Prices for services?

arleitiss

Hello, I am a full time student in college, and well, I am good/okay with computers, so far I've build 4 PC's from start, upgraded many, and each one of those 4 pc's has worked for at least 2 years (it didn't break afterwards, it just got sold as I upgraded to new, had no complaints so I assume it's still alive somewhere )

Anyways, I am asked and called for help quite a lot, by friends, and relative friends to build/fix/upgrade/clean their computers, usually I take them with me home, take apart clean out dust (laptops and PC's, as I know regular general pc user wont clean their pc insides until it jams and fries), I have build a PC for friend from scratch in 24 hours, on tuesday at 3 PM I ordered parts, next day at 10 AM I Went to collect them, and built PC in 1 hour, did pre-installs and so so it was ready to be collected literally at 3 PM. Got paid 80 euro for all that, that's fine but I always struggle with this case:

I do some servicing, on someones computer and they say: How much do I pay you? I say I don't know, so I always end up being paid too low, I seriously have no idea of prices.
So can someone help?

Should I charge people for driving to their home and collecting PC and delivering it back? (fuel costs etc..)

How much would:

• Clean up cost?
• Hardware installation (insides, like gpu or PSU)
• PC taking apart, cleaning dust, re-applying thermal compound, doing virus checks?
• Installing antivirus?
• Installing their wanted software?
• Building PC from scratch (money for parts + how much for work?)
• Cleaning up Laptop insides (harder than PC for me at least)
• Installing peripheral devices?
• Backing up and replacing HDD?

So yeah, can someone please help me? I need to know rough prices for theese. I know there is 1 russian dude in Dublin doing PC repairs, he charges insane, like 50 euro for coming to home and doing PC repairs just for call itself, then rougly 200 Euro for work of cleaning out.

He doesn't get much business though (assumingly because of his sky high prices? )


Also what antivirus do you suggest?
I usually recommend Avast as its' free and in my personal opinion it does the job just perfectly, I never had a single problem with it.

Procrastastudy

Charge 8.65 per hour plus costs - seems fair to me.

Most of that the guys here would do for free. Microsoft Security Essentials for Anti Virus.

If you're going to set up commercially you need to make sure you are properly registered, insured and paying VAT etc.

Eboggles

arleitiss wrote: »

Hello, I am a full time student in college, and well, I am good/okay with computers, so far I've build 4 PC's from start, upgraded many, and each one of those 4 pc's has worked for at least 2 years (it didn't break afterwards, it just got sold as I upgraded to new, had no complaints so I assume it's still alive somewhere )

Anyways, I am asked and called for help quite a lot, by friends, and relative friends to build/fix/upgrade/clean their computers, usually I take them with me home, take apart clean out dust (laptops and PC's, as I know regular general pc user wont clean their pc insides until it jams and fries), I have build a PC for friend from scratch in 24 hours, on tuesday at 3 PM I ordered parts, next day at 10 AM I Went to collect them, and built PC in 1 hour, did pre-installs and so so it was ready to be collected literally at 3 PM. Got paid 80 euro for all that, that's fine but I always struggle with this case:

I do some servicing, on someones computer and they say: How much do I pay you? I say I don't know, so I always end up being paid too low, I seriously have no idea of prices.
So can someone help?

Should I charge people for driving to their home and collecting PC and delivering it back? (fuel costs etc..)

How much would:

• Clean up cost?
• Hardware installation (insides, like gpu or PSU)
• PC taking apart, cleaning dust, re-applying thermal compound, doing virus checks?
• Installing antivirus?
• Installing their wanted software?
• Building PC from scratch (money for parts + how much for work?)
• Cleaning up Laptop insides (harder than PC for me at least)
• Installing peripheral devices?
• Backing up and replacing HDD?

So yeah, can someone please help me? I need to know rough prices for theese. I know there is 1 russian dude in Dublin doing PC repairs, he charges insane, like 50 euro for coming to home and doing PC repairs just for call itself, then rougly 200 Euro for work of cleaning out.

He doesn't get much business though (assumingly because of his sky high prices? )


Also what antivirus do you suggest?
I usually recommend Avast as its' free and in my personal opinion it does the job just perfectly, I never had a single problem with it.

It really depends; if I was in a family member's house whose computer I had built I would just offer to check how it's getting on free of charge, and normally they'd give a few bob for being nice like that.

However, I really enjoy doing it and the fact that I can't really take a job at the moment means I don't even ask for payment.

If you were to be semi-serious about doing something like that, I would keep my prices pretty low for the start and just ask people to get word out that I'll offer my services to them.

Anyway, for the price list, I'd go with this:

• Clean up (actual PC?) Cost of the air (whatever amount you use in €) + €15?
  
• Hardware installation? €20 for GPU, along with HDD and DVD Drive, then €40 for motherboard, CPU and PSU.
  
• I'd put antivirus and software in a €20 bundle.
  
• Building a PC? Well, you could get it build in maybe 2-3 hours normally so I'd charge €50 for the service.
  
• Laptops are a bit of a pain so I could go €40 for just cleaning it up, the amount of screws in it is ridiculous!
  
• Peripherals as in keyboards and mice? Are they not plugin-and-play? Maybe if it was something like a printer I'd charge €15, and maybe €25 if it's some ancient one that I have to spend a while on some dodgy "driver" websites to find one remotely related to the exact model.
  
• HDD Replacing and Backup I could charge quite high for, as you can't put a price on safety :P. For example, if it was something like a terabyte on the drive it could take a while, so you'd want to get your money's worth.

By the way I'd take all those prices excluding fuel.

As for Anti-virus, I'd recommend Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes for the odd scan once a month.

