How do I sell PC's online?

[TruePaige]

Hello there! I have been...looking for alternatives to my current crappy job...and was considering selling custom PC's.

I was hoping to do it online, via my own website and maybe some ebay work...but I have two concerns and I thought maybe some of the people at anandtech would know better than I about it. =)

1. Paypal is such a generally accepted method online, other than following all the seller protection guidelines, is there any other way to protect yourself from disputes/chargebacks?

2. What's the best way to source parts? Would it just be newegg or is there a way to get really good deals?

Any feedback is REALLY, TRULY appreciated, thanks. =)

 

[BigJ]

Simply put, it's not worth it. Don't even bother.

 

[jfall]

no offense, but it will most likely fail.

1. You cannot compete with pricing offered by big names like Dell
2. It would be very hard for you to offer any type of quality support

 

[TruePaige]

Well I mean I've been looking into it lightly, and I can beat lots of current prices on PC's and still make a margin of profit, just curious of the best way to go about it. If it doesn't work out as something helpful, that's fine...but I want to A) Try and B) Not get burned with losses.

Has anyone here tried it?

 

[jfall]

Originally posted by: TruePaige
Well I mean I've been looking into it lightly, and I can beat lots of current prices on PC's and still make a margin of profit, just curious of the best way to go about it. If it doesn't work out as something helpful, that's fine...but I want to A) Try and B) Not get burned with losses.

Has anyone here tried it?

What prices are you comparing to? Dell, Alienware? I seriously doubt that you could beat Dell's pricing.

You could probably beat pricing on high end computers like Alienware, but you'd have a hell of a time selling to that market.

It's good that you want to start a company and are willing to work hard at it, but I don't think you are looking in the right places.

 

[ta8689]

Tell me why your computers are better than anybody else's computers. Are you better than dell? How about alienware? Do you offer a warranty like other places? Can you give great customer support?
Doubt it.
I say nay

Edit: Remember that people who buy pc's generally dont have alot of knowledge on troubleshooting problems with their pc's, so thats one big reason why they buy from big manufacturers

 

[SmoochyTX]

How many would you be able to make in a week? If I wanted to order 50 to start phasing out the older computers in my company, would you be able to handle it?

We wouldn't be able to wait for more than a week.

 

[TruePaige]

Originally posted by: jfall

Originally posted by: TruePaige
Well I mean I've been looking into it lightly, and I can beat lots of current prices on PC's and still make a margin of profit, just curious of the best way to go about it. If it doesn't work out as something helpful, that's fine...but I want to A) Try and B) Not get burned with losses.

Has anyone here tried it?

What prices are you comparing to? Dell or Alienware?

I compared my pricing to current eBay power sellers, and to build identical PC's and beat their price by maybe 50 dollars I can make a...100 or so margin?

I mainly like to build good looking power rigs, as I notice not enough beautiful PC systems are getting sold right now.

I was thinking of starting building in maybe NZXT Lexa cases or something..

Overall feeling I'm getting here is that it's just too hard a market to crack into though...

edit: I'm capable of handling e-mail tech support and offering component warranties...I do PC repair / custom builds locally it's just not something that I get steady buys for, but locally it has a nice margin, while I'm trying to figure out how it works online....thanks for the feedback so far though, any advice is always good.

 

[jfall]

Originally posted by: TruePaige

Originally posted by: jfall

Originally posted by: TruePaige
Well I mean I've been looking into it lightly, and I can beat lots of current prices on PC's and still make a margin of profit, just curious of the best way to go about it. If it doesn't work out as something helpful, that's fine...but I want to A) Try and B) Not get burned with losses.

Has anyone here tried it?

What prices are you comparing to? Dell or Alienware?

I compared my pricing to current eBay power sellers, and to build identical PC's and beat their price by maybe 50 dollars I can make a...100 or so margin?

I mainly like to build good looking power rigs, as I notice not enough beautiful PC systems are getting sold right now.

I was thinking of starting building in maybe NZXT Lexa cases or something..

Overall feeling I'm getting here is that it's just too hard a market to crack into though...

Is it really worth building a computer, shipping it, and supporting it for $100?

 

[SmoochyTX]

Already, I have no customer support for my question. Not a good start OP.

 

[CTrain]

Err..DON'T ??

 

[TruePaige]

Originally posted by: SmoochyTX
Already, I have no customer support for my question. Not a good start OP.

No can't say I could =p

I'm just one person who was curious about a few PC's (2-5) a week type stuff =)

 

[SmoochyTX]

Originally posted by: TruePaige

Originally posted by: SmoochyTX
Already, I have no customer support for my question. Not a good start OP.

No can't say I could =p

I'm just one person who was curious about a few PC's (2-5) a week type stuff =)

Acting flippant towards a potential customer will get you nowhere fast. You'll sit there with inventory dying a fast death or you'll lose your contacts waiting on you to order parts.

If you only plan on building 2-5 PCs a week (and I highly doubt you could even do that reliably), the money you might make is not worth the tech support you're going to provide on the back end.

You will make no money and burn in bankruptcy.

