Anyone seriously tried the white van man gig

[PropertyCrashUK]

With the likes of PC World and others charging higher and higher charges for bog standard PC work have anyone on here seriously had a go at the white van man home/SME white van job?

Is charging £35 per hour, being your own boss, growing a business and working locally better than £60 an hour working away from home, working in a stressful corporate, long commutes, long hours, etc?

Or is there simply no work out there with all the hobbyists doing it for a pack of beer? Or have those who are doing it no longer on here? Or have you tried it and it just did not work out?

I hear mixed reports - some people appear to be doing well out of it, others have packed it in unable to make a living.

Interesting to hear thoughts on this.

[DimPrawn]

If you could win a few public sector contracts for maintaining hardware and software you'd be sorted.

[DS23]

i'd be interested to hear if anyone has managed to transfer their corporate skills into a local approach. getting closer to many smaller businesses and helping them reduce cost through efficiency and planning does intrigue as an option.

[stanhope4]

I have managed to secure a couple of contracts for smaller businesses (10 users or less) mainly providing remote support for thier small infrastructure.

I happened to get the first one by chance, speaking to a owner of a small business at a wedding about his company and he was worried that he didnt have any support for his IT infrastrcture, i offered my services and have been working with them now for 9 months.

i have been speaking to a couple more companies that don't have any IT support as such who are keen, there does seem to be a market for this type of work

[PropertyCrashUK]

Several people who a friend of mine taught IT in colleague have opened firms servicing SMEs and, frankly, they are flourishing.

My friend is amazed as he told me they were basically no good at IT, were no capable of working in the local public sector IT depts let alone going off and doing corporate IT as permies or contractors...

Yet, there they are.

They don't do the long commute, they work locally and probably if they have several SME customers then they are doing well. I suppose the problem is getting started, a problem if you live in a part of the World where there is little SME business - i.e the North of England or Wales which is mostly public sector work - and that now, with the recession deepening, most SMEs must be desperate to cut costs and stay going.

Longer-term, building such a business is surely the way to go?

[PropertyCrashUK]

If you could win a few public sector contracts for maintaining hardware and software you'd be sorted.

I have never met anyone who has won a public sector contract - they make you jump through hoops, have long long lists of excuses to stop you from getting the work... you are not big enough, you did not make enough profit in each of the last 5 years, etc, etc...

...and then the contract goes to a big consultancy or a mate of a boy in the public sector body.

Every business person I know has tales to tell of wasted money and time tendering for public sector work and all swear they will never do so again.

[PropertyCrashUK]

I have managed to secure a couple of contracts for smaller businesses (10 users or less) mainly providing remote support for thier small infrastructure.

I happened to get the first one by chance, speaking to a owner of a small business at a wedding about his company and he was worried that he didnt have any support for his IT infrastrcture, i offered my services and have been working with them now for 9 months.

i have been speaking to a couple more companies that don't have any IT support as such who are keen, there does seem to be a market for this type of work

That is interesting - how much of your time does it take up and how much are you making? I mean, is it more than you thought, or is it enough to make you avoid contracting? Is it enough for you to have a tidy living on?

[stanhope4]

That is interesting - how much of your time does it take up and how much are you making? I mean, is it more than you thought, or is it enough to make you avoid contracting? Is it enough for you to have a tidy living on?

Too be honest it really varies between month to month on how much time it takes up can be as little as 2 hours a month to 50 hours a month depending on the type of support or upgrades the client requires

Money wise, I charge out now at £30 per hour - it was £20 per hour when i started just to get my foot in the door for the first 6 months

I wouldn't say that i could quit contracting for it, but certinaly if i was to get enough support contracts under my belt it maybe worth it

At the moment though, i am happy to run with this alongside my contracting work and is a nice sum of money per month (better than nothing)

I do about 95% of the work remotly and have setup my own online helpdesk for my clients to log tickets too - for $40 it was well worth it

[shashee]

When I was working as an office boy in Dubai, I made some extra money by building websites to small local business. You may find this funny but I got my business waliking around the city centre wearing a sandwich board. It worked I can say.

[the_duderama]

Too be honest it really varies between month to month on how much time it takes up can be as little as 2 hours a month to 50 hours a month depending on the type of support or upgrades the client requires

Money wise, I charge out now at £30 per hour - it was £20 per hour when i started just to get my foot in the door for the first 6 months

I wouldn't say that i could quit contracting for it, but certinaly if i was to get enough support contracts under my belt it maybe worth it

At the moment though, i am happy to run with this alongside my contracting work and is a nice sum of money per month (better than nothing)

I do about 95% of the work remotly and have setup my own online helpdesk for my clients to log tickets too - for $40 it was well worth it

This is really interesting, i used to work for a company that did SME support, but the standard they provided was very poor, mainly due to having 1 salesman for every 2 technical people.

As for there being no market in the north east, well that's bulltulip, i know of at least 4 decent sized companies (between 20-50 people) who do this, and from my expereince they were all bad at what they do. Most of the staff come from internal apprenterships, are paid poorly, have no coperate experience, and all the decent ones end up leaving for the larger consultances in the area (HP/BT/Cap Gemini/Accenture etc).

I also know that the turnover for the company i worked for in 2005 was around of 8 million, for about 40 employees. They never turned a decent profit, although the salesmen where all driving audi RS4's, BMW M3's and merc CLS's.