looking for ideas for in home computer repair advertising?
 

Any suggestions on local advertising for in home computer repair?
Already did the flyers on the door/car thing with ok response and trying to keep the advertising budget to a minimum. The local flyer ad is already placed.
Anyone think of some good local advertising tecniques?

Do you have a Penny Saver or something equivalent in your area? They are usually cheap and have a broad circulation.

Also, look into renting a billboard. Depending on the location, they aren't as much money as people think.

I'm working on developing an in home pc repair company myself.. Best Buy has their own "Geek Squad" where they charge *minimum* $120 and they pay their employees $7 an hour. We already have word of mouth going for ours. I'm planning on running an ad campaign in the local paper for a month or two. Then its off to writing ebooks on how to make $100,000 a year with your own pc repair business :1orglaugh

Penny Saver ??? You from New Hampshire ?

does your city have a website?

NY :winkwink:

Drive around town sniffing out open routers, proceed to crash their system and then ring the door bell.

Don't do it. I tried it right after I finished getting my MCSE and A+ certs and quit working for Motorola. It's non-stop bullshit from idiot customers. I'd rather flip burgers or clean bathrooms than fix computers for people.

Where are you located???


If you are in socal, hit me on icq

if you want to get a banner made, hit me on icq

word of mouf... i know a guy that did it and only charged if he had to replace hardware and everything else was free. He ran that promo for a few months now he gets flooded with calls.

Already in my area's "penny saver" and business is supporting itself ok. Problem is we were spending too much time advertising and not enough in home repair to turn a decent profit.
I just checked the city's website..no advertising so far as i can tell but great idea to check out tomorrow. thanks.
Incidentally we got the motivation to start up from "geek squad" so funny you should mention them. (what a rip off...lol) we do 29.00 spyware removal and usually end up with decent sales off the calls upgrading systems ect...
We also thought about going into the banner advertising for slow spots since the co-owner is a pretty good toon artist (all hand drawn) but if you check back on all my posts you'll see that's not working out real well....lol
We have alot of digital learning to do before we can start putting put decent banners so were focusing on the advertising end for now. Keep the ideas coming in....

Pay some immigrants 5 bucks an hour to deliver your flyers

I do a lot of business on the side just from word of mouth.

One word of caution. Make sure you have legal documents that the customer can sign in the event they suffer data loss or have a complete melt down you can't fix. The customer will always try to blame you regardless. Thats part of the reason I stick to working with individuals and businesses in a very tight circle.

Insurance can be expensive as well.

good luck

Do something else, at first it may seem alright, but after a while you will get tired of dealing with people's problems. There are 10x better opportunities for bright, young, motivated guys like you.

What profits are being made with those doing pc repair?

Make sure you are incorporated, or a PLLC ASAP.

Make sure you have customers sign a waiver of some sort, or get some kind of insurance, or protection.

Next, find some smaller companies who need that service. Take a moment to think of what kinda companies you would be a good cross reference for..

Stores that only sell equipment
Telco's and cable companies who provide routers, but do not install them.
Small companies overwhelmed with job loads
Consulting companies for businesses who deal with the billing side
Etc, etc.

:pimp

I would hate to do that, I do similar work part time for a ISP and tech place. But word of mouth is about the best advertising you can do.

smart move for this type of business

lol now THAT'S a business plan :thumbsup

To answer your question, our initial charge is 29.00. A typical call is an extremely slow pc. To fix it we usually just have to clear out the startup menu's (msconfig), turn off auto visual settings,auto update and run a virus/spyware scan. Then we run a complete system diagnostic utility (five minutes and it specifies exactly what the system is ie:type of ram,exact processor, driver numbers ect..) Recommend any upgrades needed. end of the 29.00 service.
extra charges are for driver updates, firewall install, hardware upgrades...like for instance directx9.0c which is responsible for running most devices on your computer (dxdiag from the run menu will tell you what version you have.) javascript- sun's big fight with microsoft that left java out of ie...(led to the service pack in my opinion), video drivers, ect. or a laptop that's running 256mb ram (512 runs way faster on a laptop) prices vary for the hardware depending on the system and markup is anywhere from 20% to 500% ex a .10 cap we sell for 5.00 when used in a repair. Modem sells for 20 cost 12 ect..
typically it runs around 150 for a complete system "overhaul"; and that doesent include any profit off of the hardware upgrades.
We also seem to do alot of video card repair and motherboard repair wich usually ends up being blown up capacitors that need replacing due to a very low power supply/demand ratio. NOT worth the effort for the motherboards. IS worth it on the video cards. We also get alot of clogged up fan motors, air flow problems and stupid problems like that. (extra 29.00 cleaning+fan).
We designed and use a checklist sheet/reciept specifying all costs for the customer BEFORE we do the work.
Our number one priority on a call is CUSTOMER satisfaction and i'm happy to say so far it's a 100%.
Here's a tip for whoever reads this: Remember, a 300watt. power supply/amplifier/stereo bought for a cheap price is usually rated pps or "max"..meaning it's not really 300w but more like 120w. 300 w pps means they ran 300 watts rms across it for ten seconds and it didn't blow up.
Look for an rms, peak,or peak to peak ratings. RMS is true. (.707 x rms=peak) (peak is 1/2 of peak to peak) anything else is a joke. For stereo systems also look at the +- ratings,the db ratings and MATCH your speakers as closely as possible. A cheaper MATCHED computer OR stereo system is better than an expensive system that is not. There are good deals out there but you do get what you pay for and knowledge is KEY.