Are there classes online or off for doing PC technical support?

[bupkus]

I'm thinking of starting a local tech support for PCs. I've been doing it for family and friends for years so why not start making money for my time, but I sure could use some advice.

I find myself asking, "do I know enought?" How can I upgrade my skills? How do I charge? How do I advertise? Should I do work onsite or pick up and take to my home? What kind of agreement must I write up before I begin? I suppose there's web sites for everything so maybe there's a how-to for this.

I need to work for myself cause of health issues, I can't work on someone else's schedule entirely.
If you have experience with tech support I would welcome your advice. PM if this thread gets locked for some reason.

Thanks.

 

[amdskip]

There is no way to know it all and tech support is a learning process as you already know. Formally you could obtain the A+ certificate but you probably do not need that. You can work on machines at both their location and yours and charge accordingly. I charge roughly $45/hour which is cheap on site. Of course it is going to be much easier to just pick a machine up to bring it to your place, hook it up to the kvm, and get it doing it's thing and go do something else productive. People often do not want you taking their machine. Another thing is that people will have 56k which makes it hard to update windows, etc.

Word of mouth is the best advertisement. I've also found that business cards work great. I just got a box of those cheap ones in hot deals and it's the best thing I've done. Give people a stack and they'll pass them out for you.

I do helpdesk and resnet work here in the dorms at school and I do computer work on the side when I go home on the weekends. I am always learning something new.