Help with starting a new business!

It's likely that you would install Windows. Most of the issues with this is that most of your customers need a lot of support. Since there is no money in the hardware you have to be sure they understand that you provide this much for that much and your rates are this much for that much time, etc.

Now the fun begins. When you find a cranky machine and you turn it on only to find files vanishing will you be ready for the small lawsuit?

Bob

Best thing is to see what companies are already doing it that are successful at it. Lot's of times you can simply back-engineer things and you don't have to stumble and fumble in the dark.

Starting a small business is actually pretty hard. Remember to have a TON of determination!!

Two good ideas for you:

If you're going to sell online (which is a no-brainer for a computer related business) then you will need a great website that really sells. One key to having a great site is having a great website hosting compnay.

For a small online business:

http://www.godaddy.com

For an ecommerce related business:

http://www.valueweb.com

For dedicated servers:

http://www.hostmysite.com

Also - to get the word out on your products and services, I have had some success using Google AdWords - keyword based advertising that you pay for only when someone clicks on your ad. You can find the details and sign up here:

https://adwords.google.com/select/Login?sourceid=awo&subid=ww-en-et-ads-r4_f_text&hl=en_us

Good luck and success in your new venture!

I too am starting a business. I have signed up with a number of company website for free information. A company at www.innoventum.com has sent me some great information to date. You may want to sign up as well.

Chase

A resource for starting a small business is the U.S. Small Business Adminstration at www.sba.gov. Unfortunately, I haven't seen a great start up kit on the market for helping small businesses. Dos anyone have any ideas?

Hope this helps. Chase

We have been in the buiss since 01 and Dell (among others) was kind enough to run a lot of the competition out of business for us, but it is still a very flooded market. Largest cost will be support. You have the option of outsourcing, but you will find people will be upset by this. They go to a small business for small business values. When forwarded to generic support, they act as if they were let down. We staff in-house support and use the outsourcing warranties to lower the expenses. In other words we deal with them for the customer. But that is a costly option as you need staff + service that is meant to replace staff.

Best advice I have is to start local. Word of mouth and easy access to the PCs will lower costs. Once you start shipping and dealing with remote service it gets costly. Especially when you are at that awkward groth stage when you need to have enough people on staff to handle traffic surges, but are not doing consistent traffic. Basically paying people the majority of the time for nothing.

GL!