Can I make money by selling PC's I build?

Graham

Aodhan5000 wrote: »

How many is a "few" units?

Who knows, depends on your components, your skills at knowing what works well together, the specific batches of your components..........

Aodhan5000

Who is going to allow a 14 year old to fix their PC though?

Aodhan5000

Well in my opinion the thing that is most likely to mess up (other than me) is the PSU and I always buy 80+ gold PSU's.

h0neybadger

You can also ask yourself "who is going to allow a 14 year old to price, spec, build, spray paint, mod, a computer that costs 1,000+."

Graham

h0neybadger wrote: »

You can also ask yourself "who is going to allow a 14 year old to price, spec, build, spray paint, mod, a computer that costs 1,000+."

I suspect the number is going to be similar in both instances.

Aodhan5000

Do they have to know it's a 14 year-old? When a person buys a PC from alienware are they told who builds it?

IrishGrimReaper

Aodhan5000 wrote: »

Do they have to know it's a 14 year-old? When a person buys a PC from alienware are they told who builds it?

It's not 14 year olds anyway, if you really want to make money. Doing what you're asking isn't for you.

Graham

Aodhan5000 wrote: »

Do they have to know it's a 14 year-old? When a person buys a PC from alienware are they told who builds it?

If you had the brand recognition and reputation of alienware along with the backing of Dell like alienware, this would be a different thread.

To be honest, you could be 34 and still have almost zero chance of doing this profitably.

Aodhan5000

Well what other options do I have for making money?

Graham

Aodhan5000 wrote: »

Well what other options do I have for making money?

Are paper-rounds still a thing?

A part time job somewhere is the obvious answer but your age is going to work against you for a couple of years yet.

Aodhan5000

Nope

Aodhan5000

And mowing lawns isnt either

5rtytry56

OP, before selling any PC built by you:

Have you REPAIRED other people's PC?

Have you experiencing of repairing peripherals like a printer?

How much do you know about Operating System concepts?

h0neybadger

Your 14.

Focus on school. Junior Cert, Leaving cert.
Or
Learn programming at home online, and when your feeling confident, register your services on rentacoder.

Starting a PC building/repair business is a big task. A lot of people have tried, and failed. These are people who have years of experience, are fully qualified adults, have extensive knowledge of running a business, and are not 14 years old building high quality computers from their bedroom.

Realistically, you need to drop the idea. Sorry dude, it's just way bigger than you realize.

The initial cost alone is going to be huge. Advertising alone...

Aodhan5000

I repaired 2 other people PC's and I don't have much experience fixing peripherals. Operating system concepts aren't something I know about.

Trojan

Aodhan5000 wrote: »

Who is going to allow a 14 year old to fix their PC though?

About half the country, although they won't want to pay anything like commercial rates.

Businesses won't go near you, but if you put up a poster in your local supermarket "14 year old computer specialist available to fix your computer problems" I bet you'll get calls.

Speaking of the supermarket, don't do anything silly like getting a job in Tesco. You're heading down a good road by looking for opportunities for your own business here. You just need to figure out what's a good market and product - that's half the battle in business.

Post a thread on the Entrepreneurial & Business Management forum, you'll get a lot of different perspectives on it.

Korvanica

Aodhan5000 wrote: »

offering PC's at lower prices then manufacturors.

So no profit for you then? No point doing it so.

Aodhan5000

Just cause it's a lower price doesn't mean theres no profit

Wildcard7

No, I wouldn't browse adverts and ring some 14 year old kid to fix my PC.

Start in your neighbourhood. Post flyers, talk to people. If you're good at what you're doing, people will give you a shout. There are many computer illiterate people out there who are happy having a young person fix their computer or teach them something for a few bucks. I had to fix a few peoples PCs for money when I was younger (admittedly that was around 17+), and that was without trying. Word of mouth, when my parents would talk to someone and mention I work in computers and they're like "oh would he mind coming over to look at XYZ).

If you're lucky one of your customers might even have some godawful ancient box of crap and need a new computer and you get to build him one.

PS:
Hard disks break all the time (fair enough, one of the cheaper things to keep in stock). And all other parts break too, not as often, though, but even if they're good brands. When a 500€ graphics card breaks it's no use to you that you're the lucky 1% where that happened.

Kimbot

Aodhan5000, when you say you have fixed 3 pc's what exactly have you fixed with them?

To me you have a lack of knowledge and experience to take this on.

Graham

Trojan wrote: »

You're heading down a good road by looking for opportunities for your own business here. You just need to figure out what's a good market and product - that's half the battle in business.

+1

It's great to see someone looking for opportunities, don't give up OP you'll probably consider dozens of options before you find one worth chasing.

Building selling PCs is not likely to be it, it was a tough enough business back in the days of 40% - 50% margins. Now it's absolutely cut-throat.

Aodhan5000

Other than putting up flyers, how am I supposed to put myself out there?

-K2-

Will your product be in compliance with the EMC Directive and Low Voltage Directive?

How will you CE mark the product?

Do you know what these terms mean?

Wildcard7

Aodhan5000 wrote: »

Just cause it's a lower price doesn't mean theres no profit

How do you propose to undercut your competition when you can't buy your parts for less money than I can buy them for at komplett or eurieka?

Here's your first step: Create us an offer of a computer, listing all the parts it contains and it's price, and tell us how much of a profit you make on that. I can guarantee you that as soon as you make any profit, I'm able to get those very same parts or a very similar complete PC for less money somewhere else.

And again: You can't buy something ex VAT and then sell it charging VAT. That's fraud.

Aodhan5000

@-K2- Are you sure you aren't speaking a different language because I haven't a clue about what those things mean:)

Aodhan5000

@wildcard Give me a link to a page of a PC that I can't beat pricewise. I mightn't be able to beat the price but I'll try.

-K2-

Aodhan5000 wrote: »

@-K2- Are you sure you aren't speaking a different language because I haven't a clue about what those things mean:)

You are intending to build and sell an electrical product to consumers. To do this you need to CE mark the product; this can only be done if it is in compliance with EU directives (the law) for electromagnetic compatibility and electrical safety.

Will your product meet these legal requirements? If you don't know what this means then I suggest you shouldn't be manufacturing and selling such a product.

Korvanica

Aodhan5000 wrote: »

@wildcard Give me a link to a page of a PC that I can't beat pricewise. I mightn't be able to beat the price but I'll try.

He asked you to build a computer and give us the price youd sell it at. Any spec.

fleet

Don't do it kid.
Profit is thin, headaches are many.

Buy/rent a petrol lawnmower and go around asking people if they want their grass cut for €X

Aodhan5000

The reason I want wildcard to give me a link to a pc is because I need to know it's purpose. I could put 2 GTX 1080 Ti's into a pc design and he might come along with a pc that has an intel atom and say "told you i could find a cheaper pc"