People that have gotten into a break/fix side hustle, where did you get your clients?

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StarSlayerX@reddit

I used to do break fix and consulting during COVID by offering SMB the ability for their workers to work from home. I would help SMB migrate their local files and email to M365, migrating local servers to Azure, building VPN tunnels, and general consulting. I was charging anywhere from $150-$300 an hour.

I had one good client that liked my work and dropped my name to his group of business friends. That how it all got started. I stopped because I was working 70 hours a week. 40 Hours from my day job and another 30 consulting at my peak.

Made enough money in 2 years to pay off my car, my medical loans, and had a little bit left over.

Pro TIp: Residential Breakfix SUCKS! Consulting for Business is where there a lot more profits!

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Excellent-Program333@reddit

100%! Never home users. And never take on dental, medical, or lawyers. Although some have made a niche in that chaos!

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PanaBreton@reddit

What's the problem ? I go full on-premises with them and there's good money

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CommunicationClassic@reddit

Wow that's awesome that you guys work together to eliminate internship positions- really making the world a better place

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StarSlayerX@reddit

Is not about eliminating interns, is about providing optimations and innovations to reduce the need for repetitive manual labor.

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SoulPhoenix@reddit

Yeah don't worry the AI will delete the whole company and then they'll just rehire the interns anyways lmao

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StarSlayerX@reddit

The workflows I built are based off of principal of least privilege and governance. The AI can't delete the whole company because the scopes are restricted to only allow read and modify what is necessary. Also every action the workflow is made is logged and stored for governance.

Only idiots would give AI read/write all to their entire infrastructure.

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binkbankb0nk@reddit

I think you missed his point.

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Frothyleet@reddit

Wow that's awesome that you guys work together to eliminate internship positions-

As demonstrated by the story, those weren't "real" internship positions (if that's such a thing). Those were people being used as un/underpaid labor for mindless data entry and the like. So they could get "experience."

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BatemansChainsaw@reddit

Funny how you think interns can do this work let alone doing it well.

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AS_ITHelp@reddit

My first client was a colleague who I helped with upgrade and she paid even though I don’t her I didn’t want anything and it opened up some door and ideas

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FedUpWithPeople26@reddit

Years ago I started working for a school as the IT guy. A few teachers asked me to do some side work for them so I did. One seemed genuinely shocked that I would charge them for repairing their personal device at their home outside work hours. I got paid but wasn't asked by her again which was fine with me.

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Mental_Beginning_698@reddit

And then before you knew it, you were spending your summers going around signing kids up for the free breakfast program to get more erate money since they won't give you a budget.

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ElectroAddict86@reddit

Yes people are so entitled about that. Our customers ask me stuff about their personal devices all the time. I try to give the least effort as possible lol. Have charged a few hourly but you quickly start getting texts and calls on nights and weekends.

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Library_IT_guy@reddit

We have a local "Facebook Marketplace" for services and goods that can be sold person to person in my town. I'd start there. I'd also phone a few old friends who have asked me to do side gig work for them in the past and see if they still need anything.

But really, I hate doing gig work like this. It's so much stress setting it up, asking questions, quoting parts, etc. I already work 40 hours a week. Even if I was charging $100 an hour, I don't know what I'd do with that money. It's nice to have extra but I already am burned out on IT from my full time job. I already make an extra paycheck each month from my gaming youtube channel, and that's far more fun.

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thebigshoe247@reddit

Buddies friend's dad asked if I would help with the internet at the office. I figured sure, probably just need to reboot a router or something.

Get on site, and it's an empty warehouse/office. I'm like ??? -- no, the issue was the internet doesn't exist, neither does anything else. Fill in the blanks for them.

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Tr1pline@reddit

What did you do for them after?

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valar12@reddit

Jesus breakfix is the worst. I sub other people to do that grind. Look for other msps that don’t perform the work and find some you trust.

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acquiesce88@reddit

Right? Friends asking for help cleaning up a virus on their 8 year old equipment with minimal RAM and IDE hard drive. You think I want to sit with this junk?

