Start making money yourself-all you need to set up a cyber cafe

Imagine, it converts every minute of your life into money. Now people are thinking, how can we start an Internet Cafe business? An Internet café may be a great opportunity for you to combine your passions and turn your skills into earning money in an enjoyable and profitable way. Read on.... as we educate you on how to start this lucrative business.

Planning Your Internet Café

Cyber Cafe, is a place that offers customers hi-speed internet access, other computer services and variety of PC games. It deals with internet time that a customer buys and it can be sold per hour or minute and sometimes longer. Your business plan should include the following elements:

• Your business concept: The focus here is on describing your business and the market for your café.
• Market research: Market research is critical, as it describes the nature of the market you are entering into. Identify who your major competitors are, who your target market is, and the preferences and needs of your target market.
• A marketing plan: This should describe how you plan on addressing the needs of your market, how you will communicate with customers, and how you will advertise your café.
• An operations plan: This will describe your operations on a day to day basis. It would include, for example, a timeline, hours the café will be open, and the people and equipment required.
• A financial plan: This would outline how you will finance your business, what your expected costs are, and five-year projections as to your revenue.

Finding Investment Capital

• This is the most difficult part of putting up an Internet Cafe. One mistake, your investment is gone. Never trust your future to salesmen.
• Only listen to those people who are dedicated in setting up an Internet Cafe because they know what are the parts that work and those parts that will only give you a bigger investment but produce same results/profit.
• Remember: Bigger investment means longer to recover.

Finding a Good Location and Choosing a Name

• When you find a potential location, observe the area for a few hours and analyze the foot traffic in the neighborhood. Is it near public transportation or highways? Is there enough parking? 
• Ideal locations for an Internet Cafe are near the church, school, market place or inside the community.
• There should have a 'high foot volume'.
• If you will be renting a place, make sure that it has no water leak on the ceiling because computers are sensitive to this.
• Also, it must be well ventilated if you will not be using air con.

Obtaining the Necessary Licenses and Permits

• Obtain building permits
• Apply for a sales tax permit
• Register your business name with your state government, if necessary

Setting Up the Hardware and Software

• Internet connection (ADSL, Cable etc.), Client computers, Server computer that controls the clients Networking hardware
• For 5 computers or less, a DSL with at least 3Mbps will do
• Ok, table varies. You really need to consider the dimension of your shop when deciding the design of your tables. Smaller place means thinner tables or compress. You can put your CPUs at the top by placing a long flywood. Ask your carpenter about it.
• Check your neighbor Internet Cafes. This will give you an idea what it works and not. Do you need to put drawers for keyboards? Our recommendation is no. Because it will only worn out easily.
• You can put dividers or use your CPUs to serve as dividers.
• Make sure it has at least 3 sockets in every outlet of every cubicle. 1 for CPU, 1 for Monitor and 1 for speaker, or for standby.
• As for the chairs, it will depend to the class of your shop

In the most cases networking hardware is not very expensive, however everything depends on a type of network. If you plan to have wired network type, switch or router, and networking cables will be necessary. If you plan wireless network you will need to have wireless access point or router and wireless network cards for your client computers. Of course, if required, you can make a combination of wired and wireless network.

Preparing to Open the Business

• Install a firewall on your router if it does not already have one to protect your network from worms, viruses and other outside attacks.
• Find a software solution that will protect your computers from viruses such as virus protection software or live CDs.
• Promote your Internet café in the neighborhood through fliers, advertisements in newspapers, word of mouth and especially social media
• Give discounts for selling more login tickets in your Internet café

• Extra-charging for special and additional services

• Allow multi-player games to increase your membership