going to make everyone happy so to make sure that the majority of your reviews are good reviews just ask people to leave them for you if they're happy with your service now moving on some of the advertising methods that I would avoid are amongst the most expensive for instance early on I took out an ad in the Yellow Pages this was incredibly expensive I believe it cost me 80 bucks a month and you're under contract for I believe a year it depends on how often the Yellow Pages are printed in your area but in my area that's a year either way it was a complete waste of money I believe in the year that I had that stupid ad in the Yellow Pages I got like two customers it definitely didn't pay for itself I also had ads in local newspapers this one honestly wasn't really that bad it was expensive but I did get a lot of business from it I haven't done it in a really long time but that form of advertising did pay for itself the problem here is to make sure that you advertise in a newspaper that's only distributed in the area you're willing to work in you definitely don't want to advertise in some national newspaper unless your business is seeking customers all across the country however I'm going to assume that you're just starting a business being a local computer tech and if that's the case then you definitely want to pick a newspaper that has a distribution in your area and is fairly popular and you know what another form of advertising that I would highly recommend against is shopping carts it's it's not that I didn't get business from them it's more the ridicule I got from people that I know because of them the typical jab was them asking me when my picture was going to be on melt cartons and you know what it also got pretty old seeing my face on the shopping cart when I was out shopping you know what though I did get business from the shopping carts but that was also really expensive I believe it was about eight hundred dollars to do that and just wasn't worth the ridicule maybe if you have better friends then this would be a better option for you finally the last form of advertising that I would recommend against is websites like Craigslist Facebook and other free message boards it may seem like a good idea to get your name out there in places that provide free advertising but that's really not always the case this goes back to my second tip to make sure you're not the cheapest deck in town but because when people go on Craigslist looking for computer techs they're typically not looking for the most expensive Tech the customers that you're gonna get off of those forms of advertising are just simply not worth the effort so I would avoid them completely if you run a computer business already then share in the comments below what kind of advertising has worked for you maybe I'll get some new ideas now this next tip should be obvious but for some reason some people just don't get it this is to be a likable person I'm a mobile computer tech that means I actually go into other people's homes to fix their computers on site people don't want an unlikable person in their home in fact it can make the entire experience kind of awkward for not only the customer but also you the service industry is almost entirely based on Word of Mouth advertising and a cool little secret about that fact is that people will recommend a mediocre Tech with a good personality even more than a great Tech with a bad personality so consider every customer you have as a job interview because it kind of is make casual conversation with the customer take an interest in them I mean you're fixing their computer you might as well make the experience enjoyable right these customers are not only going to Remember You for their own future problems but when their Neighbors start complaining about their computer problems guess whose name is going to get dropped in the conversation now some people simply don't have great personalities and I get that but everyone can at least be nice even if you don't have a great personality you can still be kind to the customer yes that even means being nice to annoying customers also though on that same topic one of the most important things that you should do or rather not do is talk about controversial subjects like politics and other things personally I think we should all be able to talk about difficult topics but not everyone can some people simply can't discuss controversial topics with people they disagree with and the problem is you don't know what kind of person your customer is until you're in a conversation about a controversial topic believe me the quickest way to not get called back or recommended is to get into a political debate with your customer you might actually win that debate but you ain't getting called back if your customer brings up a controversial topic then sometimes it's best to just smile shake your head and then move on remember you're there to fix their computer not solve The World's problems you know what though some of my best customers hold views that I disagree with and believe it or not they're great people and there's lots of other things that we can talk about that are not controversial so you know what it's just not a good idea to get into any controversial conversations remember you're not an activist you're a computer tech and you want the customer to recommend you and call you back so pick a topic of conversation that best aligns with that goal you definitely don't want to be known for the computer tech that always talks about how he was abducted by aliens hey don't put your hand in there man foreign [Music] on a side note there's a few other things you should also consider one of those is that some customers simply don't want to have a conversation they just want their computer fixed and you to go you should be able to pick up on the cues to know if this is the case if the customer isn't really paying attention to what you're saying or is obvious in their attempts to knock it into a conversation then simply respect that fix their computer and leave some people just don't want to talk and that's okay and the next thing you really should consider also is if you spend two hours working on their computer but an hour of that was pretty much just you guys talking then make sure you don't charge them for that time you may find that some customers insist on paying you even though you easily could have gotten that job done in half the time if you weren't in that conversation but in this case be respectful and only charge the customer for the work that you did I run into this problem a lot because if you can't tell I'm kind of a talker so I often spend way more time than necessary fixing a computer because I was having a conversation with the customer however every time that happens I don't build a customer for the time that we spent talking I'm a computer tech not an escort service I'm only going to charge you for fixing your computer not having a conversation about the meaning of life and then the fifth and final tip is do a good job if someone hires you to remove a virus from their computer and you charge them money and there's still a virus on their computer then you haven't done your job I go out of my way to not talk bad about my competition because here's the thing I'm biased of course I think I'm a better Tech Than People competing with me but me expressing that to the customer means absolutely nothing it just turns into gossip in fact that should be the sixth tip don't talk bad about your competition it won't help you however the reason why I shared that is because there's been many times when a customer called me to fix their computer just to find out that I'm fixing a problem that the last tech charged them to fix and didn't fix you see they didn't call the other Tech they called me these customers are still my customers and I still fix their computer whenever they have a problem what happened was the first tech didn't do his job because of that they never called him back now they call me whenever they have problems because I actually fix their problems when their neighbors have issues they recommend me too so when you're working on a customer's computer go out of your way to do a good job one of the things that I do that's kind of unnecessary is I will run the customers antivirus even after I've done a virus removal the reason I do this isn't to find a virus if I did my job right I've already fixed the problem but let's say a week goes by and the customer runs their own antivirus and find something that makes you look bad so I take a little bit of extra time to do a full scan with the customer's antivirus just to make sure that doesn't happen going above and beyond is only going to benefit you in the long run also keep in mind if you're following my tips you're not the cheapest Tech in town you're making enough money to spend a little bit of extra time making sure that the job is done right so these are just five tips that I can give you in starting a computer repair business if you decide to take this path in life all I can say is that you've unlocked the most amazing thing that you could ever do you might not make the most money and I pretty much guarantee you that you'll work all the time you know you can say goodbye to eight hour days however being self-sufficient as a business owner is one of the most rewarding things that I've ever done in my life I could never even imagine working for someone else if someone came to me today and told me they would pay me double what I currently earn to come work for them I wouldn't even have to think about it before I turned it down I honestly wish I would have done this long before but I was scared it's hard to give up regular consistent income for pretty much the wild west being a business owner comes with some really rewarding benefits but also some downsides some months you might make more money than you know what to do with but other months you might be scraping from your savings account just to put gas in your car especially with today's gas prices but ultimately the freedom that comes with being a business owner is simply impossible to quantify I go on vacation whenever I damn well please and I even have the opportunity to do stuff like starting a YouTube channel because I don't know sounds fun if you desire to start your own business as a computer tech or any field you're good at I highly recommend it being a small business owner is one of the most rewarding things that you'll ever do with your life you really won't regret it with all that said if you want to run a computer business or you already do then check out this video where I show you how to install any driver in Windows this program has saved me so much time working on customer systems you guys have a great day okay

Channel: CyberCPU Tech

Views: 28,477

Keywords: how to make money fast, if i had to start over, if i had to restart my business, make money, work from home, how to make money from home, how to make money, how to start a business, starting a business, starting a business step by step, starting a business without money, starting a business from home, how to start a business without money, fixing computers for money, charging for a service, mobile repair

Id: QlZVF6l6BSg

Length: 20min 34sec (1234 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 05 2022