Placing an ad in the paper

I'm thinking about placing a small ad in my local paper, and advertising myself as a computer tech so I can get some money to live off of. I got an angry call about my student loan this morning...:-/ I'm going to try and offer services that I offered when I was with my last company(where I did PC/laptop repair, data recovery and virus removal)...however I'm not sure if I should buy any extra tools first. For data recovery on laptop hard drives I'll need to buy some adapters. The only thing I'm concerned about, is will I be able to provide proper troubleshooting at someone's house?

Also, virus removal can take an entire day on troublesome machines.
At the last business I had access to plenty of spare hard drives and equipment, whereas, now I've got nothing but screwdrivers and software.

Since I'm living in a small condo, I'll probably be doing all the work on-site. I don't know if it will be alright with the customer to take their hardware to my house if it's a long job. I could lie and call it my "office," I suppose.

I live in florida, does anyone know what a decent charge would be for services? It was $65/hr at my company and $150(fixed fee) for data recovery/$100(fixed fee) for virus removal.

KG

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Comments

boyles23

I would say that an ad really wouldn't be beneficial in the long run, as they are typically expensive and you have to keep renewing them. I would advertise in local yellow pages, in our area in NC you can do it for $40.00 per month. Do what you have to for now to get some business though.

You can have your office at your home and not be lying because you have to start somewhere plus plenty of people work out of there home! I should know, I do it with my computer repair. I would stick close to the going rate in the area and just piece together the tools you can to do the job. If you get offered a job you can't handle because of not having the equipment, then don't charge and recommend another company. If you have a job that will take all day, explain how long it takes to a customer and that you need to take it back to your shop.

Just my .02.

I don't believe in luck but good luck anyways!

KGhaleon

Thanks for the suggestion, I suppose it wouldn't be a bad idea to look at other businesses and see what they do. A local newspaper company I live next to sends papers to residents in my neighborhood, so I just figured they would be a good place to start. I'll look at the yellowpages as an alternative.

I'd still like to just work with a company, but I'll place this ad if I don't get any calls soon.

KG

dtlokee

I would tend to gree a newspaper ad won't get you much in the way of repairs, most people are going to head to the yellowpages when their computer is broken, not try to find that ad in the newspaper they saw. If that is your method for advertising, you may want to advertise proactive measures somone can take to prevent problems, rather than marketing towards repairs. (eg. installing virus software nand service packs/updates)

Hell, I'd bet people would pay for you to advise them on what computer to buy when getting a new one. Most people are so clueless about computers they end up buying the most expensive one they find so their 5yr old can play on sesamestreet.com.