Why the Computer Repair Business is Dead

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Ultraman

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I agree 100 % that those 2 guys should get out of the computer repair business. I mean, 4 gigs of ram! Are you serious? 4 of them.
And the second guy, if he can't make it printing flyers, pounding the pavement, and going on Craigslist, what hope is there for me? And I don't even have 4 gigs of ram!

After I trash my old computer, what happens when I turn on my new Gateway beauty? Where's all my stuff? All I see is crapware.

There have always been friends, teenagers, retirees, and part timers doing work cheaply and if you compete with them getting to $50k is hard. So yeah, if that's the end of the business you want, good luck to you. For me, if I only made $50k, I would starve.

I don't think I would be taking career or business advice from a guy that thinks 4gigs of ram is a big deal and doesn't seem to know much else about what he has in his hand. I didn't watch the end of the other video to see what it is he's selling.
 
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If his goals are competing in the "el cheapo" bottom end residential market....I guess he put his writing on the wall. Sub 400 dollar 1 year warranty laptop with cheapness components (AMD CPU, likely a basic spec HDD)...yeah there's not much margin in it.

Dealing with strictly personal computers...the residential market, yes being in that field is not nearly as lucrative as it was years ago when PCs were over 2,000 and 3,000 to sometimes 5,000 bucks.

But if you're going to focus on the bottom end models of the residential market like this guy does....yup, writing has been on the wall.

He obviously didn't hear of such successful strategies such as diversifying, selling services that turn into steady recurring revenue, or one of the larger money making decisions...going after the business market.
 
I actually like "Eli the computer guy" videos(watched them in the past) . That first video about the laptop is taken out of context(by the way, I agree that computer is powerful enough for what most people do) . He came from a background from running a large shop back in the early XP years Making a high six figure income. His point was the business has changed. If you watched the second video, he recommended doing managed support at $50/pc/month. He said the money today is providing services.

We service mainly residential and there will be money to be made for a long time. The key point to understand is to make money in the business, you are not fixing computers you are supporting and solving people's issues, in particular managing their data, which is their life. It does not matter how inexpensive computers become, people will always need premium help.
 
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I cant believe "Eli" would recommend that Gateway model. Its garbage. It overheats, the power button fails all the time, the keyboard goes bad. Sheesh, I've seen so many of those come into the shop with dead mobos or broken power buttons.

But regardless, the computer repair business is just that, people who want to get a computer repaired will want to go somewhere and pay $100+ instead of another $400 for a new one and then have to deal with the losss of installed software and the hassle of a data move. It may be dead in the future but it is not now.
 
Eli the Computer Guy knows more about the computer repair business than 99% of the people on Technibble. He is correct in what he is saying. More and more these days I'm hearing "I'm not paying more than such in such amount to fix it, I only paid $300 for it two years ago I'll just buy a new one" I have had several customers balk at HDD replacement in the past few months because of the cost compared to how cheap a new more powerful system is. The second guy also has good points. There are millions of people trying to do the same thing, and more coming in every day. Unless you got established years ago the odds of making it now are about as good as making a living doing youtube videos. What other things have we seen go this way? TV reapair? Bet you don't know many guys doing that these days. Who fixes DVD players? How about cell phones? Most cell phones these days cost at least as much at a gateway or Dell from best buy yet I don't see a lot of people fixing those. Computers are more and more becoming disposable items thanks to the PC markets "race to the bottom"


None of us want to admit it but break fix is indeed dying. The only things that will be making money in the next 10 years are services and iThing repair.



Note: To the people bashing the Gateway specs, did you notice the date of the video was May 21, 2010? Those were pretty decent specs back then.
 
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gunslinger said:
Eli the Computer Guy knows more about the computer repair business than 99% of the people on Technibble.
Click to expand...

The guy shut down his business in 2009 because he said computer repair was dead. 2009. :confused:

The 2011 video says he started back up again and its even worse. 2011. :confused:

I have been making a very nice living during the "dead" years from 2009 to 2013 and 2014 is off to a good start.

This guy might be right that the end is coming but I think he got it all wrong in 2009 when he shut down his business and 2011 when computer repair was going very nicely for many of us. Just because someone says a storm is eventually coming doesn't mean they know more than the rest of us, especially when it takes 5 or more years for the storm to show up.
 
I love it when these guys are saying the computer repair business is dead and 30-75K is all your going to make... meanwhile, in reality, we're pulling in 6 figures and I have so much work it's ridiculous.

Eli knows what he is talking about when it comes to the technical side of things but he should stay out of the prediction business because he sucks at it.
 
Can see what he says to a point, but realistically, there are always people getting computer viruses, it may morph, but oh well.
 
After readiing some of the responses, things need to cleared up. Which "Computer Repair" business are we talking about?

If you are talking about the business 5 - 6 years ago, repairing XP machines, swapping mother boards , doing RAM upgrarades, installing larger hard drives, then I agree that business is dying or dead. There are people that buy those $450 wonders, basically renting them for 3 or 4 years, and then go buy a new one when it breaks. No way to build a business there.

