Fixing Xbox 360s as Summer Income

[Zeturi]

Hi guys, title says it all. Since I work within the school system, I have two summer months off. I have some experience with fixing 360s, and what problems I haven't learned how to fix sound easy enough.

My idea is, buy the first batch of 5 rrod consoles off of ebay. About $40 each, so $200 total. My plan is to fix each of these, probably only costing $100 in parts for all five. So I have invested $300 in five non-working systems, $50 for each one.

What I want to do is, put up an ad on craigslist to trade my working console for their non-working (rrod) console. They give me $50 plus their broken console, and I give them my working console, no accessories involved. If I do that, after trading all 5 original consoles, I will have made $250. Since I spent $300 on the consoles before, my profits and debts and net -$50 ( I was -$300 before), but now I have five *new* broken consoles in my possession.

With these 5 xboxes, it will cost me another $100 to fix them, plus I am -$50 from before. When I trade all of my consoles, I'll have $250. Since it cost $100 for parts, and I was already -$50 for my old debt, I'll net $100. And I'll still have 5 broken consoles.

*I plan to let everyone have a 1-week warranty. They can test the system during the swap, and have a week in case I slipped up during repair.*

Profits and debts will net me with $150 each time I sell all five consoles. If I do that once a week, I can make $600 a month. (Or in my case, $1200 for the summer).


Okay, sorry for all the numbers, but I just wanted to make it clear that there is definitely some good money in doing this, considering that it sometimes takes only 2 hours to fix a 360. (At least once you have the parts and know the problem.) It works out to making 15 bucks an hour, without having pay taxes.

What I'd like to ask you guys is, what sucks about my idea?

Is the price reasonable?

Uhh... questions or comments? Feel free to say whatever comes to mind. I think this could be good money for >16 modders, just have your parents do the dealings so they'll take you seriously.

Thanks,

[Triton]

buying bulk lots of 360s on ebay and selling the repaired systems on ebay would probably net you a somewhat higher profit margin, espeically if you also post ads on craigslist looking for broken consoles (plus accessories controllers etc) at a reasonable price

[XCVG]

It's a good idea, if you can pull it off. I like the swap thing especially. You could try Triton's idea if that fails.

[DopestKidEva]

Nice idea but make sure u buy an xbox that u know the problem. On eBay the owner usually says the problem.

[ghosstt]

You could always buy the 360s, and just send them to M$ and then resell them.

[nevermind1534]

I resell NESes on ebay and make a good amount of money. I have about 50 of them right now.

[eagle5953]

I think Ben's still got you beat on NESes - didn't he mention in a podcast that he had enough to make an NES throne or something?

[Master Kirby]

I think when Ben mentioned making a throne, he was talking about NES catrtidges, not the actual console.

[nevermind1534]

I think when Ben mentioned making a throne, he was talking about NES catrtidges, not the actual console.

I don't have quite that many cartridges. Only a few hundred. I could just about make a throne out of all of my consoles.

[weaponepsilon]

Be warned. I once bought a couple 360s off of ebay with similar intentions. Turned out they were opened and I tried the 3rrod xclamp fix and I couldn't get them to work. They were previously opened, which I suspect may have been the reason. Either that or my fix was fail.

[eagle5953]

I was thinking about that, too - many of them for sale online are probably total losses. You'll have to choose carefully and realize you're going to have to take a loss on them.

On the plus side, you might be able to get something for them by selling the case and individual working parts, etc.

[lifeisbetterwithketchup]

I think when Ben mentioned making a throne, he was talking about NES catrtidges, not the actual console.

I don't have quite that many cartridges. Only a few hundred. I could just about make a throne out of all of my consoles.

He was talking about Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt cartridges if i remember correctly.

[Valium]

The thing is, you're forgetting a few factors in your plan.

A) Shipping on the 360's from eBay. Cuts into your profit margin, and 5 360's aren't going to be cheap.

