Hey question?

vaulsey

vaulsey

vaulsey

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Joined
25 Jul 2011
Posts
277
Hey guys im 17 and wondering if any of you guys build computers then sell it on for a profit and if you do what is your profit margin and how would you go about starting :D:confused::confused:
 
My dad is thinking of doing a part service, like they buy components and we put it together for £50-100
 
Depends, I do computer callouts in my local area, up to around 45 minutes away by car, I make PC's for customers and sell them with a big profit margin.

If however you're literally just thinking of buying components, building and putting them on eBay, I would say you have no chance, as there are far too many big comapnies (Like OcUK) who not only do it cheaper, but can include software with it that you'd have to buy on top.

You can make money like I do though, on the labour and installation.
 
lee1101 said:
You will really struggle to make a profit. Need to be buying goods in bulk to make any money
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This. Unless you lie about performance like most the people doing it on the bay, you will hardly make any profit.

It's fine if you enjoy doing it in your spare time, but I wouldn't recommend it as a 1st choice income. (Unless you have a massive customer base that is)
 
The average person isnt going to be wanting to source all the individual parts and then get someone to put it together for them they are just going to buy a whole unit hassle free.
 
There's no profit at the bottom of the market (which must account for about 99% of it) where people buy a premade system which has just the basics, since that's plenty fast for most things. The only way forward there would be to be building PCs and charging way over the odds ripping people off who knew no better.

There's no profit in the middle because people are price conscious there and know how much it is relative to the bottom of the market - really it's just the bottom plus a graphics card, or if someone does know enough about it then they'll build it themselves rather than have someone make a profit.

And at the top end of the market there's room for profit. It's a very small market and you're dealing with people who perhaps had an appetite for hardware when they were students, and now they have lots of money and not so much time would pay for someone to do a nice watercooled windowed build that looked perfect. There's no way at all they'd pay a 17 year old to do it unless they had a track record. And there's no way they'd pay up front while you got the parts and put it together. They'd go to somewhere like OcUK and buy it.
 
yeah i worked in computer store for 2 weeks and they are making a ton of money from installations and labour but they dont build compters, as you need a license to do so, i was thinking then there may be quite big market around the area for something like this as something on the side for me.
 
You could make way more money building circuits up on perfboard and selling them.
I am thinking about doing this in the summer, parts come to around £8 and I could sell it for £20.
 
vaulsey said:
i wasn't thinking of advertising it as like this computer can play "Call of Duty mw3" Computer etc
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Not going to work. Who would buy it? Why would they buy from you? Where would you advertise that they would see it? How much of a profit margin could you make?
 
for example if i built a computer for £250 and it played the latest game and sold it for 300£ i would do it for fun and little bit of money. while im at school etc
 
vaulsey said:
yeah i worked in computer store for 2 weeks and they are making a ton of money from installations and labour but they dont build compters, as you need a license to do so, i was thinking then there may be quite big market around the area for something like this as something on the side for me.
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I'm curious - who regulates the computer building industry and makes a license a requirement?

As most have said you can build computers fairly easily and if you're just doing it as a hobby/for pocket change then that's fine. It's not something I would really recommend as anything more than that - it's also worth remembering that in building the computer you will almost certainly become technical support for these people from then on which can last well beyond the point where you've made any profit on the deal at all.

If I was going to build computers again I'd probably just do so for friends, charge them a reasonable amount (or as I used to do leave it up to them) and then once I'd exhausted that market stop - the returns for trying to expand simply weren't worth the additional effort.
 
vaulsey said:
yeah i worked in computer store for 2 weeks and they are making a ton of money from installations and labour but they dont build compters, as you need a license to do so, i was thinking then there may be quite big market around the area for something like this as something on the side for me.
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What :p?
 
vaulsey said:
for example if i built a computer for £250 and it played the latest game and sold it for 300£ i would do it for fun and little bit of money. while im at school etc
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You need to answer the questions from my above post first. And if you still think it's possible work out how much someone could buy it off the shelf for, say from Dell for example, and then work out how much you could do it for. Allowing for you to test it, the time to build it and the extra postage costs.

I reckon your postage costs will be £20 easily, plus you need to find a courier that will send it for you insured.

I can think of dozens of problems. You haven't given this any thought really.

You need to do a lot of thinking.
 
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