The last several years it was possible to make some money doing virus removal, data recovery, replace dying hard drives, and phone and laptop screens That business is being taken over by low over head, low priced people. The cost of entry is low. There is a member here that said he won't pay for a virus scanner or AV, there are plenty of free ones. Anyone with decent google skills can figure out how to do the majority of this work. When they get over their head, they come to places like this and ask questions. But, there are many higher level people who know what they are doing, don't charge bargain basement rates or chase bottom feeder customers, and are thriving.

What isn't dying maybe isn't really Computer Repair. There are specialists that take on jobs that other shops won't do. People who specialize in severs or networks, people who have found a niche in business or residential, but also keep adapting to the changing market. Looking at my own business, I realize that it's less to do with repairing hardware and more to do with software, protecting data, and getting different devices and systems to operate together. With an occaisional malware removal or hardware fix thrown in.

I have been doing this professionaly over 10 years, and if I was still doing what I did even 5 years ago, my business would be dead. too.


/sorry for the long rant.
 
The market is not dead. It is evolving, just like it always has, and always will. People get so caught up on the physical aspects of the business that they forget what it is all about. Storing, processing, transmitting, etc information. Nothing more, nothing less.

Just like in the real world. Many animals went in the direction of an evolutionary dead end. So will businesses. Unless they can successfully adapt.
 
markverhyden said:
Just like in the real world. Many animals went in the direction of an evolutionary dead end. So will businesses. Unless they can successfully adapt.
Click to expand...

[Off Topic] That's not the real world. The real world is only 6,000 years old and evolution is an evil myth perpetrated by the godless scientists ...
 
90% of what we do are virus cleanups honestly. Most of it is adware/add ons/toolbars, etc. Do you get power supply replacements and motherboard replacements? Not really many anymore, unless a storm comes through and pops a couple of NIC cards, or a couple of power supplies. That being said, though, I'm still catching up on work. I am thankful for that, but we've been pretty busy honestly. I think at this point if you are mainly residential most of your calls will be services, like set up a wifi network, tuneups, etc.
 
markverhyden said:
The market is not dead. It is evolving, just like it always has, and always will. People get so caught up on the physical aspects of the business that they forget what it is all about. Storing, processing, transmitting, etc information. Nothing more, nothing less.

Just like in the real world. Many animals went in the direction of an evolutionary dead end. So will businesses. Unless they can successfully adapt.
Click to expand...

X2. I started as a hardware guy in the 70's for DEC. By 1980 they were saying the hardware is dead, go to software. They were right but I stayed with what I liked.

Now DEC and its 135,000 global employees are a distant memory. This business sucks in some ways. It is constantly morphing unlike the plumbing or electrician trades. I really enjoyed fixing hardware back in the day. Now all I do is software related and the occasional hardware swap...not very rewarding to me.

When you tire of dancing in the high tech arena you move on. I just looked at a snack route that is for sale. From high tech to no tech but after almost 40 years I'm tired of adapting.
 
Re:

I am still pretty busy, especially for the first quarter of 2014, but still keeping the biz as part-time. The end of last week I dealt with site-to-site VPN, virus removal, router replacements (and got the 3 computers of the pharmacy under a maintenance plan), slow computers that need upgrading and all of them returning business customers, referrals and calls from people that know how to google. :) By what I see I am still keeping the business as part-time, because I really enjoy running a business, even though it is exhausting and still working on making it a full time job but I see that the computer repair, whether for businesses or residences, is pretty saturated by teenagers and IT MSP businesses are hiring since they probably cannot handle the workload.
Thank God I have a full time job that pays pretty well, pays for my training, get the full health benefits I need, pays for my 401K, otherwise I would worry about where this industry was going myself. Myself and others have said this: you can't expect to stay at the same level of knowledge, make the same money and not have to learn any new skills in this industry. I for one, will keep doing what I am currently doing, because it seems to me, that I am on the right track!
 
I work for a company that only deals with break/fix residential stuff, we're certainly not hurting or in any apparent danger of going under. The owner of this company has 8 stores/shops in this state, and all are fairly consistently busy.

We don't just do "computer repair" though, we're more "electronics repair." We're doing any kind of job we can make money on. TVs/monitors, game consoles, ipads/phones/pods, heck, yesterday I fixed a bluetooth headset which had the ear piece pop off.

I think maybe if all you do is strictly pc repair, sure, its not going to keep you afloat for the next 5-10 years. But the consumer electronics repair is still lucrative enough to live on, and possibly thrive on if you don't limit your scope so extremely.
 
seedubya said:
[Off Topic] That's not the real world. The real world is only 6,000 years old and evolution is an evil myth perpetrated by the godless scientists ...
Click to expand...

What would we do without our lord and savior to guide us in this tumultious time?!

To me truely dead would be the point at which computers are no longer able to be repaired/serviced. Clearly residential and business services/repairs are and will remain on a different scale/scope. Like any complicated device that has so much diversity/capability there will always be a market for the repair/service of said device. I think the only debate is what form it will come in and if it will weigh more on serivces than physical repairs. How many businesses will that market support depends on the simplicity of the device.
 
Well Windows 8 may be helping us...if some of us techs scratched our heads at Windows 8 to begin with, where are end users left?
 
I also notice another thing and that is that not all businesses want to put their computers under a maintenance plan, since most are running on a budget. That does not mean that it is dead, it is just that money is being spent differently right now by consumers.
 
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