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any one fix computers on the side??

N

NEWYORKJETS000

Golden Member
I have been doing it awhile now fixing viruses for friends and there friends.. thinking about maybe getting some cards made up and putting a ad in the local paper. was wondering what others charge to fix computers. i usually charge 30 bucks to get viruses off. if i was to get some cards made up and start fixing peoples i dont know what would i have to do? could i get into trouble? would i have to write it on my taxes? thanks in advance.
 
You will need a significant amount of business as you will write your start up costs against any income. These include partial use of your home expenses as use for lab, auto expenses - use for business, purchase of equipments such as cables/connectors and diagnostic and utility softwares, portable USB drives, etc. (Be sure to take advantage of such opportunity to get what you need to do the job easily and thoroughly.) You wont probably need to report any profit for awhile. One thing Im not sure about is liability. That is, what if somebody you dont know gets pissed cause they think that you damaged their equipment in some way or worse, F'ed up their data or HDD readability/accessability.
 
its a small town i know most of the people here.. I will ask whats wrong with it before i get started and let them know about losing data if it a problem that might deal with that. Do i need any type of business license to do this? what if i only fix say a computer a week? 30 bucks a week and i report that. is it even worth it?
 
You may or may not need a business license...that's up to your local government.

You DO need to track your business income/expenses and report it for taxable purposes.
 
I'm doing it. Very small town. I think going into this year I'm going to try to really get it going. I've started to get a decent amount of business just by word of mouth and passing out business cards. I put an ad in the local Power Company paper. I usually get calls from that as well. As a side job, I don't think I could really handle too much more business.

Here's about what I've been charging and people find the prices reasonable.

Remove Viruses/Malware/Spyware, install new protection, all windows updates, other general "clean-up" - $65 Flat Rate

By hour labor - $30/hr

New builds I usually charge the cost of the parts plus $100 labor to put it together.
 
You will need a business license and you will need to learn tax code for your state and keep track of it accordingly. Also, anything less than $60 an hour isnt really going to pay the bills.
 
im not really trying to pay the bills with it.. just a little extra money in my pocket.
do you have to have a business bank acct?
 
OP, I do this on the side, for a decent amount of extra change. I live in a city of 150,000 less than an hour North of San Francisco, so there is A TON of competition.

It'll cost you a few grand in parts, which is: Low-end CPUs for EVERY socket from the last five years, a pair of FB-DIMMs, a pair of DDR2, 3x1GB of DDR3, DDR2/3 So-DIMMS and maybe even a 512MB stick of DDR. You'll need a PCIe video card, a PCI video card, believe it or not an AGP card (ALL must have VGA+digital), and both PCI and PCIe SATA+IDE combo controllers. Add a solid 20+4 PSU, PCI/PCIe NICS, and a monitor which has both VGA and DVI inputs. Think of EVERYTHING you could build a system with.

For LGA1156 you'd want: Pentium G6950, 2x1GB DDR3 1333
FORLGA1366 you'd want: Both a P4 and a 45nm Core-2, and 2x1 DDR2

You get the idea.

For charge, I charge $50/Hr, with a 3-hour minimum, which is about average, and I don't do phone tech-support on top of that. I charge the 3-hour minimum for a consultation. If you give free phone support, I hope you live in a land where there's no idiots.

Good Luck!
Daimon

EDIT: OP, I almost forgot: You should think of this as a way to make you extra cash, and not because you help your friends and you like computers. I've lived for computers since my Commodore PET, and I help friends for free, but once you encounter the incredible variety of idiots out there, I hope you'll see them as what they are... stuffed wallets.
 
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OP, I don't really have anything invested in a machine. I mostly do house calls. $35 to come out. Then $30/hr on top of that. It's all labor. Keep track of your mileage if you do this too. Other than that I don't really sell anything other than the occasional build(4 last year). I live in a small town of maybe 8,000 people. So, I don't see this as being my primary job any time soon.
 
It sounds like you just want to expand your side business more and stick with your regular job but not officially start a major PC repair business.

Go here and order some business cards. I have the second one, the blue and green with a Dell monitor and keyboard. They are cheap both in cost and the way they're made but work fine for what you will use them for. Always keep several business cards in your pocket and extras in your car.
http://www.vistaprint.com/premium-b...1&pagesize=24&sort=p_TO!desc&xnav=gnip&xnid=1

Pick up some basic spare parts when they are on sale. Watch the Hot Deals forum.

Keep your income separate from other income.

Good site for people like us. Lot's of good info.
http://www.technibble.com/categories/starting-out/
 
I'm bookmarking that link! Thanks Lanyap. I can relate to the "Not Getting Paid: Beginner Mistakes" article. lol
 
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