Figuring out the worth

[ugt]

I'm sure many of you fix other peoples computers either for a living or as a side job. How do you go about deciding on a price for said work? I just never know what to charge and would like some insight on how you decide how much things are worth. My latest was a computer that somehow got the bootmgr corrupted, I'm still undecided on what to charge.

[admin]

Was it a 5 minute fix ? Say just a fixbootmgr or was it something you had to troubleshoot to find? Did you go to them or did they bring it to you?
I use to charge a travel fee which was a minimum of 5 dollars. Included in my price. Basically saying if it was a 10 mile drive it was 5 dollars. 15 to 25 miles was 20 dollars. Then anything over 25 miles was 35 dollars. These charges were my own so that was the starting point. Did I tell the customer that these charges were included no.
I always charged anything as an hour. 15 mins = 1 hour. 1.25 hours was 2 hours. My hourly rates were 35. Now you ask about the travel charge? A 10 mile drive only takes about 15 mins. So I am charging for my time to travel. Plus it takes care of gas. Where I am 15 miles can take 45 mins and so on.
That is what I use to do.
So basically the travel was 5 dollars the fix took 15 mins which is 35 dollars which means I charged 40.00.

[ugt]

It was a simple fix but annoying to get to it, the computers a tiny netbook type thing. I was hoping I could use my copy of Win 7 but it wouldn't work so I had to find a copy of Win 7 Starter then put it on usb cause of no optical, after that a quick startup repair. I did a few extra things like apply updates and add an antivirus incase that's what caused the problem. They brought it to me.

[admin]

How long did it take?
What do you feel your time was worth?
50 ? 70?

[rrplay]

Not sure about what others would have charged in your area. But from the services you performed a minimum of $50 seems reasonable especially since you performed the extra services and proper admin maintenance practices can be addressed when they pick it up. Because it is likely that they would refer you again which is a very good thing.

[Cella]

I typically wind up getting notebook fixes after people have gotten a repair estimate, and typically I charge them about half of the estimate. The simple FixBoot, FixMBR stuff I will charge $40-50, simply because BB/Staples?etc will get you for $80. I typically throw in 90 days of AV with every fix I do.

[ugt]

Thanks for your responses, the half of BB is what I was doing because those prices seemed ridiculous. Guess I'll keep on doing that, I charged $40 this time so I wasn't off from the norm.

How long did it take?
What do you feel your time was worth?
50 ? 70?

I didn't even time it, I work slow so don't really pay attention to that. As for how much my time is worth, it'd be easier to answer that if I felt what I was doing was work.