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hihcadore@reddit

Then they complain about windows.

Same with clients.

“Windows is so bloated” yea maybe but your 8 yr old laptop with 16gb of ram isn’t helping.

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Due_Peak_6428@reddit

16gb is alot lol

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hihcadore@reddit

Not older ram. It’s the bare minimum. Huntress, ninjarmm, defender, immybot. All the crap your MSP puts on the laptop nukes it too.

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Due_Peak_6428@reddit

16gb of older ram is the same as 16gb of newer ram

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hihcadore@reddit

Cool. I see you know nothing about computers.

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Due_Peak_6428@reddit

You know the funny thing is, these monitoring agents are not impacted by ram as much. Cpu is the main hold back as the CPU scans everything the user is clicking on. Slow ram is certainly not an issue because the amount of data these monitoring agents are only very small snippets of information, not large files. Hope you learnt something today kid

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hihcadore@reddit

Go ahead and look at ninjas documentation. Up to 2GB of ram. Try again bro.

Also fold in office products and 16gb is the bare minimum. But keep trying to no look dumb.

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Due_Peak_6428@reddit

Ok, well you've made your mind up 😂. Slow ram is fine for monitoring agents they don't pass lots of data. I never said 8gb did I? Absolute bullshitter

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hihcadore@reddit

16 “is a lot” is what you said. Now you’re saying 8 isn’t enough lololol thank you for proving me right. It’s sad it took me educating you, for you to get there.

“Monitoring” agents. Sureeeeee I guess all you think they do is “monitor” lol. Again. Go educate yourself and jump off the sysadmin subreddit. Tech support is there you should be.

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Due_Peak_6428@reddit

Just do your own research and it will tell you that you don't need fast ram for monitoring agents because I just did before I put my answer

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hihcadore@reddit

What’s a monitoring agent? What happens when the agent is taking action?

You have no clue what you’re talking about.

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Due_Peak_6428@reddit

So I'm right :)

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Due_Peak_6428@reddit

Monitoring agents are I/O bound (Input/Output bound), not memory bandwidth bound. the speed bottleneck is almost always the time it takes to read files off your storage drive (SSD/HDD) or the time it takes to transmit data across the network to the cloud. Your system memory spends most of its time waiting on the hard drive or network card. Slow DDR4 or base-spec DDR5 RAM will process these security loops just as fast as expensive overclocked gaming RAM.

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hihcadore@reddit

Hey thick skull. This is the original post you replied too. And what I’ve been referring to.

Then they complain about windows.

Same with clients.

“Windows is so bloated” yea maybe but your 8     yr old laptop with 16gb of ram isn’t helping.

As to your “monitoring agents,” you have no idea how computers work or how monitoring agents work. You can try and drag me down into whatever state man you’d like but I’ll say again… when you have multiple agents on a PC 8GB of ram on an old machine isn’t enough.

And to school you further. You’re cherry picking what these agents do. Monitoring, sure the Ram usage is low but again I listed many agents, ninjarmm, defender, immybot where a few I mentioned you’re just skimming over. They’ll crush an old laptop.

So please go back to helpdesk 1

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Due_Peak_6428@reddit

its funny...you told me i dont know computers..but looks like you dont know computers "thick skull"

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hihcadore@reddit

Also. Reread my original post thick skull.

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Due_Peak_6428@reddit

16 is alot for 8 years ago you fucking idiot

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laser50@reddit

Lmao a fat juicy core 2 duo on 2.1 Ghz isn't new?

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Frothyleet@reddit

I would, at a reasonable rate - which, shocker, they don't want to pay $800+ to fix the computer they paid $500 for back in 2018

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purerddt2025@reddit

I hate it and I offer 2 choices. 1) I walk away or 2) I'll help you buy a new one with current specs and change you $$ for transferring the data..

The reason is I charge hourly and you won't like the bill, and you won't be happy when done.

That being said I dumped are break fix home users 10 years ago and will have to be living in my car to do it again.