Take this with a pinch of salt, by the way. I could be being way too generous!

arleitiss

And what's required to set up officially? is it okay to work at start un-officially until I can make some kind of sum of cash then register? I know PHP, html, js, mysql, css very very well, should I build a website for this?

arleitiss

lol, nah I meant by cleaning pc actually not insides, but like crappy stuff kids or someone has downloaded, you know how general users tend to click yes to every thing isntall ****ty toolbars etc..

arleitiss

Any more help?

witnessmenow

Procrastastudy wrote: »

Charge 8.65 per hour plus costs - seems fair to me.

Most of that the guys here would do for free. Microsoft Security Essentials for Anti Virus.

If you're going to set up commercially you need to make sure you are properly registered, insured and paying VAT etc.

€8.65 is too little, trust me! For every hour of fixing you will be doing there will be over heads with emails typing out quotes etc, you will have days where things are not going to plan.

I used to look for about €20 and hour when i was fixing consoles (although it was a bit of a different time!) Little 5 min jobs , I would obviously charge less (returning customers probably for free), but anything up to hour would be the same price.

I think probably €15 plus costs an hour would be a good starting point.

A bit of advice i would give is look after returning customers, the overheads with dealing with them will be less hassle if anything is delayed.

arleitiss

witnessmenow wrote: »

€8.65 is too little, trust me! For every hour of fixing you will be doing there will be over heads with emails typing out quotes etc, you will have days where things are not going to plan.

I used to look for about €20 and hour when i was fixing consoles (although it was a bit of a different time!) Little 5 min jobs , I would obviously charge less (returning customers probably for free), but anything up to hour would be the same price.

I think probably €15 plus costs an hour would be a good starting point.

A bit of advice i would give is look after returning customers, the overheads with dealing with them will be less hassle if anything is delayed.

What do you mean returning customers? Like warranty or what?

ED E

When you start asking for money for these things it becomes something more legally I assume, and there's liability there that I wouldnt want.

I'd done work for friends and family before, but I'd always leave it for them to give me a few bob, that way there's obligation to go back when they do something stupid. If its like a cousin or w/e you're pretty safe but when it gets as far as you're brothers mate or something like that it could be troublesome.

Just my take on things anyways.

arleitiss

Well yes I always tell people that they have warranty for me and if something I fixed breaks any time soon I come and fix for free unless they changed or ****ed up something themselves in pc.

arleitiss

do you think these prices are fair?

Eboggles

Those prices seem pretty ok, BTW OP do you hold any qualifications?

It might be worthwhile doing something like the CompTIA A+ or similar, so when people want to know if you're qualified to do the works you don't have to say "Most PC Builders are self taught" or "I picked it up along the way", or similar phrases.

Just a thought.

arleitiss

Eboggles wrote: »

Those prices seem pretty ok, BTW OP do you hold any qualifications?

It might be worthwhile doing something like the CompTIA A+ or similar, so when people want to know if you're qualified to do the works you don't have to say "Most PC Builders are self taught" or "I picked it up along the way", or similar phrases.

Just a thought.

Well I am getting by bachelors degree only in 3 years time ,so unfortunately not yet

Eboggles

arleitiss wrote: »

Well I am getting by bachelors degree only in 3 years time ,so unfortunately not yet

A degree in what? If you don't mind me asking . Computer Science?

arleitiss

Eboggles wrote: »

A degree in what? If you don't mind me asking . Computer Science?

Well yeah it's 4 year course, computer science, though I was building computers when I was in 2nd year in school here which is like 5 years ago. I am 19 now.

witnessmenow

arleitiss wrote: »

What do you mean returning customers? Like warranty or what?

You will get guys coming back with different things, like you might have fixed there pc, but now their laptop is broken. Repeat customers.

arleitiss

witnessmenow wrote: »

You will get guys coming back with different things, like you might have fixed there pc, but now their laptop is broken. Repeat customers.

oh, right.

mawk

10-12 bucks an hour including travel time plus material costs .
thats fine for tax free pocket money

dahamsta

Just for the record, you probably don't need to register for anything and you probably don't need to pay VAT -- basically avoid both until you're making reasonable money.

In particular I'd strongly recommend not registering for VAT until you reach the threshold, especially if your typical customers are going to be consumers. Only businesses require VAT receipts, and VAT returns can be a distraction -- if you don't need to do it, don't do it.

You certainly don't need to register as a business at the outset and it'll save you money staying as a sole trader, because you won't need to do audited accounts. You don't need to register as a sole trader either, you just need to make sure you pay tax on your income. You'll lose out a little here as corporation tax is cheaper, but it also means you don't need to arse around with PAYE/PRSI, and it won't make much of a difference at the start anyway. Focus on the work.

My advice on pricing would be to simply work out your actual costs - travel, tools, consumables, other expenses - add on few quid for your time, add on another few quid because you'll underestimate both, then look at the result and consider how appetising it'll be to end users. Adjust upwards or downwards as necessary. Now go to market, and see what the reaction is: if people are balking at the price, you need to drop it a little; if the phones are hopping it's time to start bumping it up, gradually.

I'm more on the web side of things and I can't remember the price point I started at, but I certainly wouldn't be starting below €10-15/hour, and I'd be leaning towards €15. At least. I generally just bumped up a fiver or a tenner every year or two over the years until business tailed off, then I dropped back to the last increment and stayed there for a while. It's not very scientific and you should be thinking more scientifically, but it worked at the time.

And if you enjoy it, just keep at it, you'll get there. (Persist, persist, persist! The three P's!) And if you're not enjoying it, feck it aside and do something else. Life's too short to do something you don't enjoy.

HTH,
Adam