Expand Your Tech Services

How did you get involved with the computer technician industry? Did it start out as a hobby, and as your experience grew, you turned it into a business? Perhaps it was never a hobby or an actual interest, but you started doing it just because you were proficient with computers, and you have another hobby that is tech-related, such as digital photography, audio or video production, programming, web development, or graphics design. Regardless of the category of tech experience you offer as a business, have you ever considered opportunities to expand your tech services?

Why Should You Expand Your Tech Services?

Depending on how you busy you are right now, branching out may or may not be a good idea. If you’re already swamped with work, I’d recommend against it. If you can barely handle your workload now, unless you want to completely switch your service offerings, you won’t be doing your existing business client base a favor. However, if you’re not as busy as you would like to be, and you consider yourself proficient, consider opening up new avenues by offering your hobbies or other interests as services to clients. What services could you offer?

There are many opportunities for technicians in fields other than the usual computer repair and diagnostic area. For example, many of your clients trust your knowledge and experience with computers, and they haven’t had any success finding a reputable web developer. You might be the first person they would ask regarding building a website for them, but if you offer it first, they’re that much more likely to ask you about it, so if you feel experienced enough to offer it, don’t hesitate. You might even find the other avenue of work more enjoyable as a break from your existing services, and getting paid for doing something you enjoy doing makes it that much more worthwhile.

What Services Could You Offer?

For many technicians, the amount of experience they have alone in the field makes them an expert consultant. Consider offering consulting services to local businesses, or offering advice to residential users on new computer systems, hardware, and software. Most of us know our way around a plethora of software GUI’s, so you could offer assistance with software you consider yourself proficient with, which might be rather vast. Windows 8 itself offers an opportunity for many technicians, as there are still a lot of consumers upgrading from Windows XP and finding themselves completely lost in Windows 8. Consider offering computer classes at a discount rate from your service calls.

Web development is another avenue many technicians could expand to as well. After all, depending on the project, for many clients, web development could be as simple as putting up a site on a platform such as WordPress, and most technicians should be able to find their way around the interface of WordPress. Of course, sometimes it’s a bit more complex than that, and that’s where debugging code and programming skills come in, but for most of your clients, it probably won’t be that complex.

Do you enjoy putting videos up on your blog or on Youtube often? Depending on your expertise, you could offer your video editing and production skills to local businesses to market their products or services on Youtube, Facebook, and other social networking and business networking sites. If you find a local business wants to advertise but doesn’t have the expertise to put a radio commercial together, if you’re proficient in audio and video production and you can produce high quality commercials, offer to put one together for them.

The list of possibilities is fairly endless. If you’ve fiddled around with Photoshop or other graphics programs since you were a kid, and can produce great logos and graphics, you could offer those services as well. If you’re a photographer, you’ll find web developers and graphics designers are often desperate for just the right picture, and they often don’t have the gadgets or the environment to get that perfect shot. Consider offering your photography for hire, or offering your current photo selections to developers. As I said, the possibilities are nearly endless.

How to Expand Your Tech Services

Before you go about expanding your services, you need to consider your rates. You don’t want to be so low that potential customers look at you and think the job you do must be pretty poor at that rate. On the other hand, if you’re too high, you won’t attract any business at all. Find some reputable businesses who offer similar services, and find out what their rate is. Take into consideration the size of the local community and the potential demand for your services. If there is a metro area within a driving distance of an hour or two, factor that in when considering your rates.

Remember to add your potential offerings to your current advertising media, such as newspaper ads, commercials, flyers, or online marketing media. If you’re not sure exactly how to offer it, take a look at other ads that offer similar services, and work up something similar, but be sure you make it unique. If there’s something specific you offer that you notice the competition doesn’t offer, whether local or distant, be sure to emphasize it.

Final Tips

If you’re already somewhat busy but you really want to branch out into other services, perform a test run. Mention to a few of your clients or customers that you’re offering some new services, and that if they know of anyone who needs them, let you know. That way you can spread the word and ease into it without worrying about handling all the extra calls from people who need your services when you can’t handle the incoming workload, if you had otherwise officially advertised your new offerings.

Do you have any tips on offering other tech related services? Drop a comment below, we’d love to hear about it!