No matter if you are planning to open a totally new Cyber Cafe or to renovate and improve existing business you will need some useful information which will help you avoid many unnecessary mistakes. From our work experience as a technical support for numerous Cyber Cafes in last few years, we know that many owners make typical mistakes when they set up their business. Our intention is to collect and present you useful advice and tips at one place. This tips are not inherently connected to the software which you will use because we want to give you the tips which will be feasible for all Cyber Cafes. You will only need to recognize what is adequate for your needs.

Maintain Successful Cyber Cafe

Your business success depends on numerous factors.
One of them is billing and menaging software that you will or already use. This is certainly essential for your successful business, but not enough by itself to make people want to visit your café. It`s very important to have something that will make you different from other Cyber Cafes but here is what is recommend to offer:

- Between 5 and 30 PC Workstations (not limited by software)
- Snacks, cakes, hot and cold drinks
- Space for people to sit at the tables, sofas and bars

Software

- Test Cafe software
If you still don`t own licence for billing and menaging software test it well before purchase, maybe software can`t give you performances that you want from it.

- Never use Windows 95/98/ME unless you are setting gaming center for kids.
These OS are difficult to secure from breaking by malicious, careless or computer-illiterate customers. There’s very little you can do in terms of centralized administration of users' accounts.

- Have at least a basic set of Office applications.
People will be very upset if they can't open a Word or Excel document. Not to mention PDF files.

- Have at least some basic Imaging applications.
The Imaging application that comes with Windows is very limited in terms of file formats that can open and even some JPEG varieties are not supported. Microsoft Photo Editor which is included in Microsoft Office is a much better substitute. Also, Adobe Photo Deluxe and Paint Shop Pro usually come bundled with hardware, so you don’t have to pay for them, just make them available. Take care to set the right one as a default for .JPG files.

- Have latest versions of major Internet Browsers.
The good view of your Internet connection depends on the browser you’re viewing it through. Many people are used to AOL so much that they’d rather go home than face an unfamiliar computing environment. Major plugins and helpers, such as Flash, ShockWave, Real Player are also important to be installed.

Hardware

- Always try to have the same hardware configuration on all workstations.
This makes maintenance much easier, since you can have one “gold standard” installation saved and later transfer it to each workstation.

- Buy the best monitors you can afford, preferably flat-screen LCD.
Your monitors represent the face of your Internet business. While relatively expensive, flat-screen LCD monitors take up little space and look appealing. You should consider having at least a couple of those visible from the outside. This will give your café a high-tech look. The prices of LCD monitors have come down tremendously. You have to be careful though, some are not of very high quality, so you really need to look at one to decide.

- Have a scanner and don't charge an extra fee.
Scanning and editing images is a lengthy, slow process so you get paid for computer time more than enough to warrant the purchase. Choose a parallel port model for NT installations and a USB model for all others.

-Inkjet Photo printer is ok to have, but not really necessary.
Very few people want to print photos or color pictures in a cafe, mainly because of the price. You have to charge about $1 per page for it to be profitable, due to the high cost of supplies (ink and special inkjet paper) and maintenance. People are not willing to pay that much, especially considering that most home computer systems come with color printers anyway. If you are determined to install an inkjet photo printer anyway, choose one that fits your budget from the Epson Stylus Photo line. Don’t forget to run a test page every few days, so the ink doesn’t dry up and clog the print head’s nozzles.

- Always choose a high-volume laser printer.
This printer will take a lot of beating in the café environment, and even though you may not think it will be used a lot, getting a high-volume model will save you a lot of headaches in the long run. It is also cheaper to run, on the cost-per-page basis, than a home/home office model.

- Have a CD-Recorder and never charge extra fee.
A decent CD-Recorder will cost you, but will greatly improve your café’s appeal, because people will want to take things they downloaded or created on your computers with them. Some will even come specifically to copy CDs. Again, you’ll make more than enough in computer time and blank CD sales (buy in bulk at $0.30, sell at $1 or more).

Internet Services

- Use a well-established and reliable Internet Service Provider, even at a higher cost.
The livelihood of your Cyber Café business depends on your Internet Service. Your ISP may go under without any advance notice, basically leaving you dead in the water. Any kind of new broadband service will take at least 6-8 weeks to get operational, depending more on your local telephone company, rather than the particular provider, and all that time your computer section is just dead space you’re not making a penny.

