pc business

[alexfer84]

ive been wanting to start a pc repair build business since i was very young and im almost done building kmy first pc to sell any selling tips?

[dizmo]

Don't call it a business unless you have an active business license.

[wseaton]

You'll spend 99% of your time fixing portables and customers not picking them up.

[alexfer84]

50 minutes ago, wseaton said:

You'll spend 99% of your time fixing portables and customers not picking them up.

what.

[alexfer84]

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

Don't call it a business unless you have an active business license.

yes i will have business license 

[Skipple]

Sell it for more than what you purchased it for. 

[Isuck Assimov]

calculate the sales margin before you start building a PC so you stay profitable. In the beginning you will probably have to work for free/ not add workhours to the sales price to stay competitive.

Advertisements are also very important for acquiring customers when you are just starting out.

 

good luck.

[OrdinaryPhil]

14 hours ago, alexfer84 said:

ive been wanting to start a pc repair build business since i was very young and im almost done building kmy first pc to sell any selling tips?

 

Do A LOT of research before starting your small business.

 

If you are in the USA you'll need to file in both your City & State, and also with the federal government. You'll most likely start out an an LLC so you'll need a Federal Tax ID as well.

You'll also probably want to start off doing only repairs, and less builds. Offering services is less of a tax burden than selling goods. Study both the federal and local taxes systems before setting any of your prices. Also do your due diligence and look at your competition; you'll need to make efforts to stand apart - either being higher quality or lower price is a beginning, and higher quality is a tough sell when you are new.

Once all of this is done - start small. Sell locally on FB marketplace to get a feel for demand. Don't invest in a storefront or office until you've generated enough of a steady income to MORE than cover those costs.

Finally, make sure that you are insured. I hate to say that since insurance itself is a massive scam, but people are very litigious these days and one bad experience can undo all of your hard work.

 

 

[dizmo]

21 hours ago, alexfer84 said:

yes i will have business license 

Will have? So you don't already? Should have had that started before you started building PCs to sell.

[Pickles von Brine]

22 hours ago, wseaton said:

You'll spend 99% of your time fixing portables and customers not picking them up.

I didnt have too much of that issue. I would say after a year we would have 10-15 machines that never got picked up. When you give people a call, text and email that their shit is going to get put into the trash/sold and data destroyed people come running. When they dont and it is a nice machine you make a nice profit. 

Before anything, make sure you know your local laws AND talk to a lawyer who understands these kinds of things before doing the above. The most important part is the  person must have signed the paperwork at the time they dropped off. If they haven't you are pretty much boned though after a year and NUMEROUS attempts to contact someone most places aren't going to make a fuss if your throw their shit out/sell it. 

 

Again, you must know and understand your laws AND make sure that you are in the clear otherwise you could get into legal trouble. 

Most of the stuff that got left behind was garbage. What my shop did is attempt to contact the owner several times. After 6 months it got moved into quarentine. If it is still there for 6 months we would remove the drives, place them into a safe and store them there for another 6 months and get rid of the system. Then, after a year and a half of having someone's drive it got destroyed. 

Again, we would attempt to contact the customer NUMEROUS times during this time via call, text and email. All recorded into our ticketing system. All our procedures were in plain english on the paperwork they signed. Our process was also emailed to them NUMEROUS times during this time as well. 

In PC repair it is a pain in the ass dealing with stuff like this. 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

23 hours ago, alexfer84 said:

yes i will have business license 

Your local tax office would like a word from you. 

[Arika]

I'm going to make this very blunt. Don't do it, it's not worth it.

 

Running such a business is more than just "i will build PC for you, you give me money".

 

Things you need to consider:

 

how will you deal with warranty claims?

will you have excess inventory so that if someone has a problem with a part you can swap it out for them immediately so they can get their computer back?

 

Repairs outside of warranty

similar to the above, are you going to have excess stock of every type of component to be able to troubleshoot and swap out parts to find the problem?

 

Do you have the liquid funds to purchase all this stuff up front before you start taking on clients?

