Offering ict services in addition to full time role

[Liam]

So I'm thinking of starting to offer some ict services to homes/ small businesses in my local area. This will be additional to my full time job initially. Let's not run before I can walk and all that.

 

Services to include:

Pc repair

Virus removal

Network setup both lan and wlan

Cabling

Seo

Web design

 

I am aware of the basics like tax, public liability insurance etc but I was wondering if anyone could offer any advice.

 

Initially, I'm happy to work from my home and drive to people's homes etc so I dont need premisis advice.

 

Where do I start?

What's the best way to advertise myself?

 

Thanks all

[ZeroNeg]

I did self employed IT support for 5 years in my local area. Same as your offering. I found that because you work from home you are always working.

Word of mouth is the main advertising you have. Its so much better than payed for adverts. We have a local chamber of trade and they produce a local directory for local companys thats better than bigger adverts.

You will find it very hard to get public liability as most of the insurance companys will charge you an arm and a leg. Stick to the rules for backing up any pc or laptop before you do anything and never offer no fix no fee cos it will cost you a packet. Computers can sometime take far to long to fix especialy if they are older models.

Get a second mobile for just work use as 2 years after i moved into schools i still get old customers ringing to see if i will do work for them.

I found i had no free time as self employed and only managed about 7 - 10 days a year holiday.

Hope that info help but dont be put off mate.

[Liam]

Did you do this additional to a job, or instead of.

[ZeroNeg]

It was as an addition to another part time job that was am only.

Most people want you at their house after 6pm so i needed something to do every morning then do afternoon appointments to retired people and the rest on a night. Did not see much of the family for those 5 years.

Also make sure you have a good accountant that explanes all the stuff you need to do and can offset.

[Liam]

I work full time now, but who knows what might happen. I guess it's easy to get greedy.

 

I appreciate your help though.

[ZeroNeg]

You have to think that the extra you earn will be tax heavily. Remember you will have to make sure you put enough through your books to make it look like you are being sensible. You cant do it all cash in hand.

On the up side you get to meet so many people, some nice some not so nice and some are just plain strange. The lows are when you have to explain to someone that all the stuff on the dead hard drive is lost and they do not have any backups. Most of the time you spend trying to educate people into not clicking on random stuff.

What ever you decide make sure you set yourself hours and stick to them else you will work non stop.

Ohh yer good luck :-)

[Liam]

I think working in education prepares you for anything. Did you have disclaimers for them to sign

[ZeroNeg]

Yes for some jobs. But getting someone to sign before you do anything is very hard. They dont trust you after you get them to sign a disclamer. Thats why i tried not to use one but some customers need one as they will try anything to not pay. Mostly they pay and it ok.

[mikeyd101]

unemployment office, gave me some great information on a couple of free courses that are run for self employed, and for the accounting side, I believe there run on behalf of hmrc. They were very good courses and helped me alot when i was self employed, there also a good networking source, as lots of people starting out (and need a website etc).

 

The tax stuff was easy enough todo myself saving me an accountant (obviously this will be harder with multiple incomes), They also explained were you can claim back etc.

 

Get an accounting package, I found simple cheap one solar accounts, which was good enough for invoices and tax reports, but I was working more for other businesses that needed to be invoiced.

 

Record time, not only for customers but also for yourself, you can look at time /profit and see if its really worth it.

[mikeyd101]

Yes get longer jobs in writing, web sites etc. These can quickly get out of scope or customers expecting more than you committed to. I've worked for a web development place and there were some pretty interesting project blowups.

[Liam]

The branding, website stuff. Should be a doddle. It's not what it's who, as they say..

 

This is a very useful. I can only give it a try. This all came about from being in pc world on the weekend, and seeing their stupid prices and thought what if.....

 

What did you charge zero?

[ZeroNeg]

Depended on the job. But go to high and no one can afford you. Start lower and when your name gets know slowly push it up. Make sure they are aware of your houly rate at start. You will find they keep looking at the clock and trying to hurrie you along.

[Duranis]

Couple of bits of advice that I have found useful in the past (helping setting up small businesses and working self employed).

 

Use local Facebook/freead groups. Most you will have to pay a small amount to advertise on but there are often ways to work around (look for people that ask about PC help, etc. Get a facebook page setup for the business and use that to get involved in discussions. Ask happy customers to like the page and help spread the word (you would be surprised how many people will do just that if you ask them directly face to face).

 

Be firm in your resolve. I'm quite a soft person and I find it REALLY hard to charge the people for work I do. I have often found myself working for no real gain (and occasionally at a loss) to help someone out who was in a bad situation. I'm not saying that you should never do this (it occasionally helps spread your name about) but do it too often and it will burn you out. Also some people will just completely take the piss. Set your prices, tell them what you will be doing for that price and if they want more make sure that you bill them for it first.

 

Also people will want the impossible, don't be pushed into promising it to them. For example you may often have people asking if they could get it done with X time because they really need it for X. If you already have 5 other jobs ahead of them and you have not had any free time to yourself at all do not give in to them.

 

Regarding pricing do a bit of resource and get pricing for the regular jobs (windows re install, virus removal, etc) and then depending on the price undercut it by 10% or offer something extra that they are not. You wont make friends with the other local businesses this way but it can work (at least as a starting point).

 

Another way to do it is to get friendly with the other local small IT companies and see if you can find a way to work it out between yourselves. I have done this with similar businesses in the past. Got on friendly terms with the competition and it was very useful. Anything I wasn't comfortable dealing with (or didn't have time for) I could send to him and vice versa. Was also useful for that occasion when you need a part quick that you didn't have and for bulk purchasing spares and splitting them. Doing it this way also means that you don't all end up getting in a price dropping war with each other where you all try to undercut the others and all end up working for next to nothing.

 

As already mentioned above make sure you set hours for yourself and stick to them. Having spent over 8 years self employed it completely burnt me out and I had very little time with my family (Spent 9 hours in office, came home, had dinner and spent another 2-3 hours working there before going to bed). Now working in a primary school as the ICT tech on worse money then I was earning when I was 17 and loving every minute of it

Edited November 19, 2014 by Duranis

[Liam]

Wow, thanks for all your help. I just don't know where to start. Do I approach local small business and ask them if I can help with anything, or start small and run a pc repair workshop to build a custom Base. I'm just cautious of time. I already put the hours in now, but as you all know education doesn't pay that well generally.

 

Thanks

[mrnoisy]

If your doing it to earn extra cash, why not look at moving out of education, into the private sector where you can get paid properly ? Then there's no need to have two jobs and burn yourself out.

[Liam]

Ultimately It is about the extra dollar, but the Idea behind it is that I want to expand and be the person who employs rather than employed. Jobs are few and far between these days.. It's not through lack of trying I assure you. I agree that I risk doing too much, but we have to start like that don't we?

[mikeyd101]

That's why I ultimately went self employed, I left my position working for a global solution provider, and every software development position I went for after they were asking for a shopping list of different apis and frameworks. All of them ignored the fact of actually being able to write code and 20+ years experience they were more interest that you checked every api/framework they used, this ended up infuriating me and not want to work for those kind of people. I probably left at excately the wrong time when the market was at its worse, but the opportunity to take a year tax free wage was too much and the window was too small.

 

However I under estimated excately how hard it is to get a business up and running, the amount of networking and advertising it requires to get any attention.

 

Good luck with it, but don't underestimate how hard it is to get going.

[Liam]

I'm aware this won't be easy, and i will have to make some sacrifices. Hard work doesn't bother me, just hope the Mrs feels the same ha