moonlighting

larkspur

any moonlighters out there?

My thought was\is this, I can get my hands on some good equipment. Well instead of selling the servers, switches, routers, for fast cash why not make them work for me!!

First time that concept has been said out loud!!

So I am thinking of starting my own online hosting company. Nothing spectacular, just something to do.

Just wondering if anyone else has made this journey and what thoughts are out there or landmines to avoid?

I am tryign to stay away from software that cost $$$(MS)$$$, use more of the open source approach as much as possible.

Smallguy

I looked into it but was turned off by the risks versus what I may gain potentially

basically in my case the cost of insurance would have made me do a fair amount of "free" work till I made up the money forked out ot cover my butt if anything went wrong.

I was going to do just desktop support repairing PCs and what not but after talking to a few consultants (friends of mine) and knowing things do go wrong and my potential target market versus the hours I would put in a week

I opted out of it

larkspur

basically in my case the cost of insurance would have made me do a fair amount of "free" work till I made up the money forked out ot cover my butt if anything went wrong.

not sure i follow you on that one...

Smallguy

larkspur wrote:

basically in my case the cost of insurance would have made me do a fair amount of "free" work till I made up the money forked out to cover my butt if anything went wrong.

not sure i follow you on that one...

it would have cost me about 2k for insurance incase I lost the data on someone computer or I got sued by a small business

so most tech shops around here charge about 40.00 and hour for labour so to get client's I'd need ot charge less so lets say 30 an hour. at 30.00 and hour it would mean I'd have to work for 67 hours to make up for my insurance then I'd obviously need basic supplies some inventory etc. so I might have to work 80 hours before I've paid off the initial costs of starting my moon lighting biz.


so I decided the initial start up costs and living in a pretty small town just would not be worth it to me

Gogousa

It all depends on what kind of service you are going to provide.
If you are thinking to start a serious business:
First, you would need a redundant internet connection, this means at least two different internet providers (different at the backbone level)
Second, redundant hardware, you are talking about server class hardware.
Third, someone has to be available 24x7 to control everything.
With these 3 conditions, you can charge what everyone else is charging for hosting. Add up everything and you would see that is very difficult to compete with the big ones.
Now, if you downgrade the 3 conditions to something that you can afford, and you can find some clients that are willing to pay less for less service, you are good to go and start something.
I don’t mean to sound negative, but there is very difficult to compete with big companies that have a lot of resources and can afford to charge just a little bit above the cost of operations.
Good luck, and post any news.

larkspur

Yeah I have done abit of research already, it can be intimidating, but i am looking to go small and maybe hit 25k. I am not greedy and don't need to be the next Jobs or Page.

Just a guy with a family trying to advance my career and finacial growth while doing the right things...

thanks for the honest and insightful replies thus far. It is actually starting to increase my motivation.