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FedUpWithPeople26@reddit

It started getting that way for me when malware got a foothold. It was too expensive to have me repair their stuff when they would just click the same links to infected sites as they did before and that's what most of my calls were at the time. I just stopped being available.

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L3TH3RGY@reddit

Oof easily spend two hours of your time just booting clicking ok. Mind you that click on ok will take 30mins to register while the amber led is solid. Exaggerating but ... Man!

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sneakattaxk@reddit

Paid by the hour, if the machine sucks, not my issue, but I'll recommend replacement instead

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StarSlayerX@reddit

I have a friend that networks with MSPs. They subcontract with him to do all datacenter related work for the MSPs.

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Harlowly@reddit

if i just need the extra cash? schools. schools are a revolving door of technicians

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phillymjs@reddit

Back in my MSP days the employees of clients would frequently ask me about fixing issues with their personal machines, and after I did a good job at that some would ask if they could pass my contact info to friends and family in need of my services. I grew quite the stable of clients without even trying.

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jtsa5@reddit

Started by using a local list serv that was specific to my local area. I didn't advertise just posted tips about computer use and being safe on the internet and people reached out to either thank me or ask for assistance. Then it was all word of mouth from there.

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Gavitir@reddit

I'm 30 and have never heard of a listserv. Was this recent? Lol

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Wolfram_And_Hart@reddit

Reddit is a listserv technically.

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jtsa5@reddit

Yep, recent. Listserv's have been around for a very long time and was essentially an email system like a message board. People would join and receive emails as other people posted messages via email. Eventually it was moved to Yahoo Groups which is essentially a listserv and then moved to another platform.

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Pidgeonegg@reddit

In my case it’s really just a Google group that people invite you to when you move in here. Everyone in my community calls it a listserv as well, also never heard of it until I moved here

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Gavitir@reddit

I like it!

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AlgaBob@reddit

Marketing! And by marketing, I am don't mean just buying an ad, but just making sure what you do isn't a secret. Talk about what you do and aim to be famous for whatever that means in your specific town and specialty (break fix is local work).

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blameline@reddit

Get a real estate agent as a client. They love making referrals.

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pakman82@reddit

Some of my worst clients where real-estate. I e. Around 2016 users with 50+ GB mailboxes. On hosted exchange. Absolutely dreadful. But they paid consistently from what I understood.

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blameline@reddit

There is a lot of give & take involved. I had a real estate agent who worked with high-end properties. The guy was a first class jerk, but he never disputed an invoice, and referred me to his clients who needed anything from connecting a mouse to setting up their home wifi. Since they were all higher end clients, they paid well and always paid quickly. This agent also referred me to other agents in town, so the business grew exponentially. I had to shut down as my clients were older and many died, plus I felt my talents were wasted when I'd get a call to simply add paper to a printer.

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BatemansChainsaw@reddit

Especially if their referral ends up in business, so give them their referral bonus!

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Claidheamhmor@reddit

My big break was helping someone at work who knew everybody; she referred dozens of hundreds of people to me, and after that it was word of mouth.

In our area, I also see a few people advertise themselves on our neighbourhood Whatsapp or Telegram groups. That's handy because it implies that the clients are nearby.

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largos7289@reddit

Mostly from people i worked with. Then they tell friend's and they tell friends... But it got to be a full time weekend job so i killed that.

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DotcomBillionaire@reddit

Why would a sysadmin want to revert to user support? Better use of that energy is advancing your sysadmin abilities into higher paying positions.

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bws7037@reddit

I was the desktop guy for a large manufacturing facility and I helped a few people at work after that it was all word of mouth. Since I'm my family's go to IT guy, they've mentioned me to all of their friends, when they start talking about computer problems. Over the years it's paid pretty well, enough to buy a couple cars and a pickup truck out of it.

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slashinhobo1@reddit

Hanging outside of best buy. Steal those geek squad customers.

Jokes aside it always people you know or posting your services somewhere and hoping someone reaches out to you.