PC Cleaning business

[ibamars]

Hey all, as you can see this is my first post.

First off thanks for anyone who replies. It will be greatly appreciated.

My question is this. I have been looking to start a business for years. They always say find something you love and it won't seem like a job. Anyways, I love computers. ever since I bought my first one in 1998. I have always played around trying to learn everything I can about them.

I have always done my own upgrades. Virus removals, spyware, disk defrag etc. So now I want to start a business.

The business I want to start is PC Cleaning. When I say PC Cleaning I mean going to a customers house and clean out the guts of their PC.

We all know that dust not cleaned will create heat and heat destroys components.

I have found during lots of research that noone is going after the market of just cleaning a PC. Shops do it, but noone is sending out notices or offers to just offer a PC cleaning. I find strange because I worked on cars for a living before I switched careers and we were always mailing something out. Change your oil, Clean you fuel injectors, change your transmission fluid, etc.... as preventative maintenance.

So there you have it my niche in the market. clean a PC and offer some other things like Disk Defrag, Disk cleanup, Internet Explorer Cache/cookies etc. with the service. If the customer has a problem say with software or networking I would use like a referal to see such and such. I dont want to get into all the other hassles really, because they are hassles.

Curious as to what you guys/gals think. I am currently writing a business plan and putting together all the fun stuff that goes along with it. Permits, Insurance etc.

Well thats it. Let me know. Do you think I have shot or am I out in left field. Speaking to a few of my friends and other people it has been pretty receptive so far. I figured I would ask some of you experts though.

Thanks

Scott

[nonchalant]

Personally I think your market may be with businesses rather than home users.

Just so happens we had a phone cleaner in today to clean our office phones. Seemed a pretty simple job and he was done in no time. I did get to ask him how business is and he said its earnt him a living for the last 30 years. I doubt this would be the case if he had concentrated on generating business with home users rather than businesses, which also tend to offer the other advantage of having multiple PC's in the one location = less travelling (down) time.

[cmonova]

I read about these guys years ago and I beleive they even have placed in the U.S....

Might give you some ideas:
http://www.onsitecleaning.com/news.htm

[smr1619]

I also looked in to that as well and I do offer just a cleaning. I also contacted the above link awhile back http://www.onsitecleaning.com/news.htm and they sent me a bunch of free on info about cleaning.

[14049752]

My initial thought on this was "Why would anyone hire you instead of having a 'full' tech clean the system?" I think that might be a hurdle to overcome, because lots of businesses already have someone they call, and that's probably their mindset.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that it could work. Most businesses I work for only call me when there is a problem, or I contact them to renew licenses or something like that.
The other thought I had was that you could partner up with local cleaning companies to offer some sort of PC cleaning schedule to their existing customers. Their regular cleaning staff isn't qualified to do that, yet it needs to be done. Most of my business clients do have regular cleaners for everything else, and probably would consider having someone in to clean their PC every 5th or 6th time, or whenever..

[Rider]

The car analogy has already been used so I will stick to that. If I take my car in to be serviced I appreciate it when the garage wipes down my engine, I even expect it. If I take it in specifically to have the engine cleaned I expect it to look pristine when I get it back.

I believe that most computer techs probably do a basic cleaning of most machines they work on. If a computer is brought in specifically to be cleaned the client is going to expect a little more than just having the case wiped down and the dust blown out.

You could offer different levels of cleaning. From wiping it down and blowing it out all the way to dismantling it and cleaning the components individually.

I think this might be a tough market especially with today's economy. Most people probably aren't going to worry about cleaning their machines until it causes them problems. You might have better luck with laptops, printers, etc. Things that a typical user couldn't easily do themselves.

[lack10]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Home-Based-Busin...3A5%7C294%3A50

[Y.F.N.C.G.]

Originally Posted by 14049752

My initial thought on this was "Why would anyone hire you instead of having a 'full' tech clean the system?" I think that might be a hurdle to overcome, because lots of businesses already have someone they call, and that's probably their mindset.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that it could work. Most businesses I work for only call me when there is a problem, or I contact them to renew licenses or something like that.
The other thought I had was that you could partner up with local cleaning companies to offer some sort of PC cleaning schedule to their existing customers. Their regular cleaning staff isn't qualified to do that, yet it needs to be done. Most of my business clients do have regular cleaners for everything else, and probably would consider having someone in to clean their PC every 5th or 6th time, or whenever..

Great idea about partnership! If you can partner with a few different office-cleaning services and have them throw up your service as part of one of their packages (giving them a % of your profit of course), you won't even have to worry about doing advertising, the cleaning company will do it all for you!

[MrMille]

hello! helllllooooo! the lights are on but is anyone home?


recession


nobody is going to pay a geek to hoover their bloody pc

[14049752]

recession
nobody is going to pay a geek to hoover their bloody pc

Well, certainly not with that attitude. Recession or not, people understand the value of maintenance to keep their equipment running.
I have a few businesses that I go to at least once a month, even if nothing's wrong. They understand that catching a problem before it happens (as much as I can...) or before it snowballs saves them money in a big way. A couple hundred every month is nothing for a company whose EVERY job is in several thousands of dollars, where EVERY job depends on their equipment to work when they need it to.