Opening a PC Shop

That's a lot of overhead you have listed there. How much do you figure you can make a month?

You should just keep working out of your house like you are now, you don't need a shop.

Trust me, you don't want to be in debt 50 grand right at 18........
 
Is a brick and mortar shop really necessary? Most people just drop off their PC with me and I return it the next day. You can probably advertise on Craigslist or similar. As long as you have a vehicle and a workbench you should be able to get along just fine. Why waste money if you already got a steady stream of customers. Word will spread slowly but steadily.

If you get to the point that you will be making enough money to open up a shop, I'd say go for it and see how it pans out. I have no idea how it is in your area but there is plenty of competition around here with BestBuy/Geeksquad.
 
Don't take out a loan. That's silly. I didn't take out one when I started my business. Since I'm in school, I'm not available full time, but I'm confident if I was (and I advertised, which I don't now) I would have enough clients in my small town to support me since I only have 1 other shop to compete with and I beat their pricing my a mile.

Shoot me a message on facebook or something and I'll explain what I did and how things have been working out.
 
So i'm considering opening my own PC Shop in a year (When im 18). I Was hoping to get some opinions from you guys to decide wether or not this would be a good idea.

To start up im thinking a 50k Loan (Over a 5 year period),the average commercial space around here goes for about 30,000 P.A. That'd leave me with 20k for Renovation/Furnishing/Stock.

I've worked out that per month it'd lay out like this;

$1000 - Loan of 50k over 5 Years
$400 - Electricity
$100 - Water...
$100 - Phone And Internet
--
$1600

Then i need money to live on.

This also isnt including Business Insurance as i cant find an average price.

Has anybody here done this? Failed or succesfull?

I've seen plenty of mom and pop computer shops like you described start up and go out of business relatively soon, at least in my area. You're not going to be able to beat the prices of large chain stores like Frys and Best Buy. You'd probably be better off starting up a mobile PC repair type business out of your home if you're serious about owning your own business. Way too much overhead involved when you're talking about an actual shop. Just my two cents...
 
Yeah you guys are right i think i should just continue what im doing and i'll probably just do some advertising and drop of business cards to the local business's (Gotten Business like this before).

To the people who have there own PC repair business,what methods of advertising have you used and how effective was it?
 
Word of mouth is your best friend.

Almost everyone can think back to one critical thing that kick started their business.

Mine was a Church.
I redesigned everything for this Church.
a small file server,
an e-mail server,
4 office PC's
a projector presentation room(with a recent installation of a HTPC).

The word of mouth this church gave me was unbelievable. I landed several other non profit organizations and the friends and families of all the congregation, along with their friends and families and so on....

this was 6 years ago, now I am over whelmed at times with PC work. I am supporting myself and schooling along with my wifes income which is about 50% of our total income. I have never advertised etc.

Not sure if this helps. I will tell you that I had to volunteer for a lot of free work where I did not get paid. This however got my name out there. I also have been truly honest with my clients from day one. I never tell them I will fix their PC. I will tell them I will do everything I can so find a solution to their problems
 
I suggest you get a PC-repair shop to go toolkit. This is what I roll with in my briefcase.

  • Laptop
  • USB Hub
  • External USB DVD drive
  • Blank CD-R's
  • Blank DVD-R's
  • USB - SATA adapter
  • USB - IDE adapter
  • External USB hard-drive
  • USB flash drive
  • Images of every version of Windows since XP
  • USB wireless adapter + with drivers handy
  • Ultimate Boot CD
  • A handful of anti-malware software. i.e. AVAST, Malware Bytes, SpyBot S&D, etc.
  • Can of compressed air for blowing out dirty computers.

When I get a client's PC, I don't always boot the machine. Sometimes I just pull the hard-drive out and plug it into my own machine and run a virus scan. Other times, it's the fastest and easiest way to backup a client's data before a fresh install of Windows. So that's the importance of the SATA and IDE USB adapters.
 
Yes that's one thing i really need to brush up on is my toolkit! Thanks for the list!

Word of mouth is your best friend.

Almost everyone can think back to one critical thing that kick started their business.

Mine was a Church.
I redesigned everything for this Church.
a small file server,
an e-mail server,
4 office PC's
a projector presentation room(with a recent installation of a HTPC).

The word of mouth this church gave me was unbelievable. I landed several other non profit organizations and the friends and families of all the congregation, along with their friends and families and so on....

this was 6 years ago, now I am over whelmed at times with PC work. I am supporting myself and schooling along with my wifes income which is about 50% of our total income. I have never advertised etc.

Not sure if this helps. I will tell you that I had to volunteer for a lot of free work where I did not get paid. This however got my name out there. I also have been truly honest with my clients from day one. I never tell them I will fix their PC. I will tell them I will do everything I can so find a solution to their problems

All i have used is word of mouth and thats how i've gotten most of business but im thinking of advertising in the local paper and possible online (Maybe Even Facebook).

I'm also considering offering online support services,where i connect to a customer pc and fix there computer remotely....
 
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