Gregory Baranski

When I was twelve years old in June of 2017, I bought my first iPhone, it was the 5s model with a cracked screen. My intention was to fix the screen with a cheap replacement from AliExpress and then sell the phone for a profit. Unfortunately, I made a mistake while disassembling the phone and damaged the fingerprint reader, which forced me to sell the phone for less than I paid for it. Although I lost some money, I gained valuable experience and knew that I would be more careful in the future. Despite this setback, I did not give up on my goal of making money through repairing phones.

The next phone I acquired was an iPhone 6. I successfully replaced its screen without breaking anything, and was able to sell it for a profit.

The amount of money I earned from each fixed phone varied from $25 to $100, it was enough for me to buy the things I needed without having to ask my parents for money. This was a great advantage for me. I was only able to repair one phone per month because the parts I ordered from China took two to three weeks to arrive. Additionally, it was difficult to find people who were willing to sell their broken phones, so I started offering repair services to people instead.

In December of 2019, I received my first client through a friend’s recommendation. I charged $50 for the repair, but the screen replacement only cost me $20, so I made a profit of $30. At the time, local repair shops were charging between $80 and $100 to fix an iPhone 7, so I decided to raise my prices to $75, which gave me a profit of $55 per repair. This allowed me to fix about five iPhones, but working with people proved to be challenging. Some customers complained about the quality of the replacement screens, even though they knew that the parts I used came from AliExpress and were not as good as the original ones.

In the meantime I started my e-cigarette liquid business.

Last iPhone I’ve fixed was in July 2020, and if we count in-family repairs, then last one was in March 2021. I no longer enjoy doing this work because I feel like I have reached a dead end and there is nothing more for me to learn, making it really boring.

I’ve fixed around 30-40 iPhones in total, mostly iPhone 6s and 7. One thing I regret is that I did not keep track of every repair, so I am unable to precisely calculate how much money I made from this business in total.

Operating between July 2017 and August 2020

Me at 12yo fixing my first iPhone 5S