Advice for starting a typing business...

[Horsetuna]

So, I need extra money. But I've had so many headaches with juggling two official jobs it was really hard to try and keep two at once. But while the boss at the DC is sympathetic, if there's no work for me to do there is no point of paying me to be there, and I agree

So I decided to try and hire myself out as a typer. I'm not sure what the official term for such a position is however I figure I could make some money as I live near three colleges. I have a friend in the printing business who could help me get people interested too once we figure out how much to charge, etc...

So far, I thought the services can include:

Type up your thing (Not type it FOR you. It must be prewritten)
Run it through basic spellchecker
Give it to you on CD for COD or Money Order, or
email it to you as a RTF or txt file (Half paid upon completion/before sending, rest after)

Rush fee available.


What do you guys think so far? Mid terms just ended so if I get my butt in gear I could have posters up next week.

[Pedersen]

First thoughts: include more formats. Depending on what you have, you could easily include MS word, openoffice.org, and PDF formats, all of which I would prefer to RTF and/or TXT, personally.

Second, rates: This will depend on your typing speed, I think, coupled with the amount you are looking to charge. For instance, if you can only type 1 page/day, you're going to have to charge a pretty penny to make it worthwhile. On the other hand, if you can type up a page/5 minutes, you can charge considerably less.

More on rates: You can charge per quantity, or per time. Quantity is best for your customers, time is best for you. Remember, you're going to be reading the chicken scratch of your customers, and turning that into something everybody can read. The harder it is to read your customer's writing, the longer it takes you to produce the same page of text.

Finally, more services: College students are going to have computers of their own, by and large. They are going to type up their work on the computer first, rather than handwriting it. You might want to offer more than just typing services, such as proofreading, reference checking, etc. Those services will be a lot more costly, though, and take a lot more of your time.

It's a tough field. I hope it works out for you, though.

[Horsetuna]

Well, I dont have MSword, nor a way to make PDFs. Since I only type it up and spellcheck it for you, then they can convert and format it as they want. I have to get others to proofread my own stories, so beyond basic grammar I can't do much for that, or checking references.

Thanks for the advice! I type pretty quickly so that's not a concern. I may or may not offer hardcopy depending on the ease of finding ink for my lil' cannon. But I'm not going to be going as far as Staples. Very basic services, at least at first.

[Pedersen]

In which case, get OpenOffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org/). You can then save as MS Word, and export a PDF with a single click. And learning to use all the tools in there will help you out tremendously in saving time as you type for others.

And do yourself a favor, skip out on offering home made hard copy. Little secret: The piece of your computer that IT hates the absolute most? The printer. Why? Because it's the part that is most likely to break for no apparent reason, and takes the most troubleshooting resources to bring it back to functioning.

If you insist on offering hard copy, then the proper way is to take it to Staples/Kinko's some printing/copy center. You charge for your time to do it, and the copy center's charge for printing, and make sure to cover gas in that charge. That way, the printer isn't your problem when it's broken :)

[Horsetuna]

Heh. I can usually get my printer working. Most of my problems revolve around a lack of ink for the thing! But thank you for the advice! (anyways, if I was to type it up then print int out, they'd just have to type it up again into the computer)