- The amount of bandwidth you need is purely empirical.
Generally, even a 128Kbps connection will sustain up to a dozen workstations but that depends on many factors such as the performance of your Web Proxy, if you have one, the kind of clientele you entertain, your ISP’s efficiency etc. Your ISP will always be happy to upgrade your level of service if you feel that you have a bottleneck. They can also give you usage statistics on a monthly basis.

Explore all available options for Broadband Service, before you make a choice. Each type of Broadband Internet Service has its pros and cons:

Full T1:

- high bandwidth – 1.544Mbps;
- available where other types of service may not be;
- generally thought of as most reliable and predictable;
- generally can be tied with an SLA (Service Level Agreement), which guarantees uptime and bandwidth availability for extra charge;
- has high installation and monthly service cost
- your installation / equipment costs can be reduced, or even waived if you sign a one-year or two-year agreement.

Fractional T1:

- has all the pros of T1 at lower bandwidth – 64Kbps to 1.544Mbps;
- monthly service cost is proportionally lower;
- “local loop” charge is, unfortunately, the same as with full T1;

Burstable T1:

- best of both worlds, pay-as-you-go bandwidth;
- you generally pay less than half of what you would for Full T1, and get a fixed bandwidth level, say 256Kbps, with more available on-demand;
- if your sustained usage (peaks excluded) over two consecutive months exceeds 256Kbps, you are asked to start paying for the next bandwidth level;
- if later your sustained usage returns to the previous level for at least two months, you get back to the old pricing;

xDSL:

- ADSL, or Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line, which has different upstream (from you to the provider) and downstream (from the provider to you) speeds, is the cheapest, but generally not available to businesses;
- SDSL, or Synchronous Digital Subscriber Line, which has speeds ranging generally from 128Kbps to 2Mbps, is what most Internet Cafés normally use;
- installation and equipment costs are a lot lower than with T1, usually waved with a one-year contract;
- service is practically as reliable as T1, and bandwidth is not subject to fluctuations throughout the day;
- xDSL is not available in all areas, and local telcos, which are sometimes the only option, charge a lot more than competitive providers;

Cable:

- mostly comes at high speeds, up to 2Mbps;
- relatively inexpensive, so that you’d pay about the same for 2Mbps Cable as 256Kbps SDSL;
- generally free to install, with, possibly, a nominal charge for Cable Modem
- not recommended for Internet Cafés in residential neighborhoods, especially with high-rise buildings, because of bandwidth fluctuations throughout the day, slowing down to the point of being unusable during peak hours (6pm to 10pm);
- makes a very good backup option, for the times when main T1 or SDSL service goes down;

Recommendations

- Find the right pricing.
Price for the computer time can be different from place to place. Some arcade gaming centers can be as cheap as $1 an hour, yet other can charge as much as $0.45 a minute for a PC with a regular scanner. Your pricing will have to be decided based on your location and type of audience you have. We suggest you use the simple rule of thumb that will let you find the right price:

Computers should be used, on average, at 30-40% of their capacity. This will take some time for you to figure out. If after few days you notice that the average user spends, let’s say, 20 min at the computer, the right price for you should probably be higher. Use some application to follow average usage counters. Keep in mind that you probably want to collect at least a week’s worth of statistical data before you can put it to use. Also, you should commence this procedure some time after you change the price, due to the simple fact that price change affects average usage time. A couple of iterations like that should ensure that you are close to an optimal pricing. You may also use this technique to find out best prices for different seasons or even weekdays vs. weekends. If your computers are used at less than 50% of their capacity at peak hours, you have too many computers. Expect the computer revenue to be about 20% of your total gross revenue.

- Do not overdo with trying to control everything.
We have seen many places fail because they wanted to have those sophisticated schemes where customers are restricted to some basic applications (Internet Explorer, Netscape) and have to pay for others separately (MS Office, Adobe Photoshop etc. ). Do not do that. People get annoyed, period. You have to make your computers as friendly to the users as possible, in fact people should see an environment very similar to that of at home. Of course you want to make sure to protect critical parts of your system such as registry. Its easy to setup that and other security restrictions using the Windows Administrative Tools or other protection possibillity from timer software you have.

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