hey champ, chin up mate, it will work out if you want it to work out
(please note, i am not trained in this industry in any way, just self taught) but i do it as a hobby and have done a few paying jobs for customers and done quite well from them, i do however own and operate a plastering (drywall) business,
so my advice to you, DONT work for peanuts, figure out an hrly rate that you MUST get to pay the bills and give you a profit, NOT just a wage, you need to make a wage AND a profit, even if its just a few $$ a hr above your wage,
so work out your shop rent, power, gas, insurance, water (whatever it costs to keep the shop for a week), say in total its $200p/w, divide that by 40hrs (if you work 8hrs a day, 5 days a week), thats $5 a hr it costs to keep the doors open, then if you want to earn a wage of $20 a hr (example), thats $25 a hr to make a wage, but id be charging out minimum of $32 a hr to allow $7 a hr MINIMUM, so if you say to your customer, my hrly rate for the shop if $40hr, it gives you a little room to haggle with your price, but never go lower than your minimum, be totally honest with your hrs, if you spend 4.5hrs on the job, only charge out that amount, take heaps of pics of unexpected things that pop up to show the client why something took a little longer than expected,
take a deposit to cover materials, and then at different stages of the job, so if its a bare metal resto, take enough deposit to get all the materials except the color, then when its stripped back to metal, get the client in to look at the bare shell and discuss the job with them, they can see if the body is in poor cond or in great cond, then get a progress payment after its in epoxy, then get another payment when its in the final primer, and then when the job is completed.
as r/t says, keep detailed records, when quoting take heaps of pics, notes and dont be rushed into giving a price, make sure you work it out and then recheck it, altho it takes alot of experience in knowing how long to allow for the job to be done, you can work it out roughly if you think it thru mentally, each process, work out the materials needed for the job, i keep a sheet and record each time i use a piece of sand paper, mix up any paint and filler for each job i do, so that i can get to know how much jobs in the future will use and how much to charge out to that client
the most important thing to remember, BAD word of mouth spreads 10 x quicker than good word of mouth, so take pride in your work, dont rush or cut any corners, dont get yourself into a position where you need to cut corners, you cant make money by redoing any work or by having an upset client if youve done a **** job.
just off topic for a bit, in my plastering business, we dont leave the the jobsite and send an invoice out until the work is of the quality i would want in my own home, we have been in business for a very short time (18months now), we havent even had any business cards made up, done any advertising at all (not even in the ph book or stickers on our vehicle, not even on our workshirts, heck, we dont even have a logo!!) and we have only had around 10 days without any work in 18 months
, we did inherit a couple of small builders from my old boss who retired, which is worth around 2 months a yr work, the rest that we got is from word of mouth, we take pride in our work, discuss with the builders what the other contractors do that pisses them off and make sure that we keep every1 happy, they are more than willing to pay a little extra $$ for the extra that we do that the others dont, and word spread that we do great work and we have just put another guy on the help us keep up with demand, we are around 2yrs ahead of our business plan and turning over 3x more than i forecast for this financial yr!!
now that dont have anything to do with painting cars, but it goes to show, if you want it bad enough and are willing to do great work and not be pushed into charging **** $$ which will force you to do **** work and get a bad reputation, you will do well if the demand is there!!
all the best mate, hope it work out for you
krem