Cyberus wrote:
Cool mikeymike, glad to hear it. Do you get these jobs through word of mouth, or advertising in the local paper or whatever?
I pay for leaflets to be printed, then deliver them myself. A couple of jobs have come via word of mouth.
Also, from what I gather, you seem pretty good with Windows. Considering I am no expert, but nevertheless know more than 95% of computer users, do you reckon I could do that? I know plenty of people who ask me for help, but I wouldn't ever consider charging them....until now :-D
Hard to say really. It is all down to experience, and whether you think you could stand say a 90% chance of fixing any problem a customer puts in front of you. All of my customers have been happy to pay for the work because I fix the problems completely and they can see that and are happy with it. That's the important part. Good knowledge of PC hardware is quite important. Out of the way knowledge of fixing obscure Windows problems is needed, like what would cause you to suspect a virus or bit of spyware was at work, and what would you check first.
One quick test (a scenario I encountered today) would help you work out whether you are capable of at least some of the work is this - a piece of spyware is being loaded in at startup, but you've checked all the usual places, registry etc where it could be called, but nothing. How would you delete the file? OS is Windows XP. AV nor Ad-aware picks it up (or can't deal with it).
Knowing how to work out what technology hardware is in the machine, as quickly/painlessly/passively as possible is very useful. If a customer asks you if that machine can be upgraded, say the CPU in a Slot 1 Intel box, you have to know the answers. And the answer to the last question isn't "no" :-)
Although a customer recently got hold of a 486/50/8MB RAM box and asked me whether it was upgradable, and I ended up saying pretty much no :-)
Customers like to watch what you're doing as well. A fast typing speed impresses :-)
And reinstalling the OS is a no-no due to time/cost restraints, as well as pissing off the customer with loss of settings/stuff. I sell it as a seperate service to those who need it most.
