Introducing Gaming Workstations LLC, a leading star among our sellers at jawa.gg. Check out their storefront to find builds for every budget, all meticulously designed and beautifully photographed. With nearly 300 sales and an excellent store rating, we'll let the reviews speak for themselves.
"The PC came packed so well, it could have resisted a Fallout style nuclear attack!"
"The support from Gaming Workstations was legendary. I am in love with this computer and I am thoroughly impressed by how well it was packaged. It came with an easy setup guide."
"Can not thank GWS enough. The PC is more than I paid for. It’s almost a work of art on top of having outstanding performance. Best service, communication, and price you can find!"
"The PC came packed so well, it could have resisted a Fallout style nuclear attack!"
"The support from Gaming Workstations was legendary. I am in love with this computer and I am thoroughly impressed by how well it was packaged. It came with an easy setup guide."
"Can not thank GWS enough. The PC is more than I paid for. It’s almost a work of art on top of having outstanding performance. Best service, communication, and price you can find!"
- What is your biggest piece of advice for someone who’s looking to start selling on Jawa?
Starting to sell on Jawa is as easy as making an account and posting whatever you need to sell. What makes you a great seller is great photography and great prices.
Learn to use your phone’s camera. Take good pictures and avoid a messy background or holding the item like you found on the floor. It doesn’t take much effort to take decent pictures people want to click on.
Do your research on pricing! Just because you see something posted for a price anywhere, that doesn't mean it is going to sell for that much. Anyone can post anything for whatever price they want! A good practice is to search sold listings and sort from cheapest. I like to take the average from the second-to-last to fifth-cheapest listings. The cheapest is almost always an outlier! Pricing your stuff this way will allow you to sell your stuff faster and grow your page even faster! - What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made so far when selling on Jawa and how would you recommend a new seller avoid it?
Regardless of the price point, I now work by one rule: price to current market value. I post my builds for similar pricing as other PCs with comparable parts. There will be times when you accidentally spend too much on something. That is okay, it happens to all of us. The wrong thing to do is pass those expenses to the customer. I have had to sell PCs for at-cost or less-than-cost countless times because of poor parts selection, bad purchases on my end, or parts that simply sat too long and depreciated.
I often see builds posted that make you question the relation between parts and price point. For people selling their own PC, with understandably no knowledge of the marketplace, it's okay. For us sellers trying to build a brand and reputation, a poorly priced PC or controversial parts selection could impact the way you are seen by customers or other sellers. My biggest mistake is thinking that I need to make a big profit on every build I sell. You will have more than a handful of builds that will lose you money in your career, the key is to accept the mistake, learn from it, and keep building your brand. - What is the hardest part of the process of selling a gaming PC?
The hardest part when selling a gaming PC is getting eyes on your listings. The building, testing, listing, and shipping are all the easy parts. Once you post something it is hard to stand out from the crowd of other parts/builds for sale. On some platforms, I even go as far as paying for promotion on builds that I know are visually stunning and will attract more people than just the ones interested in the ONE build promoted. Find a good way to advertise that works for you and improve on it. - What are your favorite resources to use for PC building?
My favorite resources have to be the website I get my Windows keys from and the website I generate my shipping labels on.
Your average Windows key selling site has Win 10/11 keys for roughly $20-$30 depending on deals or discounts. I have built a relationship with the site I get mine from, which has unlocked a really good price for me. This took years to achieve so it’s something to look into if you want to save that little bit extra and plan to be in it for the long haul.
Similarly, I became friends and formed a relationship with the website where I buy my shipping labels from. Thanks to shipping volume and quality, I’ve been able to unlock better pricing than most free or paid shipping services.
An honorable mention goes to PirateShip.com. I used to pay for Stamps.com service, and the extra services are nice to have, but PirateShip provides just as good of shipping pricing for ZERO monthly fees! - What is your camera setup?
My current shoot setup goes as follows:
Setting: White vinyl wrap on a wood table with white hex acoustic panels lining the back wall. The table is separated from the wall by about an inch which allows the light of an LED strip to shine upwards creating the effect seen on most of my pictures.
Lighting: I have a set of 4 Studio Lighting LED stands on C-Clamps to the table. 2 shining up and 2 illuminating the background to remove shadows. They are all powered by an Anker 60W 6 port charger. You will need something powerful like this to make all 4 light up bright!
