I ran a business on the side, OKC Office Solutions, for extra cash when I was teaching, and to a certain extent I still do it. All my customers sign a contract that states in no uncertain terms I am not responsible for any of their data when doing hardware support or general desktop support (aka spyware, malware, software installations, etc). Rates for general desktop support and trouble shooting was $35 for the service call and $25 an hour on-site, or $15 an hour off-sit (aka my house). So the first hour would usually be $60 with every hour after that being $25. Any data recovery has a similar contract that I had above, with the $35 service call and $50/hour on-site or $25/hour off site. Any critical data recovery, which meant me hooking the drive up to a separate computer and off-loading it to another hard drive or DVD was a $250 flat charge up to 160GB. One time I couldn't get the hard drive to get accessed and I sent it off to another company, where they paid almost $2000 to get it back heh. They should have listened to me when I said they needed a backup system. They have one now. Web page work was a falt $35/hour rate with a $50 consultation. I resold hosting space through a company I knew to be excellent, and did all the management, but didn't make any money from the hosting. Just $35/hour, 1 hour minimum (that means if they get a new phone number, $35 usually unless I liked them heh). I actually started making some really decent money with it while I was teaching (getting off at 3:15 helped alot), and thought about trying to do it full time, but then I started working at OMRF, and I didn't have time for alot of work. I still have ~10 regular clients, but not near as much work as I used to get. Jerrod -----Original Message----- From: Quyen Arana [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 4:52 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: FW: From Slashdot: what do you charge for tech support? ------ Forwarded Message From: Todd Walker <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 15:29:12 -0600 To: Listserv ISG <[log in to unmask]> Subject: From Slashdot: what do you charge for tech support? ------------------- http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/05/02/07/1529243.shtml? tid=98&tid=222&tid=185&tid=4 I'd love to hear the philosophies of OMRF's ISG people on this... ------ End of Forwarded Message