How much money is there in console repair/moding?

[bustaballs]

I'm currently going to school full time and barely getting 18 hours a week at my local RadioShack on minimum wage. There's no other jobs in this area and I need more money to pay for bills as my girlfriend is covering some of my expenses. I am actually a computer repair technician by trade but no jobs in this area have surfaced for me within a 200+ mile radius. So, I began exploring my options.

I've been doing side work for friends but that is not stable. The city won't let me run a business out of my house. I put up a sign in my window and in my yard and they told me both times to take it down. Anything outside of a basic garage sell is considered a business.

I was wondering if there's any money in buying broken consoles off of ebay, repairing them, and reselling them. I've done repairs on a Vtech Motion, PS2 fat, PS2 slim, Xbox 360 (drive replacement), and a couple of other systems. If I can go through the effort of learning how to do common repairs on all of the systems, including retro systems, I figured there might be some money in it, even if it's not that much. Does anyone have any input or suggestions?

Edit: I could also do simple mods like switching a case with a custom one.

[Anayo]

Do it off the books.

[scrotumwound]

why not go the craigslist route?

[DaGamingMonkey]

It'd be a slow profit but you can make a profit off of it.

[bustaballs]

why not go the craigslist route?

I live in Liberal, KS. This town barely has a Wal-Mart and is the largest town in the area. The entire area on Craigslist is lumped in as SW Kansas and go take a look and how active it is. I've been putting up my info on there for months with zero responses.

[LBJeff]

I live in Liberal, KS. This town barely has a Wal-Mart and is the largest town in the area.

Why does your location say Oklahoma?

Anyways...expand your area. You can post on different Craigslist locations. Offer mail service if people send you their gear. Craigslist is free so the worst thing that happens is you end up where you started, nothing lost. I know if I lived in the middle of BFE it would be sweet if someone local offered this service. Heck, I don't live in BFE and still mailed my PS to be modded.

[samsonlonghair]

You can make a little money, but not enough to support yourself. After you buy all the materials you need your profit margin is pretty thin.

[DerekG52]

It sounds like it may be more valuable to put your PC repair skills to use. I know you said there were no jobs, but perhaps with some digging you can find some. People always need their PCs repaired. Come up with some literature explaining what you can do to "speed pc's up" and why you are better or cheaper etc than any other competition, like a Best Buy. PC repair has very small overhead and large profit margins. I do it for all of my extended family members, and typically isn't very time consuming and I generally follow the same set of processes.

[jp1]

You would probably need to offer something really special to earn a living from it. It takes a great deal of time from what I understand and the profit/effort margin seems to be pretty low.

When you see a custom handheld or a tricked out console go for $500-600 it seems like a nice venture but I'm willing to bet that after the costs involved and the amount of time that went in you are looking at less than minimum wage net profit. Of course I'm only speculating since I have no experience in the area.

[Kebo]

I bought a completely refurbished NES on eBay a couple years ago for somewhere around $125. I desperately wanted it at the time, but that is what I had to bid to win it. At the time it seemed like they went anywhere from $75-140 from this seller, I can't find his auctions now, it looks like a lot of competition has opened up since then with the "new 72-pin" systems flooding eBay. The auction was done very well, very convincing in the quality, comprehensive repair. I have no clue how long it took the guy to do these, or how much it cost him, but I assume he made something to make it worth his while. You'd never earn a living from it, but you could supplement your income until, at the very least, you find something else. It looks like the NES market in particular may be overflowing though.