Selling Custom PCs Locally

[TidusZ]

Hey, I've been building pcs for myself, friends, and family for a good long time. I enjoy doing it, and so I thought why not try making a bit of money from it and selling custom built PCs to strangers. I started out today by making a bulletin board display showing 3 computers ranging from an office desktop to an extreme machine, priced ~950cdn to 3000cdn. A blurb about who I am and what I"m doing, a bit bout overclocking basically saying I will do it for not much more than the price of the additional heatsink, and basically saying I am flexible about what OS they want to use (This was my ambiguous way of saying ask for free os and you'll get one).

I am posting this display at my moms work, a few hundred people work there. I am now working on making a few more to post up at university and college, and then I will make a 1 page flyer and spend a day delivering it to as many houses in the area as possible (I like walking around listening to music, it will totally remind me of my paper route as a kid). I will also post an ad on kijiji but I see quite a few other ads there already.

My markup is generally looking to be about 10-20% and I'm getting parts from Ncix with pricematching and locally through Canada Computers.

Anyone have some tips for doing this? Anyone done it themselves? Right now my main concern is getting customers, I just started with this today and I"m not working atm so I have all my time to devote to this. I am excited with the prospects here, I really enjoy making computers and being able to make 150-200 a pop seems really good if its manageable.


ps: if the free os part is offensive to you please ignore it or choose to believe I am speaking wholly about windows 7 release candidate. Thanks in advance.

 

[Steven the Leech]

Yes, Insist that they buy a legal copies of windows etc:, and make a restore disk after initial setup. You will also become their help desk.

Good Luck

 

[DaveSimmons]

and basically saying I am flexible about what OS they want to use (This was my ambiguous way of saying ask for free os and you'll get one).

If by "free os" you mean a cracked Windows, then here in the USA the Business Software Alliance pays bounties for ratting out piracy like this. Just warning you aboot it in case there is an eh-quivalent there.

ps: if the free os part is offensive to you please ignore it or choose to believe I am speaking wholly about windows 7 release candidate. Thanks in advance.

We all know what you really mean. Also consider you're opening yourself up to blackmail if some disgruntled buyer threatens to play innocent and turn you in. "Honest, I had no idea he'd be giving me a pirated Windows!"

 

[somethingsketchy]

One thing I will say is better have a very good marketing strategy for getting your name out there. Depending on your area, there may be competing people/companies that will try and squeeze you out by offering a lower price for the builds.

Other than that, be sure to be ready for any customer support/pc repair/replacement for if you have a few builds that fail within the first year or so. Get enough of them and you may lose business (unless you go above and beyond the call of duty with customer service).

I wish you good luck and have a great time on your adventure!

 

[Lunyone]

Get legit Windows and your profit will be down to $50-100, which is pretty common from my experience. If you don't mind being called for just about any problem, than go ahead and start your building business. I think the real money is in support for your builds. Yeah it'll be time consuming and if you can put up with all of their questions, than you could do well. Just don't get surprised when you start to have issues and don't know how to solve the issues.

 

[fffblackmage]

Originally posted by: Lunyone
Get legit Windows and your profit will be down to $50-100, which is pretty common from my experience. If you don't mind being called for just about any problem, than go ahead and start your building business. I think the real money is in support for your builds. Yeah it'll be time consuming and if you can put up with all of their questions, than you could do well. Just don't get surprised when you start to have issues and don't know how to solve the issues.

I would agree with that. Money is in extended warranty and stuff. Unless people do some weird crap to their comp, which you wouldn't cover anyways (unless you're doing accidental damage protection or something like Dell does), then you shouldn't have to deal with many problems.

 

[TidusZ]

How would I offer a warrenty? Would I write up some sort of agreement and then simply sign/date it and photocopy it so they have a copy? I'm fine with diagnosing and fixing problems but I would not be willing to replace parts - I would assist with RMA at the very most. I'm pretty good at fixing most hardware/software issues that popup and those I don't know how to fix I can generally figure out eventually. Been using computers all my life and surrounded by people who do the same, but I can't understand why I am very proficient and my friends and family are not - probably because I do all the fixing/learning.

$50-100 seems kinda low for a profit margin. 100 on a 1700 cpu is barely 6%. With a 175 markup your still offering better hardware than a similarly priced Dell albeit without retail windows/office and fancy warrenty. I was comparing today and I couldn't even find what motherboards they use because they dont list them. Last time I got a oem cpu was a Compaq with a proprietary motherboard and powersupply, no agp on the mobo and 110w on the power supply. Was a world of hassles. But anyway I want more opinions on what margin I should be taking, 50-100 per pc just seems too low to me. If ordering, building, installing os/testing, and bringing the pc to the person takes 6 hours that's like $8-17/hr and that's conservative because I plan to build them well, using quality TIM and offering overclocking for very low margins (which is time consuming). Keep in mind these are Canadian dollars.

