How viable is this?

[TechLovingDad]

I've worked in IT support for over 15 years now, but have recently started to give serious thought to doing it as my own business. To begin with I'd have to do it alongside my day job, but was wondering if you folks thought it was something that was actually viable, or if PC World, Dell, etc had it all sown up?

I'm open to supporting either small businesses or home users.

My dh works in IT (not self employed) and recently found out how much an IT company was charging a family member who has a small business. It was a large amount of money for jobs that dh tells me are quite simple. Since then he has done a lot of these jobs for our relative himself and the things that they were being charged £££ for have not taken much of his time at all.

My dh is not thinking of going self employed but the experience above makes me think that there could be the work available for IT people like yourself if you could undercut the large price tags of the big companies.
That said however I guess the difficulty could be getting yourself known in the first place with advertising and later word of mouth from clients. Like you say though you could build up along side of your day job in the first place.

You could join a networking group - I used to belong to BNI and you need to go to breakfast meetings at about 7am, once a week. It is a long day, and you need to pitch yourself to) other (usually) self employed people.

You can try a couple of meetings for free then it costs a few hundred quid to join.
however if you are any good you will start getting word of mouth referrals and do not need to compromise your day job until you are sure you can make a living being self employed. good luck!

Thank you, both of you. I hadn't thought of the networking group idea.

cupofcoffee, I'm astounded by how much family and friends are charged for basic 10 minute IT tasks. Hence me thinking, "I could do that!".

There is one Mum are our school who offer IT help eg: website set up, database management, computer problems, doing 1-2-1 tutorials one Word, excel and even Google Picassa! She is very busy and advertises in the local paper, school newsletter, local mags like Little Tigers etc.

She seems to make a decent enough living and fits it in around children.

I was also going to suggest advertising in a local booklet type advertiser in your local town.

Also, you could pop into local businesses and ask if they require someone for their IT support. I'm sure you could undercut whoever they are getting it from currently.

luciemule - thanks for reporting my post and getting it removed. what a kind supportive MN's you are. I hope one day, if/when you are returning to work and would like some feedback from people about your site or idea you get it, instead of some negative, moaning minny getting your post removed.

Thank God for more intelligent people on other sites who have give me, as requested, feedback about my site, without any moaning.

Well done, congratulate yourself on your negativity.

I promise I didn't report your post carocaro.

I wasn't being negative; just pre-warning you quickly that someone might remove your ad/post.

I swear - I did not report your post.

I still stick by what I said though; it wasn't really very fair when everyone who has paid for their web ads, could have simply done what you did and asked everyone for feedback on their site for free.

More excellent advice, thank you all.