We run a small Guest House, How do we set up a small Internet Cafe , how do we charge for this and how much?

Answer 1

The simple way would be to have a broardband conection with a few PC's connected to it. Then have people fill in a sheet with their name and arival time then charge them a small fee for the time they use the PC. I have seen this work before but you need a person to administer the system. If you are just using for your guests it should be easy this way.

Answer 2

1) you need to see what the possibilities are concerning internet connections (the faster the better) and the costs. Being a Guest House, maybe you can get a company deal.
2) you need to decide how many PC's you want to place and how much it's going to cost to buy them, have them installed and configured (internet cafes usually have special client PC's and a central server PC where access and security is controlled)
3) based on the given information, you can establish a price for the use of internet, either incorporated in the room price or per use

Answer 3

Firstly find out from your internet service provider how much they charge per hour and how you should go about doing this(eg, each computer have their own modem, or is it a network modem, etc) Then from there you will have an idea of how much you should charge per hour(eg,expense on internet per hour and profit= price per hour) You should however find a way to time each computer and set up a system where you will be able to control the time and usage.I am from South Africa and this is more or less how we would set up a internet cafe.wThe prices here is in rands and the minimum the internet cafe's charge per hour is about R10, which in dollars would be about $1.5, but this all depends on how much the internet costs.First find out how you can use internet affordably and inexpensive.

Answer 4

The best thing is to just get a broadband unlimited connection set up (pipex or zen are apparently the best), a wireless router (netgear, linskys, d-link or belkin), a few pcs with wireless ability, and away you go. As for the charge, it's really up to you. It's usually done by the hour or half hour and the average price I suppose is about £1.50 for an hour? But bearing in mind that you'll only be paying about £30 a month max for your internet connection, it's really up to you how much or how little you charge. If you're wireless you also need to think about what you will do with people who bring their own computers or pda's in - do you charge them or let them have it for free?

Answer 5

I agree with Duel1977 as to the method. For charging you might like to make it 'free' to guests but add a small charge to your daily rate as you might if you installed extra facilities in the room, e.g. hair driers.
For non-guests, charge £2 an hour and make up the extra profit on the refreshments you sell in the cafe.
Above all, cover your braodband costs and write off the cots of the pc's over 3 years.

Answer 6

i don't know the software, but you can get something where you will have no administration problems or even have to be there to collect money,
Basically the user would log on to the Internet but only see a page asking for credit card details in order to buy time, and they wouldn't be able to browse for anything until they have done so.

you need to make sure you lock access to anything else other the the internet, that means, task manager windows explorer, basically no programes other than the internet browser. If you don't do this people can and will screw your PC up, sometimes just for a laugh

Answer 7

Your internet connection coming in would go in to a router, if you live near where the cafe would be then you MAY be able to use off your current connection, you would run your Main line in in to a router, out to your computer, the other port on the router would run to the cafe, you can buy 1000FT of that line at a time, then at the cafe that would be the in line, so another router, and that router off that one line could run 4 computers,

Answer 8

Easy.
Allow for 100% usage and cost that including the gear.
Multiply by the number of access points and tables.
Work out the anticipated profit on your sold products during this period.
The answer might be £5 for an hour per person?

Answer 9

I used to do bed and breakfast and did, for a while, offer guests the use of the computer, but found it open to abuse. You never know what they are downloading for a start. You will be leaving yourself open to viruses also.

The guests moaned about paying £1 for half an hour, so I stopped it.

Answer 10

You need to research this properly,see what the other internet cafes are doing.