I'll be brutally honest and say.... in my opinion it is impossible to grow an IT repair business and work at home, unless you have a converted garage, etc.
I currently have 9 metres of work-bench space, a scary amount of power sockets, and an ethernet network.... just for my basic repairs. I have the ability to lash about 8-10 machines onto the bench at once to work on, with monitors, keyboard, mouse, lan, etc all sitting in place.
I am in the process of moving premises, where I am likely to double my workbench capacity, and I think this will even grow further in the near future. I'm even creating a smal bench separately to handle laptops (the numbers of them needing basic cleanups is increasing dramatically. This additional bench will cater for up to 8 laptops at once.
Figure this... you have 8 laptops in your shop for repair, is it not more cost effective to put all 8 onto the bench at once, and work your way along them, moving to another each time you would normally be waiting on the original completing? The chances are you will only get £30-40 per machine, so it will take all of them to be completed in a shortish period to make this cost effective.
It is impossble to build new Pc's on your bedroom floor, and makes no sense. It is also no good to set a PC running a dosk check, an AV scan, or any other basic longish job and then just sit there twiddling your thumbs.
I sometimes get repairs in where a Pc is on my bench for a day and a half... how do you cover this at home? Do your other jobs have to wait until this one is completed before you start them? At a measerly average of about £40 for one of these daily menial trasks, it takes a shocking number of them at once to get a decent turnover from our trade. Because a PC takes a day to finish all your cleanups, reformats, etc does not mean you can charge accordingly, usually your actual input is minimal for hours on end. To have another machine to move along the bench to, then another etc is the way forward.
If you are serious about your business, get yourself a little workshop somewhere, with somewhere the clients can park outside for collection/dropoff. You can then line all the jobs up along the bench, and perform numerous tasks all at once, therefore making best use of your time, and getting maximum return on your time.
.
