Hey Mingle buddies!

I am totally broke now, I live in Nicaragua, I am a computer engineer here, I am unemployed right now, We have a hard situation here and everyday things tend to get worse, I have an expertise, I can make professional pc maintenance with easy and can explain what I am doing to my friends with simple words, I don't do this all the time because I don't have the resources to mount a big advertisement campaign to gain new clients, I only attend my friends and these "clients" are no more than 10 persons top, as I said, I am broke, I have over two years of working for a brother living in Seattle, he has a computer repair workshop and I help him with remote pc maintenance using remote computer software like Team Viewer, He Charges $85 and up, and people pay this easily, however, I don't get a dime for these kind of work, I do this as a hobby, sometimes my broher give some gift for my services, but no cash, I was thinking of opening my own remote pc maintenance company, I already have all I need: Internet at home, enough experience ( I can say more than my brother which have no more than 4 yers of experience), I have the software, I speak English, I have an USA local phone number given me by a MagicJack device attached to my computer, so, what else do I need? -- Obviously CLIENTS, and a way to charge my fees using paypal or something which I don't have right now, but I will some way or another, so, for all you folks in mingle2, please, Give me your personal opinion, it is possibl to earn a few buck from here just using remote pc software? Is it possible to trust people to pay me remotely after giving my service?.

I study pc maintenance everyday to keep up to date, I study English too, I speak Spanish all the time here, I am able to work at any time at any hour, all I need is a decent work, My fees would be half the average price in the USA.

Would you please give some advices in this matter, I need ideas, any constructive comment will be highly apreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Mario Calero

Remote maintenance is a rather limited scope of service to offer. It is something that on the business side is usually offered by the vendor or in house. On the home user side local techs would be more likely perceived as being able offer better service as via remote you not able to do hardware repairs and most average users would be unable to tell you if their problem is hardware or software related. Most would be a bit dissatisfied to pay you to tell them that you cannot fix their problem and it doesn't make good business sense to work for free.
Maybe you could do some repair work locally and low balling your competition by charging significantly less than they do.

I think this is a great thing to do. I was thinking of this myself as well. It is not a problem to get the PC to run remotely, I've done it numerous times as well, the problem is to get paid.

I was thinking that you must offer two stages, evaluation and repair. Evaluation is free, and repair is paid for.

In an evaluation stage you get the access and do your homework, finding the problem and testing the ways that are going to be available for you, such as a possibility of a file transfer, authentications, etc.

Once you're ready, you tell them what it is going to take in dollars, and in time (approximate time of repair). If they agree, then they make a payment and you do it. The key here is that the client doesn't pay for the time. He pays a price for getting back to normal. Guaranteed.

As for you, the trick is to be able to be efficient, so that the evaluation and repair doesn't take more of your hourly rates than paid for.

To charge, the best is to figure out some ways of not being on the books. For instance, there is a company in Germany, that provides a charge service by phone. I.e. your client calls a number and holds certain number of minutes to pay according to a rate you set up. Just an idea.

Best of luck.

I have my own computer programming and repair business on the side of my full time job.
One of the ways I got customers fast was using the 'lawyer' technique. I didn't charge them to find out what was wrong with their system, only to fix it. That has not only worked quite well for me, but my customers bring in MORE customers. I am hoping in the next three or four years to be able to run this business without the need for a full time job as well.
Another thing that I also do, I only charge my customers the price I pay for a part, not what the price tag says on the shelf. I save my customers money, and they make more for me by bringing in more people, plus in my state, as an 'on call' business, I am not required to have a business lisence, just a certification of "competence" in my field.