 

[TruePaige]

Originally posted by: SmoochyTX

Originally posted by: TruePaige

Originally posted by: SmoochyTX
Already, I have no customer support for my question. Not a good start OP.

No can't say I could =p

I'm just one person who was curious about a few PC's (2-5) a week type stuff =)

Acting flippant towards a potential customer will get you nowhere fast. You'll sit there with inventory dying a fast death or you'll lose your contacts waiting on you to order parts.

If you only plan on building 2-5 PCs a week (and I highly doubt you could even do that reliably), the money you might make is not worth the tech support you're going to provide on the back end.

You will make no money and burn in bankruptcy.

Well I already got the point of the replies that it's probally a bad idea...but just FYI...I could technically build that many PC's but I wouldn't have the money to finance it that much up front, and wouldn't be comfortable building that many.

The actual building of a PC takes me about...an hour.

But then I like to run a 48 hour burn in per rig to check for any premature component failure, assemble a 3 ring binder of specific troubleshooting information, install any requested GUI mod's and install any pre-purchased software for the client.

That's how I've done on-site repairs/set-up's locally at least. Thanks for the feedback everyone, it's been...interesting to say the least...=)

 

[Tom]

Nobody thought Michael Dell could do it either.

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: Tom
Nobody thought Michael Dell could do it either.

Different time, different market conditions, etc.

Really, there is no comparison.

 

[tranceport]

Originally posted by: TruePaige

Originally posted by: jfall

Originally posted by: TruePaige
Well I mean I've been looking into it lightly, and I can beat lots of current prices on PC's and still make a margin of profit, just curious of the best way to go about it. If it doesn't work out as something helpful, that's fine...but I want to A) Try and B) Not get burned with losses.

Has anyone here tried it?

What prices are you comparing to? Dell or Alienware?

I compared my pricing to current eBay power sellers, and to build identical PC's and beat their price by maybe 50 dollars I can make a...100 or so margin?

I mainly like to build good looking power rigs, as I notice not enough beautiful PC systems are getting sold right now.

I was thinking of starting building in maybe NZXT Lexa cases or something..

Overall feeling I'm getting here is that it's just too hard a market to crack into though...

edit: I'm capable of handling e-mail tech support and offering component warranties...I do PC repair / custom builds locally it's just not something that I get steady buys for, but locally it has a nice margin, while I'm trying to figure out how it works online....thanks for the feedback so far though, any advice is always good.

It's going to take you at least a day to build the computer from parts and install an OS.

Is your time not worth more than $100 a day? That's $12.50 an hour.



Listen to what people are posting. WHAT is special about the computer you will build for me? I want to be your customer right now...




TruePaige, I see you have blahblahXblah computer on your ebay store. What makes it better than the equal model Dell XblahblahX?

Say I buy it from you. Say you sell 50 computers and make $5,000 in profit over 50 days.
On day 51, 37 of the computers bluescreen because of a hotfix for xp you didn't load. 10 of these people call you between the hours of 10am and 12pm. How do you handle the 10 calls in 2 hours on you phone lines?

Think it through... Otherwise you will be providing average systems you think are great and will provide the worlds worst support if any at all.

Again.... WHY would someone buy their computer from you?






Edit: Glad we were able to crush your dreams.

Anyone want to help me in a new, slightly dusted, business idea?..... We are going to build... Computers!

 

[SlitheryDee]

In order to be really profitable you would want to start accounts will all the major parts dealers whose components will be in your PCs. That means buying directly from nvidia, ATI, Intel, AMD, Asus, MSI, XFX, Lian Li, Seagate, Western Digital, DFI, Crucial, PDI, Samsung, Maxtor, Hitachi, creative, microsoft, logitech, etc. These are only a small portion of the computer hardware manufacturers available, and they would each require a certain minimum amount of product to be purchased in order for you to get wholesale prices or even start a dealer account with them. Forget newegg or any other online retailer as your supplier, in order to be a true retailer in your own right and make any reasonable amount of money you should get your parts from the manufacturers or some other dealer that specializes in supplying computer retailers.

 

[ta8689]

Originally posted by: Tom
Nobody thought Michael Dell could do it either.

well he covered the market of people who buy computers because the guy on the commercial says the word "dude" and they dont really mention anything performance-ish about the computers. He wants to build higher-end machines.

 

[quakefiend420]

leave it to ATOT to crush someone's hopes and dreams within a matter of minutes :laugh:

 

[SmoochyTX]

Originally posted by: TruePaige

Originally posted by: SmoochyTX

Originally posted by: TruePaige

Originally posted by: SmoochyTX
Already, I have no customer support for my question. Not a good start OP.

No can't say I could =p

I'm just one person who was curious about a few PC's (2-5) a week type stuff =)

Acting flippant towards a potential customer will get you nowhere fast. You'll sit there with inventory dying a fast death or you'll lose your contacts waiting on you to order parts.

If you only plan on building 2-5 PCs a week (and I highly doubt you could even do that reliably), the money you might make is not worth the tech support you're going to provide on the back end.

