<p>I'm 24 years old, an 18-credit hour college student and I'm interested in getting my feet wet as an entrepreneur. Why? First of all, having a demanding college status leaves little to no time for a traditional part-time job to gain additional income, and I'm in need of more income to address even the basic necessities I have pending. More so, it gets frustrating to decline to go out with friends due to the lack of funds. I believe having a way to gain some income without being locked into a concrete schedule of most part-timers, I could address the money concerns and decreasing social life of mine simultaneously.</p>
<p>I think I'm going to start off by doing private computing work, as in repair and troubleshooting. I recognize that there's a substantial market for people who have "contracted" spyware on their PCs that result in decreased performance, decreased bandwidth, and a host of usability issues. I would even offer a little education to these individuals about how to prevent spyware from reoccurring. Unlike most commercial vendors out there, I'm offering home service and affordable (mostly flat) rates.</p>
<p>I want to start with getting some ads out on Craigslist, but I'm not sure how effective CL is for computer services. I know once I acquire a client, they'll be mine for life given my past experiences.</p>
<p>What do you think about this? Any tips, advice? Are there any other ventures I can get into to make some cash?</p>
<p>I know two people that have started businesses doing this. One was laid off from his job and opened a computer store build/selling PCs and doing repair and maintenance. I think that he built up his business and sold if for about $5 million and retired early. The other guy is an older guy in the southeast where there are a lot of other older retirees and he does in-home service and gets a lot of word-of-mouth referrals. He makes enough from his business to live on without working a huge number of hours.</p>
<p>The thing about owning your own business is that you can truly get hooked on it spending huge amounts of time getting it up and running and it can push out other interests. If you build up too much of a client base, how do you balance the demands of a heavy courseload with additional work to make more money or emergency work. If you got a contract from a company that wanted a guaranteed response time, would you quit school?</p>
<p>You have to scope out the competition too. There might be a computer store nearby that provides a similar service (home and carry-in). You would need to build up a toolkit and perhaps get hooked up with Microsoft or a reseller to get distributor costs for software.</p>
<p>My son tutors for his university and loves the job and gets requests for private tutoring through the tutoring office. Private tutoring would pay quite a bit more but he likes the set schedule that he has now and he like not having to deal with negotiations and collections. That said, tutoring has far more variables than repairing computers does because you are dealing with people. People have all sorts of expectations of tutoring and some even use them for cheating.</p>
<p>With computers, there are generally a known set of variables and there’s always the nuclear option of reformatting and reinstalling the operating system when cleaning out viruses and spyware. Hardware has gotten a lot simpler on most systems as almost everything is on the motherboard these days. Connectors are much simpler and swapping out a bad device isn’t really that hard anymore. Spare parts are dirt cheap so you can upgrade a customers machine with an extra gigabyte or two of memory to speed things up for very little money. The customer sees the improvement in performance for a small outlay. You can also provide advice to the customer about best practices in using their computer to avoid problems in the future.</p>
<p>A lot of people are pretty desperate to get their computers back up and running quickly when they have a problem so they won’t have a problem with spending a few bucks for an emergency repair call. It’s like the plumber that charges $80 an hour. If a pipe is broken and it’s leaking water through your floor, you’re going to want it fixed as soon as possible.</p>
<p>Computer repair is time consuming. Sometimes more frustrating than anything else. I would say try to see if you can find another job out there. I’ve done computer repair work before and the one thing I know when it comes to computers is that you must expect the unexpected. What you think may take 1 hr to fix, can easily take up 5 hrs. You’re better off doing something else for extra income.</p>
<p>There are many tax advantages to running your own business over working for someone else. Disadvantages of running your own business include the added paperwork, accounting fees, legal fees, etc.</p>
<p>I use to run a small business when my friend for computer services back in high school. The only problem with this is that most of the time, unless you’re working strictly on campus, you’ll need to be able to travel which does take up some of your time. What you should do is advertise, like any small business, advertisement is key to gaining an clientele. Having a flat labor fee also makes people feel comfortable that they aren’t being ripped off (as opposed to a $$/hr).</p>
<p>It’s good money for small expenses but don’t expect to live off it.</p>
<p>There are also tax DISadvantages to owning your own business, primarily that you have to pay both sides of FICA taxes, not just the employee’s side.</p>
<p>Also, if you’re getting financial aid, be sure to investigate how additional income will affect your aid.</p>
<p>Good luck! I don’t have a drop of entrepreneurial blood in me, and I’m always amazed at people who have the vision and gumption to do this.</p>
<p>“There are also tax DISadvantages to owning your own business, primarily that you have to pay both sides of FICA taxes, not just the employee’s side.”</p>
<p>It depends on how you take your income and on how you look at things. If you take a salary, you have to pay both sides. But if you’re an employee, the employer side reduces your income by their side of FICA anyways so there’s no real difference.</p>
<p>The problem with mechanical turk is that there is no recourse if a vendor screws you over. You lose your ability to take decent hits and they get free service.</p>
<p>Well, I thought about it all and I reasoned that doing some part time I.T. work on the side would be worth the effort.</p>
<p>I started by created by own graphical ads and posting them on Craigslist, informing of the services I offer. Day 1 - no response. Day 2 - I get a big job with a small business doing contract engineering work and another call to do work this evening after my counseling session. I made $225 in one day. Not too bad for a college student.</p>
<p>So, the jury is out. Doing part time IT work to make some additional income is more feasible than getting a part time job and more financially rewarding.</p>
<p>I post ads three times daily and the response is good!</p>