Here's an example of one of the pc's I threw together today which has approximately $190 markup (11.2%): http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/6352/gamingrig.jpg (I don't mess around with $99.99)

 

[TidusZ]

So, I posted an online ad, one other detail thats fuzzy is concerning payment. My idea is to have the person pay me half of the total cost before I buy parts, then give them some sort of receipt, then buy parts and build it and get the other half when I deliver the pc. How do I make a legal quality receipt? Is there something to it, or is a signature on paper good enough?

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: TidusZ
How do I make a legal quality receipt? Is there something to it, or is a signature on paper good enough?

If you want to get all legit and stuff, then you need to REALLY be legit. Beyond not offering pirated software :roll: you need a business license, you'll need to collect and pay taxes, you may need insurance (depending on local laws), a dedicated business phone would be nice and you may need written policies (depending on local laws).

Building systems for other people may be a nice way to pick up a little extra cash here and there, but don't expect to make a living at it. You'd make more money servicing computers than building them. The reason is that non-gamers will buy whatever is cheap at their local office superstore while many gamers build their own. Then there is supporting the systems after the sale.

With service whatever you make is pretty much free and clear - you're not on the hook afterwards to support it (unless you really screw up). Also, everyone who is not a gamer will probably need service at one time or another, and there's a lot more non-gamers than there are gamers.

 

[TidusZ]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: TidusZ
How do I make a legal quality receipt? Is there something to it, or is a signature on paper good enough?

If you want to get all legit and stuff, then you need to REALLY be legit. Beyond not offering pirated software :roll: you need a business license, you'll need to collect and pay taxes, you may need insurance (depending on local laws), a dedicated business phone would be nice and you may need written policies (depending on local laws).

Building systems for other people may be a nice way to pick up a little extra cash here and there, but don't expect to make a living at it. You'd make more money servicing computers than building them. The reason is that non-gamers will buy whatever is cheap at their local office superstore while many gamers build their own. Then there is supporting the systems after the sale.

With service whatever you make is pretty much free and clear - you're not on the hook afterwards to support it (unless you really screw up). Also, everyone who is not a gamer will probably need service at one time or another, and there's a lot more non-gamers than there are gamers.

Definitely not gonna go the "really legit" route. Government gets enough of my money. I think I will add the computer service idea though, that shouldn't be too difficult.

 

[unfalliblekrutch]

If someone buys a computer from you, they will expect to turn to you when anything goes wrong, and if someone goes wrong hardware wise, you may be faced with having to pay for repairs yourself if an RMA doesn't go through or having a very disgruntled customer

 

[Lunyone]

Buying quality parts from reputable places will make your RMA process easier/cheaper. You'll probably have to pay for shipping, but that can be a minor expense. You'll need to clarify what kind of coverage that you will be offering for your services. If you just build the system, than you'll need to spell out what kind of warranty (if any) that you offer. I'd consider offering 1 yr parts and you can decide if you want to cover labor to replace the parts.

 

[Blain]

Your plan of becoming rich building rigs sounds great on the surface. As long as you have the captital reserves to cover your mistakes and make plans for long term legitimacy and viability, plan for growth, you may make more per week than a minimum wage job would provide.

Originally posted by: TidusZ

Definitely not gonna go the "really legit" route. Government gets enough of my money. I think I will add the computer service idea though, that shouldn't be too difficult.

My guess is that the government gets very little of your money.

Are you a Pizza Tech?

 

[videogames101]

Originally posted by: Blain
Your plan of becoming rich building rigs sounds great on the surface. As long as you have the captital reserves to cover your mistakes and make plans for long term legitimacy and viability, plan for growth, you may make more per week than a minimum wage job would provide.

Originally posted by: TidusZ

Definitely not gonna go the "really legit" route. Government gets enough of my money. I think I will add the computer service idea though, that shouldn't be too difficult.

My guess is that the government gets very little of your money.

Are you a Pizza Tech?

The only difference he appears to have mentioned is that a pizza tech doesn't stick around to make sure the problem is fixed and costs less, based on that article, hiring a professional tech would be a terrible waste of money.

