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So I’m thinking about doing freelance IT work for some extra cash but I’m not entirely sure what to charge… I’m offering drop off and in home repairs (virus, malware, hardware, etc), Microsoft training and additional training based on what people are looking for, and basic setting up a wireless router in their house - stuff like that. Should I charge hourly? flat rate? I’m trying to gain customers but I also don’t want to work my butt off for not that much. so my question - what do you deem a fair rate for those services and how do you go about doing freelance IT support?

53 Spice ups
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You will get a wide variety of answers on here to that question.

Some will say Charge what you want.
Some will say Charge what your worth.
Some will say Charge what People will Pay.
Some will say Charge what People should pay.

Its going to come down to you and what you want to charge. I would look in the yellow pages and call some other mom and pop shop providers and see what they are charging.

18 Spice ups
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If you “don’t want to work your butt off” skip residential. Setting up a router will turn into 5 hours of hell for the low price of $50.

31 Spice ups
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Couple things that always come up.

  1. The geek squad charges $100 an hour and you have to come to them. Don’t be cheaper than the geek squad.

  2. Why are you wanting to do this? To scratch an itch? How are you going to keep this from interfering with your personal life, and work.

Why not take the same amount of time and spend it getting some certifications, or learning some skills?

These things can increase your base marketable value (what you can “charge” someone for those other 40 hours a week).

When I started I looked at doing this stuff for extra money, but learning VMware/Cisco/Microsoft/Storage in my free time led to double digit salary growth, and multiplying my base salary. In the end Its more lucrative to invest in yourself. Especially when your young and have the energy to spend 80 hours a day doing IT.

30 Spice ups
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I already make a really great salary for my age (I’m 22) with 5 years experience between a large software company and an ivy league university, I just feel like I can make some extra cash on the side instead of playing video games and stuff and then be able to pay off some debts and have a little more fun money - I’m not so much worried about work because it will either be after work or a weekend day when I do these. I have a lot of free time after work that would be nice to fill with something beneficial to me

6 Spice ups
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I stopped charging but I also only do it for certain people now. I may do one job for free and the next job they hand me a $100. When I was charging I charged what I needed to cover my expenses and to pad my pocket some (This was also my first ever experience, I stated that upfront), I was in it to pay bills while going to school, not to get rich. I charged $35 an hour plus travel cost, I offered to order parts with a mark up; my contract gig was considerably more. Once I started working full-time and kept doing side work I charged more because my time was now more precious; eventually I could not give up my spare time to do side work and stopped doing it.

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You should charge more then geek squad, charge hourly to cover unforeseen circumstances.

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For things like virus removal, OS reinstalls, optimizations, hardware installs, etc. just charge a flat rate. The idea is that if you can pick them up, do the work at your house/garage/basement/whatever, you can run multiple scans and cleanups simultaneously. Anything where you have to go out to someone’s house and do setup, scanning, etc, you have to charge hourly. The only problem you will find is that most people have terrible computers and are super cheap. Slow machines means longer time onsite, means more money they have to pay. This is why residential work is pretty terrible.

As far as the rate, you would have to match it up with the area you are in. The closer you are to a large city, the higher the rate tends to be. The further out, the lower it gets. I would say $100/hr is a fairly average rate for computer-related services by companies. Individuals are usually charging a little less, but it all depends on what your target market looks like and how you market yourself.

4 Spice ups
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$30/15 minutes :slight_smile:

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I have two different cost structures: One guy I contract with I do for USD 75/hr, mostly because the work is engaging and remote work almost exclusively - I don’t have to leave the living room.

For everyone else, it’s $200/hr in 15 minute increments - at night it goes to one hour increments, and weekends, holidays, and overnights are $350/hr with a four hour minimum.

It keeps people and companies that are less likely to pay away, and helps my personal bottom line.

8 Spice ups
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The going rate?

Is there anyone doing similar things in your area? Check out what they are charging and charge 5% less.

4 Spice ups
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For many things like router setups, memory upgrades and the like you could easily charge an hourly rate.

But things like virus/malware removal or even basic hardware diagnostics to find the source of a problem this can be an issue. Often times a malware scan can take an hour or more, and most of that time you are doing nothing but waiting. When I have to do things like this, I do it at my office and charge a set fee.

I can work bench multiple (up to 16 systems) at once for diags and long scans and such. So it’s easy to set a price for that type of work.

Maybe for business you can charge for three or four hours of sitting around and waiting, but that won’t fly for home users. Tell someone removing a virus is going to cost them $500 and they’ll say screw that and buy a new computer instead.

I tried to do in-home repairs years ago and gave up. If it’s setting up a printer, configuring a router, installing software or anything that can be done quickly sure. Any problems I just tell them it has to be done at my office. For those that ask I let them know the process can take multiple hours for a scan to finish and if I do it on site I’ll have to charge them for the time.

1 Spice up
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I used to do quite a lot of freelance work just to make some extra money and I agree, some home / residential work really can be Heartbreak Hotel.

That said, they weren’t all bad, maybe 1 in 5 jobs would be a nightmare, take far longer than anticipated, run in to endless complications, and then you’re faced with the issue, as others have pointed out, that you can’t charge a residential customer hundreds because a scan took hours to complete.

For that kind of work I’d recommend having a base set price, and advise the customer up front ‘I charge X for this service, although if it runs into problems we may need to revise it a little’. That way they get a ballpark figure, and aren’t worried about the hours clocking up, but equally won’t baulk if you turn round later and say ‘This has went sideways, I’m going to have to charge a little extra’.

