Setting Up an Internet Cafe in Your Home With A Minimal Capital

Are you an OFW who will be finishing your work contract and will be returning home soon, a retrenched employee, a pensioner,or an entrepreneur who have save a small amount of money and would want to go into a small time business, putting up a small internet cafe in your home will be very ideal for your hard money if you have only a small budget.

This is only for a backyard internet cafe set up in the home, in your vacant lot, in your receiving room or in a vacant garage. You will save your money on renting space. But if you have a vacant lot in the province it will be a big advantage for you.

If you had a wide space for your internet cafe. I recommend 10 or more units of computer. It is because mostly gamers play in groups and they play LAN (local area network games) like DOTA in 5 vs. 5 players or 4 vs.4 set up.

1. How much will be  the starting capital ?  - Let us say for example with my own Internick Cafe?
2. The capital was : 80,000 (eighty thousand pesos ) for 8 computers, cheap? but I recommend more capital than that amount.
3. What are the computers I bought? They are surplus computers I bought from Openpinoy.com you will see if you go their site they sell good second hand computers with 30 days warranty, computer spare parts, as well as branded brand new computers.
4. The PC specification is Intel Pentium 4 2.4Ghz, 512MB video card of 128MB hard disk storage : 80G    
5. If you want to save on electricity consumption, I recommend that you will buy an LCD monitor, open pinoy are selling them also. LCD flat monitor uses less electricity of course surplus ones cost less
6. You will have to purchase also a router ( 4 ports will do ) but I recommend an 8 port router D-link DI-604 was the easiest to set up so that you can share your internet connection.
7. A hub (network switch) with 8 ports will be an additional if your router has only 4 ports.
8. Purchase also LAN cable for your networking. I recommend the branded ones. This cable last longer and you will not have problems with your network disconnection.
9. One unit of printer if possible an All in One Printer ( meaning you can print, photocopy and scan)
10. A DVD writer - if  you will offer CD burning services

 Hardware:

1. 8 units of PC or desktop computer - Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHZ or higher 1 GB memory Video Card 128Mb or higher 80GB of Hard Disk with USB ports in front ( if you are buying in package : keyboard and mouse are already included as freebies)
2. 8 units of LCD flat monitor.Router
3. Hub
4. LAN cable
5. 1 unit of An All in One Printer ( colored and black) recommended Canon or Epson
6. DVD writer - if you will be offering CD burning, an additional income
7. 8 pieces of  headsets
8. 4 pieces of web cams
9. 8 pieces of mouse pads
10. 1 piece usb stick flash driver
11. 1 piece Card reader
12. 1 Electric fans
13. 8 Chairs - recommend purchase durable mono block

• Purchase a licensed Microsoft Home XP operating system - enable you to update and patch hot fixes.
• Purchased a licensed Anti Virus Software such as ESET NOD 32 or you can start with free trial but they will expire in 30 days.
• You can also purchased an Internet Cafe timer (optional), you will need 1 dedicated PC for this set up, ( 1 PC that will act as a server) it will automatically shut down your computer when the time is finished for the renter, that is  the advantage but the disadvantage is you will be spending 1 computer for this purpose, an addition to your electric bill, in my internet cafe, I do it manually I just write in a piece of paper the time the user ends.
• If you don't know how to install programs you better learn it early to save money on overhead expenses, because  there are a lot of troubleshooting especially if your internet business had a lot of customers, and your knowledge in maintaining a computer will be a very valuable resources.    

Software :

1. Windows XP Home or Professional version
2. A good anti Virus
3. Mozilla Firefox
4. Google
5. Yahoo Messenger
6. Microsoft Office 2007 
7. C Cleaner - clean your computer from junk files and its free
8. You tube Downloader - for downloading videos from youtube

Games :     

1.  DOTA (Frozen Throne)
2.  Garena
3.  War rock
4.  Counter Strike Source
5.  Counter Strike Extreme
6.  NBA Live 2010
7.  Crazy Kart
8.  Battle Realms
9.  Yuri's  Revenge
10.  Cabal Online P.H
11.  RAN online

This list will be dependent on your customers preference, you have to uninstall some of this games when your customers are not using it to optimize your computer's memory efficiency.

Like every business, the site or location of your internet cafe business success depends also with location, you will be successful if  your location is near the school, government, business offices and near the street where there are always human traffic.

Our residence is near two schools and my kids are also playing LAN games which our users are also playing. My kids are also DOTA fans and they have tournaments especially during weekends and these contribute to the success of bringing customers to our home internet cafe.

I will post some more tips and guides regarding setting up the networking connection of a home internet cafe. Hope that this post will help you, please comment or click here to let me know of your  inquiries or feedback or use our forum so I can improve my tips and guide in how to make our computer make money and improve our lives.