Re: freelance sysadmining - other thread went bonkers
hi ya
On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Arnt Karlsen wrote:
dont give up on providing tech support etc... how to get going
and where to start is the trick ..
- its not about $20/month or $50/year...
- to me, its about solving the customer ( with cash ) what they are
looking for, and as time goes on, all the rest of it will get fixed too
- its about watching your time vs $$$$ for yourself and for their budget
and their ability to keep working productively before you made the
changes or fixed their problems
- your free time will go down the drain 100x faster than you want
for very little $$$ if you're doing it for a living to pay bills
> > I was planning on working with whatever distro the customer already
> > had installed. I have a little (granted, very little) experience with
> > RH (7.2), and if/when I get a laptop I'd put Slackware on it for a
> > little while, just to get some experience with it, and I'd also put
> > RH on it just to stay in practice.
>
> ..I advice you stick to one distro for your clients, Debian Sarge should
> be out before you get your feet wet..
use the "distro" that the clients want to use ..
- they have the $$$ in hand
- they already made up their mind by the time they call for help
( it will 90% of the time be redhat ... unfortunately,
( but its their $$$, time and headaches they are trying to solve
- most people will not accept "i want to wipe out your OS"
and replace it with this new thingie-ma-jig
( even if they know its 100% backedup and tested and restored
( from a couple days ago
on the rare occasion, 1% of the time, that you are the only one to do
that admin work, use your fav distro that you know, 100% will work for
what they need, because you have already setup an identical system before
and getting back to square-1 ...
- since redhat is dropping its support, there willb e lots
of crazies looking for help ... since they probably wont
be paying the $1500 extortion to keep chasing the moving
target every 6 months with a new distro/major patches
==
== there is a syadamin market ...
==
>
> ..another way is always keep a Knoppix or your own remaster of it,
> handy, if you weed out enough bloat, you can put it on a credit card
> size cd and use that as a your business card.
always have 10 different ways to boot a system ... and restore their data
- any piece of klunker ... you dont know what they have till
you get there ... its usually NOT what they think it is which
is why they couldnt fix it before
- they might have old 386s that was their mail server..
- they might have dual-xeon-2.0G ... with random crashes
===
=== people that bring their PCs to the local linux-installfests are
=== the ones looking to have problems solved ...
=== good place to get an idea of what people are trying to fix
===
---
--- eng-ga-neers and programmers or degreed folks tend to need less help
--- ( less willing to pay real $$$ for support )
--- debian market is too too small to make a living at
--- though its a great distro for 500 or 1000 servers
---
--- lots of folks making a living at dumb rh support :-)
--
-- if there isn't a local FREE-FREE "place where people/businesses come
-- to get linux installed", than you should start one ...
-- from that group, you will find paying customers after they
-- know you can fix this problem and that and have demo'd that
-- ability and you have the right dress code and hair style
-- ( demo'd the communication skill to be able to work with them )
--
===
=== you also need to be on the first page of google responses when people
=== go looking for the widgets you are attempting to provide
===
=== - friends and family too ... they need to know you charge $$$
=== or will work for a beer/pizza/dinner/etc as opposed to "free"
===
=== - make it official looking invoice, taxID, business name, etc
=== if they give you a check vs $20 - $200 dinner w/ wine
=== ( no opium, no hash, no dope, no smack, .. :-0
=== i wonder if this post will show up when someong googles for
=== "those things"
- do what you like doing, whether your paid or not, and new business will
come on your doorstep with check in hand ( if they know to bring $$$ )
- especially right now, given suse and redhat's business models
have fun
alvin
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