The problem with residential is the sheer volume of unknowns. Sure this can and does happen in a business environment but it’s far more likely in a home where you have god knows what mixture of random hardware, old and new, screwed up networks, malware riddled devices, the list goes on and on. It’s this kind of thing that makes what should be a 10 minute job turn into 4 hours.

Business is somewhat easier, you can either charge an hourly rate, or again have a fixed price for certain services. The difference is they will have a greater commercial understanding of the cost of your time and won’t be shocked if you present them with a bill for a few hundred.

Residential jobs, do them by all means, there’s money to be made certainly, but go into it with your eyes open, you will, on occasion, work very hard for that money.

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Just to cloud things a little, a friend I used to work with would always say ‘If you work on someone’s machine, make sure you do it in their home, so they can see that it actually did take you 8 hours to do and won’t be surprised when you charge them accordingly’.

It’s an argument that does have some merit, but when it comes down to it, do you really want to be sat in some stranger’s house for hours on end waiting on some scan or other to complete, when you could be working on other things in your own home or office?

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I used to do this for friends and colleagues. Most paid me with dinner or Jack Daniel’s for small jobs, cash for anything that took longer than a couple of hours. I never specified an amount, but people were usually pretty reasonable/generous. One gave me £200 for building a PC from parts, which pretty much wiped out any savings he’d made from buying it from Dell or someone…

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When I did side work, I did it only for people I know personally. I charged a flat rate, did not do any onsite work (they brought the machines to me), and I made sure they knew that this work was done in my off-time, and would be done as possible. I’d try to have a quick turnaround, but sometimes my career and life had demands that meant they would wait sometimes 2 weeks (or more) for their repair. I was very clear about all of this before accepting work. Because I did a good job, and significantly cheaper than anyone in our area, many of them were fine with it.

If it was a small task, I would do the work for free. For parts, I always charged them exactly what I paid for the parts. I was able to do this for quite awhile, keep myself busy and entertained (the reason I’m in IT after all is because I love tech).

Recently my career has demanded more time, and as I get older I certainly value my free time a lot more now than some extra money. I found an associate that I could pass my existing clients to, and gave them his contact info.

I still do (very limited) work for a few select people, but I only do it for free now, as a personal favor to them. I honestly just don’t have the time now with my career, and my free time, I’d rather be doing things I enjoy (like playing Destiny!).

Side work can be very rewarding, and you can make some extra spending money, which is always nice, but you should certainly keep the following in mind if you are going to do this:

  1. as mentioned above, you could be using this extra time instead to work on certifications or furthering your education through something like Udemy - keep that in mind as you decide upon your immediate (up to 5 year) goals

  2. I would be cautious about doing work for people you don’t know. Come up with a form or policy that you have them agree to prior to taking on work, detailing exactly how the process will work and what you are accountable for. If you are going to warranty your labor, make sure it is in writing and the details are clearly defined. (Not my fault if you go get another virus the week after I return your machine!).

  3. Consider forming an LLC and getting small business insurance.

  4. Never, ever, ever deal with pirated software. If they don’t have legitimate licensing or reinstall media, stay very far away from that.

  5. Don’t work for free, without explaining what it would have cost. If you are going to do work for free (as I sometimes did) make sure the customer knows the value of your time and what it would have cost them. If you do free work, and don’t do this, then people will begin to expect it, and it will undermine your worth.

  6. Be meticulous about tracking your work and your customers. Google Docs is great for this, you can keep track of things like computer model and serial numbers, etc for follow up work

Best wishes to you in your endeavors fellow Geek

4 Spice ups
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If you’re set on doing this, do not sell yourself short.

  1. Set a ‘bench’ charge. Any service business does this. Meaning that “just for me to drive over, or sit down by your PC, it will cost you this.” It should be at least 25% of your base hourly rate.

  2. Charge mileage. If you’re coming to their house, this is completely reasonable. If you want, set a ‘base charge’ of say $10 for the first 10 miles, then charge a reasonable rate after that. This is good in two ways… you should track mileage and use that as a deduction on your taxes, and you don’t want to pay them to drive to their house.

  3. Charge an hourly rate. I agree with charging a minimum of what Geek Squad does. Remember, you’re providing a service, so charge for it.

  4. Set reasonable hours for service, and don’t be afraid to turn down business. It’s better to turn the customer to someone else because you’re too busy than to not deliver.

3 Spice ups
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If you’re going to do freelance work… I suggest you start an LLC otherwise you leave yourself open for a world of pain in the event someone tries to come after you after you accidentally delete their baby photos or something stupid. At least with an LLC your personal finances are separated from business.

4 Spice ups
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You should take a lance and shove it through their computer and hand it back to them free of charge…

JK

If you have the time and do not feel it is going to interfere with your free time I would say go for it. Do not sell yourself short though because in the end you will end up working harder for less money. You do have to be realistic on some level. If a router install takes way longer than expected, say 4 hours, due to unforeseen complications and you typically charge $100 an hour well you obviously cannot charge the customer $400. I mean you could but I can promise you two things will happen:

  1. This person will never call you to do IT work for them again.

  2. They are going to tell everyone they know never to call you for IT services, which when you are starting out, word of mouth advertising is very important.

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…for the low price of $50…per hour, you mean?

I do $20/hour for family. $25/hour for friends. $50/hour for anyone else. Cash only.

I always show up with an 8gig usb stick in case I need to back up something and leave it with them.

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