Re: Starting part-time comp. building business. Help and suggestions needed.
- From: Pdigmking <paugle@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 17:28:08 GMT
"jer4202@xxxxxxxxx" <jer4202@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:1133278153.216687.251420@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
> Its a good idea, I even thought about doing it myself. The only thing
> that prevented me from actually starting a business the taxes. When you
> register it as a business, you would have to pay taxes on the parts you
> order as well as charge taxes to your customers. If you advertise
> correctly this shouldnt be a problem because you would draw alot of
> business. As far as warranties go, I tell the customer up front that
> the warranty is through the manufacturer only, but if a part were to go
> out, I would be glad to replace the part if it failed if they were
> willing to pay for shipping and it was still under warranty. Write
> again if any other concerns, I would be glad to chat because it may
> inspire me to do the same.
>
Actually the Taxes are no big deal. You get a tax number from the state
and then you don't pay sales tax when you by the parts, you only collect
sales tax when you sell the computer,and pay the state at the end of the
year. You don't have to set up a corperation, you can do it as a sole
proprietor Doing Business As account.
The big problem is profitablity. I mean, I have built my own computers
for ten years. The only reason I save money is becaue I'm not starting
from scratch. I re-use perfectly good video cards, hard drives, CD roms,
RAM, monitors, etc. when all you need is a new case, power supply, cpu,
and a mother board you can save a lot of money, you have a new computer
for less than $300.00. But if you build a completely new computer from
the ground up, it's gonna cost you $600+. You can buy a new computer at
big box store for $700- $1000, with hundreds of dollars of liscensed
software. If you go into the computer building business, that's your
competition. If you build a computer for $600, or even $400 (your cost
in parts) How much do you have to sell it for to make enough money to
make it worth while? If you know what your doing you can slap a computer
together in an hour, but then you have to load software on it, make sure
it works, smooth out any conflicts etc. And then there's the service of
it. Your competing with outlets that sell three year warrantees, and
service the stuff. Back when you couldn't get a decent computer for less
than $1,200 there were a lot of little shops and guys around building
computers and selling, them, you could make $3-$400 per computer at those
prices. I know three guys that used to do it, and they're all out of
business now. I mean what kind of computers are you gonna build? Are
gonna do high end stuff, bargin stuff, or custom build them. If you
custom build stuff your always dealing with parts that your not familiar
with, you'll have compatibility problems and what not and spend hours
making them work. And service will still be a hassle because even if you
only offer the manufacturers warranty, you still have to diagnose the
problem so you know which part to send in, you can't just start replacing
stuff until the thing works because that may take weeks or months. And
then there's advertising expenses....
I mean you do the math, but use the best numbers, and really really
figure out how many computers you have to sell and how much you need to
make per computer.
Personally, I think a better business would be cleaning up and tuning
computers that have gotten clogged with adware and other bugs. People
are getting $50.00 - $100 an hour to sit at the compuer and load and run
anti spyware and anti virus programs. There's no expense, you tell the
customer what to buy, and then you load it. A lot of people don't secure
their networks and computers. There was this story in the New York Times
a while back about people who's computers are so bugged up that they are
just buying new computers. Thing is, if they don't secure the new
computer it will just as useless as the old in six months anyways.
Let em buy whatever computer they want and you just charge em $100 to
secure it, att's my advice. You can even charge em to run updates and
what not every so often. Sell em service contract for a year.
Paul.
.
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