Camera: My main camera is a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra on 1x1 Pro Mode with a 3.2-3.8K white balance, autofocus, and stock ISO / Shutter speed setting. I only change those two during very particular builds. I always shoot in the late afternoon to have better control of the lighting level. I could improve on this myself, but I am working with a very small room for everything. - How do you decide which market to target?
The builds decide the market I target! I still build one-of-one builds that are based on the best deals I can find. You will often find $300 builds next to $2,800 builds on my page. This is because I let the market dictate which builds I make. There are times when the second-hand market is on par or more expensive than just buying new parts. During these times, I focus on higher-end builds because it's easier to make a profit on new high-end builds. During budget GPU releases, people are more willing to sell older hardware for much much cheaper thus making budget builds much more profitable than usual. - How do you consistently make a profit on your PC builds?
This may not help new buyers, but It can help someone who's been selling for a while. Don’t be afraid to buy in bulk. It can be scary to dump $1k in just RAM for example, but it's something that serious sellers need to learn to be okay with. There are two instances in which I buy bulk.
You find a new part that is substantially cheaper than the next part. For example, finding a reputable 32GB kit of RAM for $40 whereas everywhere else they start at $60. I would buy as much as I can!
You find a local seller with a surplus of used parts willing to give a discount based on volume.
Regardless, the key is research. Make sure you are getting a better deal per part than the cheapest version of that part ANYWHERE else including any fees or shipping.
For new buyers, my advice may be a little different. Do NOT use old power supplies and storage. Avoid both at all costs. A returned PC will cost you more than the piece of mind of a new part. Everything else is okay to be found, used, and refurbished. Even from my humble beginnings, I have tried to always use new power supplies and storage unless I am selling a customer trade-in for very cheap with disclaimers. - How long did it take you to grow your business to where it is now?
I started building and selling PCs in 2016 as a personal seller. I needed a good computer to run 2D and 3D CAD for school. I would build PCs, use them for a little bit, and then sell them for a tiny profit. I would keep going until I got comfortable with the PC I had plus extra money to keep going!
The parts selection I decided to keep for many years was: Intel Core i5 7600K || Sapphire RX 580 8GB || 64GB 3000MHz
During 2020 I formed into a sole proprietor with a made-up business name.
In 2021 is when I formed my Instagram page which was then called Gaming Rigs. I initially started my account as a way to track and archive all the PCs I had built and sold. Most people have this kind of Instagram page and it's commonly known as a camera dump. I had zero intention of making a page that grew so much, relatively speaking, with no attempt at playing the algorithm or attention-grabbing posts. Follow @Gaming_Workstations 👀
In 2022 I formally registered the name Gaming Workstations & Services (GWS) and started to operate as an independent seller with permits and all the fancy paperwork associated with a sole prop like a registered fictitious business name.
And finally, as of the beginning of this year, 2024, I became an LLC under the same GWS LLC name. - What is something that you do differently, or try to do differently compared to other sellers?
This is not something that I actively think about. If you are constantly worried about what other builders are doing, you will never allow yourself to craft your brand. It is okay to explore other seller pages and get ideas but take them as an influence, not a copy-paste.
I think what makes me slightly different from other builders is my attention to otherwise overlooked details and keeping to a style signature. For me, one cable out of place, mismatched hardware size, or a bad picture could ruin the whole build, making me return to the drawing board. I have had builds done, pictured, and posted only for me to look at them hours or days later and take them apart because I didn’t like them anymore. I aspire to become the Akira Nakai of PCs, I already have the hair to match haha. I like making even the cheapest PC aesthetically look double its price tag. There are times when I stare at a freshly finished build... just to immediately take it apart because it didn’t end up looking the way I envisioned. You can always just throw expensive parts at a build and make it look somewhat good, but the art start when you can make all your builds look equally stunning regardless of the parts used or the price point of the build. - Which component or component combination is selling the best for you right now?
My builds are still to this day very one-of-one, I don’t always follow the meta builds or combo because I then get lost in a sea of meta builds. I build what I can with the parts I can get for a good price. However, this doesn't mean I don't keep a mental statistic of what sells best. It is no secret that Nvidia-based builds sell way faster and with a slightly better profit. This combined with a white case and RGB lighting it’s a winning combination. The components themselves don’t have to be white, oftentimes just having a white cooler, cables, and ram with everything else black could make the build look so much cleaner.
