Anyone seriously tried the white van man gig

[xchaotic]

When dealing with a SME do you set up recurring monthly fees + hourly rates on top for the excess calls or what?
It seems to be the best approach - otherwise you might not see any money at all, I suppose?

What are the most common issues to deal with? I've done a bit of sysadmin work in the past and it seemed to bit a mix of AD work and printer not plugged in, is it still the case?

[Durbs]

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?

Undoubtedly so, and thats the way to go, but, believe me, its HARD.

Tried it myself years back and was forced to go contracting in the end due to inexperience and making stupid rookie business mistakes.

Spent the last few years learning where i'd gone wrong and doing the same albeit on a smaller scale whilst contracting and am now happily in a position where i feel comfortable to take things further, am much wiser and have a good clientbase.

You'll never make any real money working for the man, being your own boss is the way to go (cue 'i earn £xxx/day posts' - but in the end, you are just someone's bitch) but don't go into it starry eyed, its ferkin hard work, takes a while to work out and be prepared to fall flat on your face a few times.

[scott_free]

I was considering doing this, was concerned with SLA's - being a one man band operation, also dealing with those "dumb" users

I guess some investment is needed in the wording of contracts

[portseven]

I do this for a couple of family freinds. Have done one for 10+ years, the other for 3. As they are family friends I only charge £150 a month each, and sometimes they never call me sometimes I am doing loads.

They are both small outfits (less than 20 employees) and most of the support is remote. I pop in now and then if they need.

Have considered taking it further, and I could push it if I wanted, one is part of a wider group of companies who I know the directors of. But doubt I could match my (current) contracting rates.

I think there is a decent market there though, but it does mean dealing with users, who don't like locked down desktops and love fiddling and installing any old software. It's a different mentality in small firms, and that can take some adjusting to.

Speaking of which I need to logon and sort someones desktop now ;-)

[Platypus]

IME home users are hard work and don't want to pay anything. I often recommend they get the local teenager / geek next door to have a look, after telling them what I charge and sensing their shock (£25-£20 p.h. depending on how I feel).

Every now and again you find someone who understands they're paying for a professional service and expects to pay proper money. But these are few and far between. I wouldn't want to try to build a business on them. I only do this kind of work for occasional beer money so haven't tried to make a business out of it, but as others have said, going for local SMEs has got to be the way forward, as they at least understand you have to pay for what you get.

I always wanted (and tried) to get my local accountant to sign up, as I wanted to see the look on HIS face when I charged him £100 p.h. oh that would have been sweet !