 

Where will you keep your inventory?

Are you going to rent out a commercial space? if you're doing it at home, you need to consider the insurance implications of it

 

How will you market yourself?

you're going into a field that every boy and his dog is wanting to get into, how will you stand out?

 

 

So with all of the above:

why would people come to you?

Remember that there are already very large businesses that do exactly what you are wanting to do who have the resources, the reputation and suppliers. why would anyone come to some random person to build a PC worth potentially a few thousand dollars instead of a place they know will support them and have the resources to fix issues they run into?

[alexfer84]

2 hours ago, dizmo said:

Will have? So you don't already? Should have had that started before you started building PCs to sell.

havnt started yet

[NovaNightmare]

Peruse this playlist, Louis Rossman has spent many years talking about having started his business, failures, successes, things he has had to deal with, etc.

 

 

Playlist has 93 videos at the moment.

 

And just as an FYI, the economy is not in a good place right now, expect a decent sized retraction and much struggle for businesses going for a while. That may be a good thing in the sense that you've not started yet and can perhaps see what kind of need develops once things get back on track.

[alexfer84]

10 minutes ago, NovaNightmare said:

Peruse this playlist, Louis Rossman has spent many years talking about having started his business, failures, successes, things he has had to deal with, etc.

 

 

Playlist has 93 videos at the moment.

 

And just as an FYI, the economy is not in a good place right now, expect a decent sized retraction and much struggle for businesses going for a while. That may be a good thing in the sense that you've not started yet and can perhaps see what kind of need develops once things get back on track.

my whole plan is to have it as a side jobe but it i get lucky and it takes off i will have it as a full time i will use youtube, tiktok, insta etc to spread it around

[NovaNightmare]

27 minutes ago, alexfer84 said:

my whole plan is to have it as a side jobe but it i get lucky and it takes off i will have it as a full time i will use youtube, tiktok, insta etc to spread it around

If you are not familiar with Louis, he also did this, in the sense that it was a side job and then he went to work fully for himself. You should consider it a lesson in doing the thing you really want to do, and in fact many of his videos are tutorials and teaching how to do the same things he himself did to begin his business.

[jaslion]

On 8/27/2022 at 3:48 AM, Pickles von Brine said:

When you give people a call, text and email that their shit is going to get put into the trash/sold and data destroyed people come running. When they dont and it is a nice machine you make a nice profit. 

This very much. I had a 3 month policy that if the device wasnt picked up by then after multiple email reminders and call attempts on the provided information (sonif they gave wrong info I was covered) ownership would transfer to me.

 

4 times I basically sold that laptop to the people again but with their data wiped and then charged them for a data backup too. Sounds like an assholr move (it was) but Id never see those people again and they were very rude.

 

I also made exceptions of course but just having that in the policy they SIGN covers you.

 

As for op start this as a side job. It will take time to build up the needed resources and client base before this will be a main job

[Pickles von Brine]

9 hours ago, jaslion said:

This very much. I had a 3 month policy that if the device wasnt picked up by then after multiple email reminders and call attempts on the provided information (sonif they gave wrong info I was covered) ownership would transfer to me.

 

4 times I basically sold that laptop to the people again but with their data wiped and then charged them for a data backup too. Sounds like an assholr move (it was) but Id never see those people again and they were very rude.

 

I also made exceptions of course but just having that in the policy they SIGN covers you.

 

As for op start this as a side job. It will take time to build up the needed resources and client base before this will be a main job

We just take the drives out and keep them with dates on them. Then once every 6 months to a year audit the drives, contact the customer one last time. No response after 2 weeks the drives are destroyed. When the client signs it states we are not responsible for their data and it is their responsibility have a back. However, out of an abundance of caution we chose this. 

Computers can be replaced. Data cannot was our thought on the matter. 

Growing a client base, tools and experience takes time. I will say that I am damn good at computer repair and most in home services. But, that took 17 years, thousands of hours, thousands of computers and a lot of mistakes.