 

[lxskllr]

There's no money in computers. If you enjoy building them, you can make some beer money while doing what you like. Your specialty can be a nice default package of software, that many people wouldn't otherwise know about. Btw, use a legit copy of Windows. You could end up selling to someone like me who'll hunt you down, and beat the legal copy of Windows out of you ;^)

 

[TidusZ]

Originally posted by: Blain
Your plan of becoming rich building rigs sounds great on the surface. As long as you have the captital reserves to cover your mistakes and make plans for long term legitimacy and viability, plan for growth, you may make more per week than a minimum wage job would provide.

Originally posted by: TidusZ

Definitely not gonna go the "really legit" route. Government gets enough of my money. I think I will add the computer service idea though, that shouldn't be too difficult.

My guess is that the government gets very little of your money.

Are you a Pizza Tech?

I certainly don't plan to become rich building pcs but I do expect to make money from it. Being a pizza tech would require me to be a teenager and in school, i'm mid 20's and a nurse so I guess not. Building pc's is something I enjoy and making money from it seems natural. Fixing PCs is not something I enjoy but its something I'm good at - a lot better than the pizza tech sounds like. I'm also somewhat libertarian and yes the government gets too much of my money.

By the way, the difference between a professional tech and a pizza tech is the name. I have friends who went to school for networking and work the 9-5 doing computer stuff and the 5-11 living computer stuff... and yet I am more useful than them with computers unless it comes down to some hardcore networking. Since I'm in a profession and I know a lot about tech I guess that makes me a professional tech anyway though so no worries.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: lxskllr
There's no money in computers. If you enjoy building them, you can make some beer money while doing what you like. Your specialty can be a nice default package of software, that many people wouldn't otherwise know about. Btw, use a legit copy of Windows.

lxskllr pretty well sums it up.
There's more money in nursing.

 

[TheStu]

What the article was trying to get across was that a 'pizza tech' is a bit of a hit it and quit sort of tech. Regardless of age, they roll in, run AV scans, reformat windows, whatever, take the person's money and then leave. They offer little to no follow up, little to no customer service, no explanation to the person on how best prevent this sort of situation in the future, and all they really know how to do is run AV and reformat.

It has nothing at all to do with certifications or degrees, it has to do with what the writer laid out, experience, responsibility, sustainability and honesty. There are plenty of people out there that will tell you that they know more about computers than random guy A and random guy A has 27 certifications and degrees!

A professional technician is someone doing this for a living, their name is on the line, as is their livelihood, a pizza tech is in it for some cash on the side.

That was the point of the article. "I am not saying the professional technicians are holier-than-thou and they should be put up high on a pedestal. I was young and inexperienced at one point too and I occasionally make mistakes even today, but I always had 3 of the 4 parts which were Responsibility, Sustainability and Honesty; Just not experience. If you are inexperienced but follow the other 3, you are not a pizza tech."

 

[Blain]

TheStu, I can tell you scored high in reading comprehension. :thumbsup:

 

[Zap]

Wow, that technibble.com site has some interesting stuff to read. Gonna bookmark it.

Originally posted by: TheStu
A professional technician is someone doing this for a living, their name is on the line, as is their livelihood, a pizza tech is in it for some cash on the side.

:thumbsup:

Here's a good quote from the article:

Its having predictable price rates and keeping the client up to date for any price increases that may occur from the original quote rather than surprising them later.

I can't stress this enough. Tell the client when they initially contact you how much you charge (whether the repair rate or how much labor to build a new system). This way you don't spend your time/gas driving to someone's place only to have them tell you they don't want to pay what you want to charge. Once you are at the computer and take a look at it, give an estimate. If your estimate was off by a lot, then re-estimate ASAP.

Why? Let me tell y'all a true story that happened to a friend of mine years ago. He was and still is a great computer tech, but at one point in his life was not fixing computers for a lifing. He was working for a hardware store and had to quit (on good terms) because of an injury. His former boss knew that he could fix computers, so called him up for some computer work. He just started working on the computers without discussing rates. After he was done, the guy paid him $8/hour. He tried explaining to him what he would normally charge for computer work but the guy wouldn't pay him any more because he never mentioned the rate.

 

[TheStu]

My friend and I run a computer service on the side. We don't have the appropriate client base necessary for us to take it full time, but once we do we would definitely like to.

We have, from the outset, made sure that we were completely above board and honest in everything we do. Although we both have been known to *cough* cut corners *cough* with regards to some things, we absolutely do not on a customer's computer.