B) RRoD's aren't simple to fix, if they were then there wouldn't be so many bulk lots on eBay. You'd be lucky to be able to fix more than half of the 5 you initially buy. Don't forget that these fixes are necessarily permanent, your 1 week insurance is a good idea, but the x-clamp from what I've heard is far from perfect. You'd end up with a fair few amount of customers complaining that their 360 broke after a few weeks. Not to say that's a problem exactly, if there's no refunds, but it's not a good start to a business. Especially when it's free to make ads on craigslist that will defame you.

C) Assuming A isn't too much to make it not worthwhile, and B isn't deterring you at all, then you will still need to find your target customers. 5 people a week who need replacement 360's, if this was the launch year of the 360 then yeah, you'd easily find more than 5 people a week. But the RRoD isn't so common anymore, and with the free replacement from Microsoft, shelling out $50 for a possible scam (no offense to you, people are untrustworthy n' such), people aren't as likely to trust you.

Sorry to break a young entrepreneur's idea, but there's better things you can fix with a little electronics knowledge. Set up a few ads on craigslist saying you can fix iPods, game consoles (pre-7th gen is all easy), whatever, buy cheap chinese replacement parts for iPods and you'll be rolling in the money. Lots of idiots break their iPods, and them shelling out $20 + parts for a 5 minute part replacement would land you a lot more money than fixing 360's. More if you can come to them and up the availability factor.

[Dark-Aries]

IU like your idea, but as Valium said, it's not perfect. Even my Idea for money is far form perfect. Doing what Custon NES guy does but for every console. To get consoles in working condition for cheap is hard, then try to make a profit out of it, as today nobody wants to buy expensive stuff. (That's why I'm hoarding stuff right now...

But power to ya if you can get it to work.

[Zeturi]

The thing is, you're forgetting a few factors in your plan.

A) Shipping on the 360's from eBay. Cuts into your profit margin, and 5 360's aren't going to be cheap.

B) RRoD's aren't simple to fix, if they were then there wouldn't be so many bulk lots on eBay. You'd be lucky to be able to fix more than half of the 5 you initially buy. Don't forget that these fixes are necessarily permanent, your 1 week insurance is a good idea, but the x-clamp from what I've heard is far from perfect. You'd end up with a fair few amount of customers complaining that their 360 broke after a few weeks. Not to say that's a problem exactly, if there's no refunds, but it's not a good start to a business. Especially when it's free to make ads on craigslist that will defame you.

C) Assuming A isn't too much to make it not worthwhile, and B isn't deterring you at all, then you will still need to find your target customers. 5 people a week who need replacement 360's, if this was the launch year of the 360 then yeah, you'd easily find more than 5 people a week. But the RRoD isn't so common anymore, and with the free replacement from Microsoft, shelling out $50 for a possible scam (no offense to you, people are untrustworthy n' such), people aren't as likely to trust you.

Sorry to break a young entrepreneur's idea, but there's better things you can fix with a little electronics knowledge. Set up a few ads on craigslist saying you can fix iPods, game consoles (pre-7th gen is all easy), whatever, buy cheap chinese replacement parts for iPods and you'll be rolling in the money. Lots of idiots break their iPods, and them shelling out $20 + parts for a 5 minute part replacement would land you a lot more money than fixing 360's. More if you can come to them and up the availability factor.

I've found a few 360s with free shipping for $40. Usually, I look up what's wrong with them in the ad, if it seems fixable, then I order it. I took a chance with one console, but not with the others. And yeah, free fix over a $50 fix is pretty bad, but their getting their console back immediately with me, not the 1-3 months that microsoft takes. The only two fixes that I'm really looking to do are the E74 error (which I fixed before), and replacing a bad disk drive, which doesn't seem to hard.

On the other hand, I may attempt a 360 laptop. (Been reading and rereading the how-tos for a while, and have some of the resources on hand.) If it isn't half-bad, then I might consider doing a few, and selling them on ebay.

If neither of these works out, I might consider doing the easier fixes for ipods and stuff. Thanks for the feedback, by the way, negative criticism is usually the most helpful.