Odds of Hanging On
Happy clients make the world go round. The business guys are smiling because they now have functional hard drives instead of screens full of gibberish and hard drives grinding themselves to bits. Now they can generate sales reports, create Power Points that make everyone zone out at meetings, and play Solitaire when no one's watching.
PC and Mac users can shop the eBay auctions, download/upload YouTube videos, and play Farmville until the cows come home. They're all really happy because their computer repair techs keep their systems humming along.
Keep providing your clients with good service so they'll tell their friends. Don't blow them off, or provide service that flat-out stinks, because they'll blacklist you on all the social networks. That would probably be the kiss of death for a computer repair tech.
Beyond that, how can you hang on as the computer world keeps changing at warp speed? Strap yourself in, arm yourself with the latest technology, and enjoy the ride. In other words, maintain your certifications and obtain new ones, read relevant computer magazines, and eavesdrop on technology forums run by cyber-innovators. You've got to stay ahead of the pack to stand out from your competitors. Anything less will condemn you to mediocrity.
On the upside, the big thing you get with computer repair is relative security—you can always get a job. Like, you could murder someone (although we don't condone it) and be convicted and still get work fixing computers. Unlike being a movie producer, for example, the odds of there being way more jobs in ten years are...really high. Will people still be using computers in a decade? Unless the robots have defeated us and taken away our rights to use them…yeah, we think so.