Hopes Up for our Internet Cafe Business in 2010

Tweet

Pin It

If you've been following my blog, you'd know that my partner and I are managing our own business - an internet cafe. We recently had to move everything from Cebu to Manila. It was costly but we managed to ship all our computers to Manila. Construction of our internet cafe is still ongoing here at our home and we're hoping to open our internet cafe by February.

One of the reasons we moved out from our rented place in Cebu (image above) was because it's no longer profitable for us to stay there. Our competition stooped down to charging Php 20 (about $0.50) for 3 hours of internet use/computer rental. We have better computers, better ambiance and better service than they provide so we don't want to compete in a price war with them. So, more customers choose them over us because we charge Php 15 per hour. And that resulted to a huge profit loss for the last 4 months we were open (August to November). Because of a lot of circumstances, we decided to put up the internet cafe here in Manila instead.

We only have 10 client computers and 1 server computer. As much as we wanted to expand our business, we cannot do it right now because we don't have the money to do so. We're hoping that before this year ends, we'd have enough money to add more computers. I wish we could apply for a business grant to help with the expansion but I don't think internet cafe owners like us even have that available to us here in the Philippines. We don't want to apply for a business loan so we'd have to earn that money so we can add more computers.

If you're from the US and you're hoping to get more information on business grants such as business grant opportunities, how to apply and get them, visit National Institute of Small Business Grants website. They're the only online resource dedicated exclusively to daily content on actual and real business grants and other funding options that should help you setup your own business or expand your current one. Check out their blog to read about news on business grant opportunities that you can take advantage of. They also have helpful articles on their site if you're not familiar with business grants yet.

Going back to our internet cafe, we're hoping that 2010 would be a profitable year for us. We'd love to expand and add about 5 to 10 more computers before this year ends so wish us luck!