Firstly, Location. It is imperative that you decide on a strategic location for your Internet Cafe. I recommend an area where a sizable crowd pass by on a regular basis; close to a school or a heavily populated residential area is best. As a pro gamer, I would like to find my preferred cafe close to a school exit so finding it will be easy. Placing it close to some eateries or “carinderia” is helpful (discard this if you plan to serve “real” food to your clients, see bottom for further details). Most pro gamers would want to eat at a place just outside or near their Internet Cafe.

Next, make up your mind as to how many computers you want. My guess would be around 15-20 for beginners. You might also want to put in fewer weighing in your cafe’s space and starting capital. More personal computers may translate to higher income; which can be assured if are the only café owner in a residential/commercial area for a few blocks.

Computer Specifications. Being a gamer myself, I would like to play without the annoyances of lag or slow start up. Every second matters when you play MMORPG’s, especially during guild wars or other vital regular events. I would recommend on going for the most recent specs, to give you an advantage on other internet cafes. High-quality specifications allow you a bit of breathing phase before you would need the next upgrade. Owning a technology receptive business means that in the succeeding months, a brand new hardware would be released to make yours the not-so-new in the line. So, investing on those well performing hardware are really a gain.

On the other hand, if you intend on renting your computers to a market made up of students who only want to type their projects, work on the internet, and the like, you can go for basic hardware.

Please remember that the key in this sort of business is decent service. You must have your clients keep returning for more. Maintain your computers by keeping them up to date with first-class computer specs. At present, having a dual core processor is ideal. Along with respectable RAM (1Gb to 2Gb is best), and a high performance video card of 256Mb-512Mb will make a good rentable computer. You could do without an optical drive and a floppy disc drive (which already appear to be outdated with the launching of USB mass storage devices). You can have a CD/DVD writer combo on the server so CD’s can be regulated and monitored before they are used. In addition, you can also add cd/dvd-burning to your list of services.

Next in line are good cafe softwares. You can choose free cafe management software like HandyCafe. They permit the administrator to take control of the internet cafe via functions only available to the server. You can limit the rental time for each client and regulate the bandwidth when heavy downloading affects the entire network. Cafe management softwares often have billing functions that automatically calculate what you should charge your customers. This is a nice feature to use particularly if you want to manage the cafe by yourself.

Food. Most gamers spend less time eating whenever they go online. It is difficult to break the concentration of a playing pro gamer. However, they are people, and people do eat. Whenever they feel the urge to revitalize, you can offer them quick preparation food like instant noodles. But, if you wish to enhance your Internet Café’s income scheme, you can offer “real” food to your customers. This would mean that they won’t have to go look for a restaurant and leave your cafe, thus remain in it while on their favorite games.

Comfortable chairs. I, for one, spend most of my time in from of my laptop or PC. I want to feel snug and comfy in my seat. Long hours in an uncomfortable chair can be exhausting. Consequently, I believe it vital that next to good service, customer comfort ought to be taken into account.

Games and Wordprocessors. After you have everything ready, you can ask your technician, or if you are capable yourself, install all the games and word processing applications on the computers. You opt for OpenOffice applications in place of Microsoft Office if you have a strict budget. Purchasing the licenses for these applications can be very pricey, particularly their operating systems.

I hope you find my guide to putting up your own Internet Cafe useful.

Please check out my blog, http://www.mobileexpressions.blogspot.com for more information on the subject.

Business Models If you’re pondering over how to start an internet cafe, the most crucial decision you have to make is which business model to adopt. There are numerous choices. The first one is the most conservative model wherein you provide only internet access. Another option is to serve tea, coffee and snacks along with internet connectivity. You could also add computer repairs and maintenance services and even sell computers and computer parts. Many people buy franchises of prevailing internet cafe businesses. When you buy a franchise you get the advantage of a time-tested business model and the know-how behind it, but you’ll have to pay for that edge.

Planning Before starting a cyber cafe, always chalk up a solid business plan. A good business plan should lay down your business goals, ways to achieve them, the obstacles that you may encounter, how to surpass them and financial planning and analysis. If at all possible, talk to at least three different cafe owners about what you plan to do. Try to contact cafe owners from out of town, so there won’t be any competition conflicts, and, if possible, show these experienced owners your business plan. The advice they give could save you thousands of dollars, so don’t hesitate to offer them a really nice dinner or lunch for their time.

Start Up Costs Finance is the driving force in any kind of business. So make sure that you acquire adequate funding before starting your business. How much is enough? It depends on your business model and the services you intend to offer. If you’re planning to provide exclusive services like gaming, social interaction or a remote office, your capital requirement can run into thousands of dollars. There are computers to purchase, broadband connections to book, furniture to be bought and a place to be leased or acquired outright. Include these things in your budget. Also conduct an analysis of monthly expenses, projected future incomes and profits. You can raise finance through private investors, banks and financial institutions that specialize in granting small business loans.

Changing Trends The success of a cyber cafe depends on how you keep up with the latest cutting edge technologies. Trends keep changing and technology keeps improving. Webcams, video conferencing and innovations like VOIP were unheard of before but are widely used these days. So the survival and prosperity of an internet cafe depends on how well you adapt to the changing trends in computers and related technologies.

Advertising Advertise as much as possible to draw attention to your cafe. Distribute your business cards whenever you get the opportunity. You can also sell memberships in terms of internet hours. Put in an ad in your local newspaper and on community websites. Get a listing in the yellow pages.

Last but not the least; apply for a business license to run any cafe. Evaluate all the risks, conduct your market research and adapt to changing technological trends. If you’re serving food, this will mean in inspection by the health department. Health department inspectors regularly refuse licenses until major repairs or improvements are completed. Your business plan needs to be ready for an unexpected $5,000 expense.

Pamella Neely writes about how to start an internet cafe for http://www.OpenAnInternetCafe.com.

Selling food

I cant tell you much about selling food in Internet Cafes. I didn’t sell much food. I had pre-packaged food such as danishes, candy bars, and potato chips. I also sold water and soda. An interesting observation was that Coca Cola and water were the two main sellers. I could stock the fridge with 30 kinds of drinks. At the end of the day, it was the Cola and Water sold. I just sell Water and Coke now. If you have a long term lease, I would suggest opening a food portion to your internet café. Be sure to go to your local health department to find out all the rules in setting up your café. Also, be sure to look on eBay for your kitchen equipment. You can usually find restaurant equipment for 20% of the price on eBay.

Where to buy cheap PCs

We advise business owners to purchase their PC’s online. There are a great line of refurbished IBM PC’s on eBay. Its important that once you start out, you purchase the same PC’s, if possible. You’ll understand why shortly.

How to limit technical work

In the olden days, when we had PC problems we used to remove the PC, reinstall windows and all the software. This would take about 1-2 weeks before the PC was replaced. It was very annoying, it would takes hours of brainless work. Then we came up with the idea of removable hard drives. With this system, you must have all the same PC’s. You have a master copy of the hard drives. Then you use a program called True Image (www.trueimage.com) and clone your master hard drive. The cloning takes about 4 minutes. In 4 minutes you have a new drive with all the settings and no viruses. Your PC’s should also have a removable hard drive slot, you can purchase these online. You should make 5 extra clones of hard drives. If a computer is acting up, you simply take your key, open the hard drive slot, remove the old hard drive, and replace it with the new clone. That’s all. Your up and running. Once the system is set-up, maintaining a network of 10 or 1000 PC’s is effortless.

Start, Build and Run an Internet Cafe Business and/or Internet Kiosk Network, FREE http://www.internetcafewifi.com