Aluminum Cartop Boat Transom Gussets (jakeru's #16)

[jakeru]

Thanks for sharing this job with us. I was wondering how you advertise, if you work out of your home and how you charge your customers? It sounds like you bill by time, Do you ever charge for materials?

I have advertised with various methods, such as word of mouth, a running craigslist advertisement, a web site advertisement, dropping off flyers at local businesses, dropping off business card piles at local businesses and to people who I meet, and once I even set up a booth at a model hobby expo where I not only met people and handed out cards, but I actually brought in a bunch of welding and metal preparation equipment including my vertical wheeled air compressor and my Everlast Super200P, and set up in a a corner booth with 240V service behind a custom arc ray curtain I fabricated, and welded up people's new and broken model airplane, battlebot, etc projects they'd bring in.

I am not doing welding "full time" now like I once was (as I have an entirely different career path in addition to welding, which at this point I have resumed), but I am still doing some of the more specialized welding jobs, for some of my better customers, which are pretty nice to do and to work with. It really does make a difference dealing with good customers. It was a nice challenge and good learning experience to try and solve whatever problem would come my way via the craiglist ad though. With a craigslist ad, you never really can tell what people might ask you to do! (Yes, that means I have some stories, but perhaps the topic of another thread and only if people are interested in my ramblings. )

Oh by the way, I usually charge by the hour/minute and I would charge for any materials which were significant (including any that would need to be arranged ahead of time for me to buy.) I'd need some payment up front for jobs like that. Most of my jobs are with customer supplied parts. For simplicity of billing on most of my jobs, I would include things like common grade filler rod and shielding gas, abraisives, in my hourly rate. I have a shop out of my home which I do the bulk of my work out of, but occasionally did do some jobs at customers job sites (either on my own brought equipment or on theirs.) Mobile was not my preferred mode of operation, however, so I generally don't encourage it, and would only even offer it if it was pretty clearly going to be worth it for both me and for the customer.

[DaveO]

once I even set up a booth at a model hobby expo where I not only met people and handed out cards, but I actually brought in a bunch of welding and metal preparation equipment including my vertical wheeled air compressor and my Everlast Super200P, and set up in a a corner booth with 240V service behind a custom arc ray curtain I fabricated, and welded up people's new and broken model airplane, battlebot, etc projects they'd bring in.

That sounds like a fun (and hopefully profitable) way to spend a day- meeting up with people with the shared interest, hearing their stories and welding up their broken parts. Is it an annual or every-so-often expo? You could imagine people thinking, hey i'll go to the expo, and that welder guy can fix up this part. If you posted pictures of that landing gear rebuild you did some time ago I bet you'd have a line at the door.

Nearby there's an annual event called the Sheep and Wool festival (more interesting than it sounds), and every exhibitor from the 4H-ers to the concession folks to the people selling skeins of wool brought animals or gear on a trailer... I've wondered about how a mobile welding guy would do if he went from tent to tent and offered to fix trailers on the spot, in the parking lot.

PS I think your Craigs List stories would be a blast!