The 3 wealth building markets

Market #1: The Home Market
Over 1 in 3 homes now has a computer. People are buying them in droves and invariably they are stuck when it comes to using them. Most users feel that they are only using a small percentage of their machines capabilities.

That’s why they call upon a trainer to help them get better value for money out of the machine.

You can expect the home user to want to learn how to use Windows 95/98/2000 which comes bundled with just about every new machine nowadays. They may also have Microsoft Works or some other package that has a similar function (Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Database).

Often they want you to set up a printer, get some software installed or even troubleshoot simple problems. It’s all pretty easy. But if you don’t know the answer to something just tell them. They will still look upon you as the expert.

The biggest misconception is that you won’t be able to learn enough to instruct the typical home user. This is nonsense. With a modicum of effort, you can learn the basics thoroughly. And most home users are only concerned with the basics when they first buy a new machine.

The things they might ask advice on are:
• How to print
• How to use Windows
• How to customise Windows (its easier than you think)
• Producing a letter
• Installing software
• Setting up and using the internet

With effort, you could learn this thoroughly in a week and I mean thoroughly. You need to be motivated to persist when you are having difficulty understanding something. If you give up too easily you’ll get nowhere.

In my opinion, the home user is the best place to start because it gives you a safe environment in which to learn how to train. Also, you will find you learn new things every time you go to an appointment. Your client will not know you are learning on the job and your appointments become your training ground.

You tend to get a lot of business with home users just after Christmas. Computers are bought as presents and people play around with them, not really knowing how to make best use of them. Then it dawns on them that some training might be in order so they can get the best possible use from the machine. After all, it probably cost them over $1,000 and that pesky printer doesn’t work properly, that game keeps crashing and so on.

While home users are a good place to start, they are not where you want to stay. The most lucrative market is going to be with businesses.

Market #2: Small & Medium Sized Companies
By small business I mean either a one-man band or anything up to 5 employees. While this may not be the official definition of a small business it is what I will be using for the sake of this discussion.

Right from my second week I was dealing with small businesses. Mainly one-man bands, they knew only the rudiments of using a computer and were aware of the potential benefits it could offer to their business.

Two key benefits when dealing with a small business are that firstly they can pay a higher hourly rate for your services - when starting out, my $20 per hour charge must have looked ridiculously low when offered to a business. Secondly, you often get much repeat business. One small business hired me over 25 times over 2 years, each session earning me around $96 to $192. Medium sized companies hire me even more!

Most businessmen and women don’t have the time to wade through manuals to learn to use their computers. They rely on “experts” to get them up and running quickly. Often, their needs are simple such as how to use their word processor a little more efficiently or the basics of using a spreadsheet.

This should be the lifeblood of your business for some time or at least until you are ready to tackle larger companies and their bigger paychecks!

Market #3: Large Companies
The larger the company, the more you can charge. With a small business owner he has to pay out of his own pocket. They tend to be more reluctant to fork out a high hourly charge.

However, with a larger company, the person paying for the training does not pay for it out of their own pocket. Also, they are under pressure to get in someone competent to train staff.

One factor they look at to judge competency is the price you charge. If you are charging $20 per hour they are unlikely to hire you. That is a toy-town rate of pay and they would consider you amateurish at best.

Another benefit with a larger company - other than a high hourly charge - is they often book you up by the day or half day or even week! One single contract can lead to a sizeable paycheque.

Furthermore, you often get a lot of repeat business as staff come and go, the companies needs change and they discover the benefit of your expertise.

Having said all this, you first need more experience before you can tackle this market. You will gradually slip into this market as a few larger companies will respond to your advertising and you will be sucked in. It can be a harder market to crack but the rewards are well worthwhile.

Which MUST you first start with?

The answer is a simple one - the home user. This is the easiest market to break into and requires the least experience. Also, it is an excellent place to cement decent computer skills. You will often be presented with all sorts of situations that will challenge you. But the cost of not solving these problems is so small when compared to dealing with business.

Businesses want results and if you don’t deliver they won’t hire you again. But homes users will be happy even if you can’t solve one or two of their problems. They normally have such a large list of things they want to tackle that if you just cope with 60% of them they will think it is money well spent.

However, once you have built up some expertise, I recommend you move onto the small and medium sized business. With more experience you can then tackle the larger companies. If you stick with home users for a long time (like I did) you will not get paid the big money you are worth.

Changing from the home market to the business market seemed daunting to me at first, but in reality you are doing the same thing. The surroundings are different but you are still dealing with people and their computer needs. Honestly, no difference whatsoever. I was tied up psychologically thinking how difficult it must be to “break into” the business market. What a load of rubbish! I did break in and without any conscious effort on my part – it just happened.

Looking back I think I should have been locked up with some of the attitudes I had. Despite this, I still made a whole bunch of money. And I had no mentor to guide me! I envy you.

Today’s Top 10 Hot Opportunities

Money-spinner #1: Training on Microsoft Windows
Nearly everyone in an office uses Windows. They have 95% of the market and so this must be considered an area where you can profit. Forget the Apple Macintosh users, forget the Linux users. Just focus where the money is. And when you start that is where the mass market is. You can always target a niche market later on when you have more experience.

Opportunities in this market include:

• Home users who have just bought their first PC. They haven’t a clue how to use it and need your help

• Home users who have a PC that has been sitting in the corner for the last 12 months. They feel they are not getting value for money from it, which they are not.

• People retraining for work. They are often women who have had children and the consequent layoff. They are re-training to catch up with modern office practice and PC skills.

• Upgrading of company operating systems. If a company has been using Windows 3.1 and then upgrade to Windows 2000, the interface looks different. The managers then decide they need some training to get staff to understand this new look “thing.” You step in and show them its practically the same!