You will make no money and burn in bankruptcy.

Well I already got the point of the replies that it's probally a bad idea...but just FYI...I could technically build that many PC's but I wouldn't have the money to finance it that much up front, and wouldn't be comfortable building that many.

The actual building of a PC takes me about...an hour.

But then I like to run a 48 hour burn in per rig to check for any premature component failure, assemble a 3 ring binder of specific troubleshooting information, install any requested GUI mod's and install any pre-purchased software for the client.

That's how I've done on-site repairs/set-up's locally at least. Thanks for the feedback everyone, it's been...interesting to say the least...=)

If somebody I was buying computers from told me they didn't have the finances to even cover the cost of what I was buying I would run like hell away from them.

Physically building a compuer doesn't take that much time but there's no way in hell you're going to be able to hold a customer's computer for 48+ hours for testing. If I'm needing 10 computers in two days and I'm willing to pay $1000 each are you really going to tell me that you can't do it because you have to test them for 48 hours?

If you tell me that, you've just lost my business and I'm going to Dell or Gateway or somebody else where I can get the computers I need in time and have tech support.

You also have to remember that to save money on computer parts, you should be buying in bulk. What's the problem with buying in bulk? You're going to have parts sitting on the shelf losing value because the latest and greatest is coming out and you need to get rid of those parts. Charging full price on those parts will get you no business so you're going to have to mark them down. Always think inventory in a startup like this.

Who's going to be manning a phone or phones while you're building? Who's going to be packing the computers while somebody is building the computers? How are you going to take orders while tracking down parts that need to be replaced on computers you've already sold?

 

[TruePaige]

Not so much crushed as...redrawn...=p

Might be better off trying to expand my grassroots efforts where I can provide near-perfect tech support than to try and sell online...or try and sell cheap pretty machines instead...>.>

But I caught the drift that I really can't build a performance rig with a profit without high order dealer accounts and such.

 

[Zugzwang152]

you're better off keeping your day job and doing tech support as you are available. If someone's looking for a new computer, offer to spec it out at Dell or wherever with a 10-15% service charge for setup and whatnot, or offer to build them a custom one.

 

[TruePaige]

Originally posted by: SmoochyTX

Originally posted by: TruePaige

Originally posted by: SmoochyTX

Originally posted by: TruePaige

Originally posted by: SmoochyTX
Already, I have no customer support for my question. Not a good start OP.

No can't say I could =p

I'm just one person who was curious about a few PC's (2-5) a week type stuff =)

Acting flippant towards a potential customer will get you nowhere fast. You'll sit there with inventory dying a fast death or you'll lose your contacts waiting on you to order parts.

If you only plan on building 2-5 PCs a week (and I highly doubt you could even do that reliably), the money you might make is not worth the tech support you're going to provide on the back end.

You will make no money and burn in bankruptcy.

Well I already got the point of the replies that it's probally a bad idea...but just FYI...I could technically build that many PC's but I wouldn't have the money to finance it that much up front, and wouldn't be comfortable building that many.

The actual building of a PC takes me about...an hour.

But then I like to run a 48 hour burn in per rig to check for any premature component failure, assemble a 3 ring binder of specific troubleshooting information, install any requested GUI mod's and install any pre-purchased software for the client.

That's how I've done on-site repairs/set-up's locally at least. Thanks for the feedback everyone, it's been...interesting to say the least...=)

If somebody I was buying computers from told me they didn't have the finances to even cover the cost of what I was buying I would run like hell away from them.

Physically building a compuer doesn't take that much time but there's no way in hell you're going to be able to hold a customer's computer for 48+ hours for testing. If I'm needing 10 computers in two days and I'm willing to pay $1000 each are you really going to tell me that you can't do it because you have to test them for 48 hours?

If you tell me that, you've just lost my business and I'm going to Dell or Gateway or somebody else where I can get the computers I need in time and have tech support.

You also have to remember that to save money on computer parts, you should be buying in bulk. What's the problem with buying in bulk? You're going to have parts sitting on the shelf losing value because the latest and greatest is coming out and you need to get rid of those parts. Charging full price on those parts will get you no business so you're going to have to mark them down. Always think inventory in a startup like this.

Who's going to be manning a phone or phones while you're building? Who's going to be packing the computers while somebody is building the computers? How are you going to take orders while tracking down parts that need to be replaced on computers you've already sold?

Note - I wouldn't buy a PC from someone who DIDN'T give my PC a 48-hour burn-in minimum. =p

That's basically standard to test high-end PC Parts.

Aside from the whole idea of burn-in testing your components ability to handle an overclock, it's a guarantee from the shop that all the components work ok, and that it doesn't get spontaneous blue screens or a premature PSU blowout.

 

[TruePaige]

Originally posted by: Zugzwang152
you're better off keeping your day job and doing tech support as you are available. If someone's looking for a new computer, offer to spec it out at Dell or wherever with a 10-15% service charge for setup and whatnot, or offer to build them a custom one.

Yeah looks like that might be how it goes...not so bad..hope I get more local PC business soon...it's a decent margin for real person to person support around here.