this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023

14 points (73.3% liked)

Selfhosted

39410 readers

121 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world

HybridSarcasm@lemmy.hybridsarcasm.xyz

Monetising spare computers (lemm.ee)

submitted 10 months ago by Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hey! So I have two spare computers, with 7th gen i5s and 16GB of ram. What would be the best way to try and monetise them? I’ve found one or two websites which allow you to rent out your servers essentially as a VPS on a fairly long term way with a decent payout. However I tried sending them an email and got no response. Are there any other such services?

(The website was this )

top 16 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] Acters@lemmy.world 30 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The amount of money you can gain from renting out your equipment vs. the electrical cost is not worth the effort you will need to employ to make this work. Especially for these entry-level spec computers. The best way to monetize is to liquidate them into cash and churn that cash into something more profitable, which is not easy, but it works for those who are creative and passionate enough. Another method is to make them do tasks that frees up your time, or you can delegate tasks that will help you. Good luck on your monetization efforts

[+] Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee -6 points 10 months ago (3 children)

The only reason why I’m considering this kind of monetisation is cause my original plan of flipping office computers into low end gaming machines is not working

[–] Acters@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Maybe don't try to market them as gaming PCs and just market them as great workstation PCs. Also, it depends on the market and your inventory imports. If your market is people who can afford current Gen laptops, they will not like your PCs. If you market them as home theater media streaming PCs for those who want something better than a firestick, then it will make a better selling point. Either way, if you have a steady supply of these low-end PCs, then think about multiple markets instead of limiting your client base to just cheap gaming PCs. There is so much more a computer can be. Do some market research on your local or online markets and make the PCs capable of solving their needs.

[–] Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee -5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I tried doing such market analysis and it did seem that the low end gaming market was filled with overpriced stuff that I could easily undercut with apparently even some semi professional sellers present.

[–] Acters@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

OK, I understand your idea. However, I will have to throw some cold water on you. You did a market analysis, and you saw the margins for low-end gaming PCs were too high. However, what you didn't do is market analysis on the clients. You half ased it and got burned. From my experience, customers do not do much research or think logically about what they spend their money on. It's true that people will most likely make bad financial decisions. They will see your lower priced PCs and overthink it. They will believe that the lower priced stuff is also lower quality and a worse deal. There is a range in which they believe a PC should cost, and by undercutting the competition, you estranged your client base. On the other hand, presentation and words matter a lot to people and the algorithms(search engine optimizers). They don't care about acronyms or technical words. If you look at how Apple and other giant tech brands marker their technology, you will find that specs take a back seat. On the flip side, the experience and capabilities take center stage. Making your clients feel welcomed and meeting their desires without accidentally coming off as "cheap garbage" is a tricky balancing act.

If you don't want to do this type of marketing and selling, then just make the PCs work for you instead.

[–] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Why do you need to have "scamming people" as a business model instead of selling those machines as what they are?

They're born for office use and are still perfect for office use. They're not and they're never been gaming machines. You're trying to deceive those people that they just know "Intel i7 is good", but they don't know that a 1st gen Intel i7 is worse than a 10th gen Intel i3. They'll immediately return it as soon as they discover it can't run even old games at 720p 30fps

Find which line you like (optiplex, thinkcentre, HP), stock only similar computers and sell them to small businesses, 5-6 years old machines are still overkill for accounting and email.

I resell old thinkcentres with a 100% margin without any kind of lie or omission and customers are happy and buy again. Then because I only stock the same stuff I have plenty of spare parts and I can give fast replacement

[–] Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Im not scamming? I upgraded the machines, doubling the ram and adding a dedicated graphics card. I’m actually attempting to create value

[–] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ah ok I thought it was just adding some RGB and vinyl wrapping to cover the scuffs

[–] Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

Nah. I did the arguably poor choice of only upgrading the internals

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 months ago

I did that with my personal machine. It works well.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 months ago

I run one of these office machines as a desktop/server. My desktop is a vm with vfio and it works well.

Its especially nice as I can basically though in tons of ram and even a external GPU and power supply with an adapter. Don't call someone a scammer just because they want to make money

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 months ago

Really? You could just throw in a GPU and call it a day.

You shouldn't have any issue selling these machines as there is still a market

[–] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 11 points 10 months ago

Because you don't have dozens of ipv4 addresses and you don't give a SLA or a business invoice you have to severely undercut prices.

A VPS with that cpu performance can be rented for free from Oracle or from $2 from ovh.

So you have to rent it to 50 different customers just to break even the electricity price. Impossible

Not to mention bad customers who pay the low fee just to see if you're hackable

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 10 points 10 months ago

You could sell the hardware. That's about it unless you want to save money by self hosting

[–] chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net 8 points 10 months ago

Another angle to consider is the liability of you being responsible for the content on your system. Someone could rent your machine to host very illegal content. At which point, as far as the authorities are concerned, it is coming out of your IP from your computer. You might be able to explain it away, or you might not. It’s not a hassle that’s worth the while.

[–] echo64@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Solar panels and mining crypto when the sun is out and electricity is free. Nothing else will bring you any profit. And it's unlikely you'll be able to mine anything in any time length that is useful