• Enhancing existing Windows user skills. Staff want more advanced skills (like learning how to use Windows Explorer). What is advanced to them is a piece of cake for you. But there is money in them hills.

Money-spinner #2: Training on Microsoft Office
MS Office holds nearly 90% of the office suite market. This is the main set of productivity applications that are used day in day out. There is big money to be had here, but mainly in the business market. To them, time means money and if they can save a whole bundle of it that means a bundle of money for you too.

Opportunities in this market include:

• A company changes their office suite from a competitor (e.g. WordPerfect) over to Microsoft. They want to re-train their staff and familiarise themselves with the new features in this package.

• A company upgrades from previous versions of MS Office and want to get up to speed on the new features added.

• A new member of staff is recruited and they don’t have the necessary skills. You step in and show them how wonderful MS Office is. They love you for it.

• The office staff keep getting stuck on certain parts of MS Office. They make a list and call you in. You go through each step, bang bang bang. There, you’ve finished. But it took less time than they imagined and they booked you for a whole day. You show them some more features that they didn’t know existed. They feel they had excellent value for money because they got more training done than anticipated.

Money-spinner #3: Software development
If you are a bit of a techie this might be a good area to explore. Most companies need systems to manage their information. Once common area is databases. Another might be creating a specific utility to calculate prices for their clients based on a number of input variables.

This area is complex but the rewards are high. Get some solid experience first and then come back to this area with a fresh mind.

Money-spinner #4: Technical Support
Everybody is stuck. Up and down the country, all around the world, people are banging away at their machine with frustration because things are not working as they should be. Or even not being able to achieve one small task using the software that they know can do it.

Support is great because it means they turn to you as their first port of call once the client relationship is establish. The client says, “Call that John Doe. He normally deals with this sort of thing and he knows our systems as well.” Now you may have some knowledge about their systems, you may not. That doesn’t matter. What does matter is the client’s perception of things.

Get in the door here and they will nearly always call you back somewhere down the line.

Money-spinner #5: Website design
In recent years there have been a proliferation of website designers, all competing for a growing market. They can be relatively simple to design, but you do need to have a good eye for it. Alternatively, copy someone else’s design and modify it so it isn’t identical and you don’t infringe copyright law. That’s what I did and some of my websites look rather professional.

Learn this area by designing your own website first and use Dreamweaver, the product of choice for setting up websites.

Money-spinner #6: Networking
Most businesses have networked computers, with the exception of one-man bands. And networks are always going wrong.

The opportunities here are setting up a network, adding new PC’s to the network, altering the configuration of the existing network and troubleshooting problems when the network goes down.

I tell you, if I had a penny for every time a network goes down... It’s a great ongoing money-spinner and many smaller businesses seem to think that if you can set-up a network you can do anything. Consequently, they offer you all sorts of additional work completely unrelated to networking.

Money-spinner #7: Installing peripherals & software
Installations can be a painless affair but sometimes you can hit problems. This can arise because the software you install has a knock-on effect on another bit of software. You end up chasing your tail to finalise the fix. Also, sometimes the hardware is incompatible, is of the wrong sort or just wont fit!

The thought of installing hardware is terrifying for most people. Installing a bit of RAM would normally take me 10 minutes flat. But most don’t want to dare take the computer lid off. They have a fear of computers.

The net result? Money for nothing. Particularly if you have a minimum charge of one hours work for a local client. You’re there for 10 minutes and then you’re off again. But the invoice is for one hour’s work. I used to come away with a nice smug feeling and took the rest of that hour off. Its so nice being paid well for short bits of work.

Money-spinner #8: Supplying parts
I’ve included this opportunity not so much for the profit you can make in supplying parts but for the doors it can open. Supplying parts themselves is unlikely to make you much money unless you do it in volume and on a large scale.

However, if you supply parts on the basis that you will install them, that’s a different story. You send them an “engineer” to install the supplied part at your normal billing rate. You make $5 on the part, $100 on the installation. You’ve also acquired a new client to add to you list, which your going to sell to regularly, right?

Money-spinner #9: Website marketing
What is the point in having a website if nobody goes to it? Many companies spend upwards of $7,000 on a nice looking website but it ends up as an expensive waste.

Get people to that site for them so they can make sales! That’s what its all about, isn’t it? Show them how you can boost the number of daily visitors from 5 a day to 500 to 1000. Use a product like DoorwayPro (www.gettingtraffic.com) to make it easy for you. Sell them the idea that you are an expert in this area.

But before you do this, set up your own website and market it like crazy. Learn the art of getting visitors to come to your site. Use techniques like creating doorway pages, getting other sites to link to you, using pay for position search engines like goto.com, post messages to Newsgroups and forums and put your website at the end of each posting as your signature.

In a nutshell, learn first and then sell this service. It isn’t really all that difficult. I’ve seen Internet marketing gurus speaking at seminars spouting out-of-date rubbish that just doesn’t work anymore. And they get paid a fortune. You can learn what they know with just a little concentrated effort. Don’t believe these self-proclaimed ‘gurus’ are geniuses – they aren’t. They are regular people like you and I who just call themselves experts. You can do the same.

Money-spinner #10: General consultancy
Sometimes a company just wants general advice. They don’t know what they don’t know but they do know they have a problem. With your extensive knowledge of the IT industry, they call you in to pick your brains. You are a resource of knowledge that can help them make sensible decisions over what to do.

Typical consultancy questions include:
• What type of computers should they buy?
• From where?
• What software will do the job?
• How can they get on the net?

The list is endless.

My charge rate for consultancy is generally higher than for the other areas because they are paying for my vast experience. This doesn’t come cheap but the payoff for them is large and so worth it.