My friend started up a internet gaming cafe, he invested about $100,000 total into it. At first it was a small place off buford highway, about 20-30 computers.. The building he had was really small, and there was barely any parking spots. But it would be constantly full, people would park on the grass and across the street. Well, this was when Counter-Strike really first started getting popular (in Beta) and I remember going there and I was on a 2 hour waiting list to play (it was like this all the time, even on a Tuesday @ 2 am). A lot of people were playing Starcraft as well. We would play on multiple servers, all on LAN. There was no internet in the initial beginning, and LAN was really fun. He was making a lot of money in the beginning. So he thought there was a huge demand and went got a bigger place off Jimmy Carter it was in a same shopping complex as Kroger and some other stores, 40-50 computers, big parking lot, very comfortable compared to the first place.. but it was 10 miles away from the old place, and another Internet cafe opened near his old building. He didn't do half as near as good as his old place, a combination of the change in location and the competition. Also, when he first opened a lot of his customers didn't have broadband access & they had really slow computers. There were all on dialup, however as time went by more & more people got broadband and faster computers. Some of those guys who came to play on the fast T1's or the fast computers, no longer came because they had it at their homes now. He did have his core 15-20 regular customers who would come and play all the time, those guys would basically cut profits even. He also had new types of customers (not all for gaming) college/high school kids came in to type up there reports (some customers would actually help them on the report), and they would stay for about 4-5 hours. Some people would come in and video chat/email's/surf. He had a few 16 player / 32 player public servers that were really popular. After a few months of profit. However, he would keep breaking even. In the end, he told me he actually made some money about $10,000 total after all the investments(mainly because of those first few months, he would make at least $1000 nightly) and decided to buy a Bruster's Icecream and close the place down. The other internet cafe competition I hear is doing really well right now, I hear they are banking in the cash.. I don't know about the story from the other side, but you should get some advice from that owner.
Facebook
Twitter