Backups are made any time anything even remotely potentially fatal gets done to the system (fatal meaning full data wipe) and we advise our customers on safe browsing habits, as well as let them know the update schedule that the AV and ASW programs are running on. We check with them before hand if they are the type of person that turns off the computer every night, or if they leave it on. That way we can adjust the scan schedules to hit them at non-peak but still turned on times. We have preset prices that all the customers are made aware of before hand, but do hedge it all with the clause that we reserve the right to adjust the price due to unforseen difficulties, but that hasn't come up yet.

To date we have had multiple return visits from customers, asking us to help them with something else and have only had to return to a customer once to fix the same problem again (wireless network was acting up twice, we forgot to tell the other computer to remember the password for the network, and didn't feel confident to walk the customer through it over the phone).

We maintain a database with our customer's data including their current system configuration and a folder with all the pertinent drivers that way we can make a customer slipstreamed disk for restore purposes in just over an hour.

Little things are what helps you keep customers. Being polite, being punctual, explaining what you are doing while you are doing it, offering free consultations (at least as long as you can, once it becomes your livelihood, you have to start looking at how long each dagnostic/consultation takes and how much money you could have gotten during that time), as well as other things... for example, we only charge 1/3 time for automated things. An antivirus scan is a mostly automated thing, a person needs to be there to keep it moving in case it finds any thing critical, and has to know what is important and what is a false positive, but while it is running I can be doing other things. So, if it took 2 hours, we only charge for 40 minutes of time (which still works out to an hour since we charge for the first hour regardless of how long the job took).

Little things, be better than the other guy, not cheaper or faster necessarily, but just all around better.

 

[Modelworks]

Couple things come to mind :
Offer Ubuntu as the default OS if they don't want to pay for windows, the legal problems you could get into from lack of a windows license is not worth any money you might make.

You are going to have a hard time competing with the likes of companies like HP, so don't . They can buy in bulk and offer systems that most people see attractive for $400. Go after the people that want something better and be prepared to educate them about why your systems are better. I suggest you talk to people that you know who know nothing about computers. Now try explaining things to them so you can get some practice. People that work with tech tend to think the average person has a higher level of understanding than they really do.

Get a new cell phone for work only. This allows you to be on call when you want to be on call and not someone call your personal phone at 2am because they can't load facebook.

Set up a plan to call all customers about one week after a sale to see how the system or repair is working for them. Lets them know you care about the customer.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Zap
Wow, that technibble.com site has some interesting stuff to read. Gonna bookmark it.

Alright, I think I read about 3/4 of all the articles at technibble.com. My eyes hurt now.

I just had a thought for TidusZ. Besides not installing pirated software, I would suggest you NOT install Windows 7 RC. The reason is that it is a ticking time bomb. All of us enthusiasts here know that it will expire in a year. Your client will not know and will not care (even after you explain it to them). All they will know is that in a year it stopped working, and that they bought "it" from you.

 

[TidusZ]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Couple things come to mind :
Offer Ubuntu as the default OS if they don't want to pay for windows, the legal problems you could get into from lack of a windows license is not worth any money you might make.

You are going to have a hard time competing with the likes of companies like HP, so don't . They can buy in bulk and offer systems that most people see attractive for $400. Go after the people that want something better and be prepared to educate them about why your systems are better. I suggest you talk to people that you know who know nothing about computers. Now try explaining things to them so you can get some practice. People that work with tech tend to think the average person has a higher level of understanding than they really do.

Get a new cell phone for work only. This allows you to be on call when you want to be on call and not someone call your personal phone at 2am because they can't load facebook.

Set up a plan to call all customers about one week after a sale to see how the system or repair is working for them. Lets them know you care about the customer.

Good advice. Getting a cheap compaq presario as a gift when I was young was my inspiration to learn all I could about hardware so I can definitely define the benefit of having a custom built pc versus an oem where every corner is cut and everything is proprietary. Before getting that piece of junk I was content knowing just the basics to get by. (I do realize that oems are marginally better these days, but they're still second rate computers and since I am offering overclocking there really isn't any comparison for those who care about performance).

As many people have said, installing pirated windows is a bad idea, I'm afraid to do it so I wont. My problem with ubuntu is that I've never used it although I understand that its quite user friendly and I've seen others use it a little bit.

Also, this isn't going to be my career, just going to be doing it full time for a couple months then part-time as a hobby and for extra cash.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: TidusZ
[ My problem with ubuntu is that I've never used it although I understand that its quite user friendly and I've seen others use it a little bit.

Go to the ubuntu site and download the ISO. Burn it and boot your pc with it. You do not have to install anything to try it out. It runs off the cd and makes no changes to the system unless you want to do an install.


http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download