Uhm depends on how you want to do it?
plan to work outside in an office or in your own home? to be honest I would simply crook the license thing work out of home, what the government and SARS dont know wont hurt them or you. That being said I would recommend that you do that to see if people would come to you then it would be wise if you have a big enough market to either A) get an office which then you will need a license and B) declare it to SARS or you will end up in jail. You might be thinking you dont need an office for this type of job, but in reality you do. An office gives the impression of professionalism, just like how I would not trust a dude on the road to cut my hair I would go to a salon or barber shop, yet the dude on the road could be 100 times better than the dude in a salon. That concept applies for all business, appearence is key (though it needs capital, most businesses fail because the owners put too little capital into the business and it dies because the business cant survive long enough for people to get word of it)
When you test driving the service from home (if you choose to do it as i suggested) you should work on a strict cash basis so it wont show up on your portfolio when its time to audit your taxes. As for getting supplies from a distributer im not sure but im pretty sure you can procure brand new in the box items quite cheap on the internet and simply charge your clients the delivery fee. For example they tell you what they want changed or upgraded order it then charge them the item price + shipping + internet fees to procure the item and maybe a service fee for the labour done in getting the item or just add labour charge at the end collectively. You will still be cheaper than most repair stores or upgrade centers this way, and lets be honest if a guy knows these tricks he mostly like is computer literate enough to fix his own computer and wont require your services so dont bother about these people. I dont think you need to have a special license to be able to purchase from a distributor but you have to be a registered retailer and those licenses can be quite expensive and difficult to get (one old guy had a hand built wooden shack as a shop outside one of the hospitals I used to work in, and he ordered his coke and cool drinks directly from coca-cola they even gave a sign and everything. LOL was epically funny when the 18 wheeler truck came to drop of one crate of coke for the shack
, anyways i highly doubt this man had a special license to order from coke). Though ITS A MUST, if you dont have a business registered and you caught (and its easy to get caught competitors research their enemies and report them to eliminate them from the market), you can be blacklisted and face criminal charges. I not sure how long the blacklisting stays for but its a note that will always be on your financial record, can be troublesome when you want to apply for a loan ect with a bank. Though I dont know how the actual method of blacklisting goes about, and whether its in affect for small businesses. For big businesses like factories its a big issue. If you work from home small time like on a odd job level I wouldnt worry about it.
Another idea how you can beat the competition, especially if you starting small is doing call outs charge your cilent the petrol plus a fee for actually coming out to take a look take their computer for like when windows crashes because of unstable hardware or driver conflicts or what ever the case. This would immediately put you one step ahead in the business game, HOWEVER, this is risky. People are misers and cheats they might call you out make you look at the thing then go nevermind and throw you out and its their property thus their right to throw you out and that would be a loss on the customer and on the transport charges. Also say you get big enough you wont be able to handle many clients at the same time you will be overwhelmed and that will make you lose clients as well, it may also slow down your workshop progress in turn also make you lose clients. Just like how we get irritated at pick pay when someone's card is refusing to read we get mad but in reality we only being waiting 5 - 6 minutes. I suggest you think hard about this idea, or simply reserve it for your most loyal customers. You can offer to pimp out people's PCs, unlikely you will succeed here cause if they into pimping their pc its usually their hobby and they will take joy in doing it themselves though seems like an interesting avenue to persue, some people dont really have the time or knowledge to pimp out their PCs, but would like to have a pimped out pc to show of at the next big LAN? (but do people who arent literate enough to do this themselves even go to lans?)
Consider how you going to make your services known to the public. Flyers in postboxes, I wouldnt do cars cause in today's traffic intense world people wont bother taking a flyer or take smile and throw it out the window. At least in a postbox they HAVE to look at it to see if its important mail before they throw it away. Give some kid 50 bucks to put the flyers in the postboxes around your area (hopefully he wont throw the flyers in the bin come back 3 hours later take your R50 and go KFC).
Now im not sure how much of the information of mine is relevant to you. I also dont know if this is the most recent ideals of business for today, its just information I've picked up from some business science students and commerse students I used to know when I was on campus, and some of the business information from some big business folk I know. Hope it helps for pushing you in the right direction to get the 100% correct information and I hope some of my business strategies help, I just simply put my thought processes down if I was going to start that business.
lol is this part time or full time ROFL ? if part time then some of my ideas wont work I forgot about that
) Is this possible?
