I try to almost always answer emails from people inquiring about staring their own Video Game LAN Center. Sometimes I am tired and busy and I just send a short answer. Sometimes I spend way too much time. I thought it might help to start copying down some of the questions/emails I get here on my blog along with my answers so that it might cut down on repetitive questions and allow me to start referring people here for more basic answers. I will leave the names off for privacy reasons.
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10/23/2013
Hi Zack,
I have been planning to start up a lan center and while browsing the web I saw your wordpress page and I would like to get some tips as I am starting from scratch and I’m lost. I have no experience at all start a business and I would like to ask you a couple of questions that could really help me. I know you are really busy and I`ll try to keep it short.
Question:
-Did you start it by yourself or by a group?
-Did you get professional help for a business plan?
-How did you get the capital for this business?
Feel free to ask me any questions.
I look forward to hear from you .
Thank you
Regards,
__________
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BoZack's Blog 
Zack,
I have a few detailed question about how you guys run the back-end of your stores.
I am currently helping a friend of mine update his store. Currently they run with CyberCafe which is out of date.
We were looking at using Smartlaunch but they advise us to use a complete standalone dedicated server. My problem is That’s super expensive and I was hoping to use an old desktop as my server instead of a full rack. I asked them if we could use this instead but they haven’t gotten back to me.
i was mostly wondering if you guys use a full server and what software you use. I was hoping to stop by your store maybe next year and check it out but that would be quite a trip.
I am also wondering about your website, who you used to build it and who is hosting.
I mainly ask these things because you guys have been around for so long I would expect you have hit a lot of roadblocks and made a lot of mistakes and I’m hoping to avoid the most costly ones
Also any quick tips for setup?
Thanks in advance,
Trevor
Trevor,
You can run SL on a workstation level machine, it doesn’t require a dedicated server. If your data grows too large, that means the center is doing well and you can afford to upgrade to a beefier machine.
We built our own website, these days website “building” is super easy anyway. Just get a wordpress site like my blog here and you can download a free template or purchase a nicer one. Then just point your domain name to your blog.
There is no such thing as quick tips in this business. 🙂