Ever since Apple launched the iPhone, smartphone repair has been a profitable business. As more people buy smartphones and tablets, and upgrade them more frequently, the demand for quick repairs and replacements will only keep increasing. In this guide we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about how to start your own smartphone repair business.
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1. What you need to start a smartphone repair business
Smartphone repair can be a profitable and fun business to start. If you have the right tools and parts and you know how to fix smartphones and other devices, you can make a living out of fixing other people’s devices.
Before you get started, there are a few things you need to understand. In today’s post, I’ll talk about: Apple won’t make it easy to start your own repair business. You’ll need a laptop or PC, the right tools, the basic knowledge of electronics (like what a charger looks like), and the desire to fix electronics for a living. Much like running a blog, this is a hobbyist business with no guarantees of making money, but with all the positive aspects to starting a business, it’s worth it.
After you acquire some tools and parts for your business, you can start fixing your own devices. There are two things you need to remember before you get started: We’ll go through everything you need to know after you’ve learned about these two points. If you have a laptop or PC that you don’t want to lose, you can get your smartphone repaired.
Take a notebook and write down everything you want to fix your smartphone. Include the phone model, serial number, email, and any special instructions the seller gave you. I would suggest coming prepared with photos and videos if you really want your customers to know you fixed their device. Right now it’s illegal for US citizens to repair their own electronics.
That means if you think you have the skills and the tools to start your own repair business, be very careful whatever you decide to do. This is because you might be charged with violating the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which makes it illegal to sell devices that are capable of "accessing the Internet or a wired or wireless communication service without authorization" after you’ve sold them.
2. The tools you’ll need to start a smartphone repair business
In order to start a smartphone repair business, you’ll need the following tools: a smartphone repair stand, a heat gun (for soldering), a heat gun (for de-soldering), an X-Acto knife, tweezers, and a good quality magnifying glass. The stand is used to hold up electronic devices (for example every smartphone) so that you can fix them.
There are different models of stand, you can choose between one that lets you repair all smartphones in one sitting or two stands. The type of stand you choose will be completely dependent on your budget.
I highly recommend getting a stand with a powerful enough battery to keep your phone powered all the time, which can be expensive. You can always get used ones which are completely functional, but these will save you from having to replace your devices regularly.
Once you find a stand you like, it’s best to leave it in a place where you can check on it regularly. You will need some soldering equipment, like a soldering iron and some solder. Soldering is a process of heating metal to be used as components in electronics. It’s done by inserting rods or leads into specially designed solder tubes. Each tube does a specific job. In your smartphone stand, you will need to connect at least two of these tubes to the other side of the device solder, in the following picture you can see what I’m talking about.
To start your own business you will first need electronics parts. You can find all sorts of electronic parts for your new smartphone repair business at radioshack.com, cellspare.com, globalsources.com, alibaba.com, amazon.com Search for computer memory (an M-labeled memory card will work just fine), expansion cards, batteries, displays, circuit boards, camera lenses, earphones, keyboards, microphones, batteries, chargers, antennas, and screen protectors. Basically anything that you need that isn’t soldered to the device and will make your life easier during repairs. Next, you’ll need a heat gun.
Read More Details: Why Huawei Is A Smart Choice For Small Businesses
3. The best places to advertise your business
Nazarian says the best places to advertise your business are on Facebook and Instagram because they’re the fastest growing social media channels. She also says to consider advertising on Snapchat because it’s a fast-growing channel and users are more engaged than ever.
How to Choose a Niche Your niche should be niche-agnostic. For instance, you can talk about smartphones or Apple laptops or maybe drones or smart home devices or smart city vehicles. These are all potential niches. Your skills need to lie somewhere inside this broad topic. For example, one of Nazarian’s clients is a man who needs to improve his smartphone photography skills. Another client is a licensed culinary chef who uses his smartphone to take mouthwatering food pictures. What to Sell Your Services Niches will definitely keep growing, keep their clients engaged, and their revenue diversified.
Especially in today's challenging economy, it’s not so easy to guarantee a steady stream of steady income, but working in a certain area of your niche is certainly a bonus. So, help your niche grow. For instance, during the pandemic, you could find some valuable traction in e-commerce and help people to escape from their pandemic-induced problems by purchasing luxury and needed home accessories.
You could even use your smartphone to create therapeutic workouts and capture movement that people can use in other ways. When to Be Active and When to Sit It seems to be a personal preference. Some people do their repairs on a daily or weekly basis while some do it less frequently and sporadically.
Moreover, people repair their phones on a daily or weekly basis when they’ve got more time because they work from home rather than at a station or repair center. We suggest giving your best to determine how often you can fix your users’ phones and tablets. If you don’t have the time to do your work even on a regular basis, there’s no need to force your way into the business.
4. How to find the parts you need for smartphone repairs
With the right tools and a little know-how, anyone can fix their own smartphone. You’ll need to start by identifying the problem with your phone, which can be done by using a multimeter. A multimeter is a device that measures voltage, resistance, and current in electronic circuits. One type of multimeter is called a voltage divider. This tool will only show you the voltage of your circuit but won’t show you the voltage of other parts in your circuit, like the battery. It’s best to use a voltmeter that can measure both voltage and current because this will help you choose the correct component to swap out.
Before you actually buy the parts to fix your current or missing component, you’ll need to determine the right price. The cost of mobile phones varies based on a host of factors, including brand, model, and storage capacity. A good place to start is checking the cost of popular smartphones from reputable brands and then work backward. If your phone is selling for too much money, you can rest easy knowing that almost any component can be replaced at a cheap price. If your phone is selling for too little money, there might be cheaper, high-quality alternatives that you can try.
Please do your research before you buy the parts you plan to use and make sure they’re from reputable companies. Once you have a breakdown of your total cost and components you can heavily discount different parts by figuring out the total volume of the parts sold and then finding your cheapest price per unit. To determine volume, you can visit sites like Geekbench and import your phone’s IMEI from Samsung to get a rough idea of how many units of that model have been sold. To find the cheapest price per unit on a specific component, look for the total volume of all devices on the marketplace that are selling that particular piece of hardware.
5. How to price your services for profit
To ensure your business makes money, price your products and services in a way that covers your expenses, allows for growth, and leaves room for profit. To find your price point, consider how much you’ll spend on supplies, how much time you’ll spend on a project, and how much you want to make on each project. To determine your overhead expenses, try to calculate how much your scoring allows you to earn in a month versus how much that overhead would cost you per hour. (Hint: a Scoring Calculator is available at PayScale.)
Then start the calculators and see what your budget looks like. Apple’s App Store estimates the value of your app at 0.005 cents. Given that in an average year you might sell your app for $1 to $1.5 million, our rough calculation shows it is more profitable to charge $0.008 to $0.01 per install. If you take this approach, then the rough approximate cost is around $12. Commodity prices fluctuate based on supply chain, production costs, and demand. In figuring out the value of your app, it pays to analyze your sales figures, over a 12-month refund period since new releases are rare.
Since a new release would occur approximately once a month, you need to know the month with the highest sales figures. To run a quick calculation, average the sales from the first three weeks of the month, and subtract that from the typical monthly average. That gives you the January sales average, and the most common monthly sales figure. Next, find the second most common monthly sales figure, and add that to the average for January. Finally, add the third most common monthly sales figure to the average for January to get the monthly average. My intuition told me that the average cost of a new iPhone with cellular second generation SIM card would be $799, so that is the base sales price of my app.
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