Profiting From A House Cleaning Business

Making money and profiting from your own cleaning business is easier than you think. Don't know how to start? Lets read through this article to start with the basics of setting up your own home cleaning business.

House cleaning is in huge demand today. It is forecast for this trend to continue over the foreseeable future. Have you noticed that people tend to be more in a hurry and are much busier these days? This means that people are willing to pay service providers to help them with mundane and everyday chores - such as house cleaners.

You have to decide if you want some of this action now - while the demand is huge and still growing. Starting your own house cleaning business has never been at a better time than today.

Please find below some of the main aspects you should know in order to set up as an Indpendent Cleaner.

Your Business Name:

Spend some time thinking up a suitable name for your house cleaning service. If you are stuck on ideas, do a search online for 'house cleaning services' to give you an idea of what your competitors are calling themselves. A good business name is important to give your business an identity in itself and is also important for your advertising and marketing.

No matter how small your business is, even sole-traders, you should take your business serious from the beginning. By giving your business a good name is a great start by giving you your identity within the industry.

Identifying Your Customers and Territory:

Knowing who you want to target and where they live is one of the first steps you need to take. Remember, if you have your own transport then you will be able to get around faster and do more cleans per day. If you need to rely on public transport to get from A to B then this will reduce your cleans significantly. Don't forget to take this into account when taking on new clients.

Therefore, if you do not have your own car then it would be wise to find customers where you live. However, you will need to identify if these people actually have the available funds to pay for a cleaning service.

To summarise this, you really need to know if your target customers can afford you. Secondly, you need to know if there will be enough customers who live close to one-another. In an ideal world you should try and find as many customers as you can within a short range of each other. This will cut down your travelling time dramatically.

Set-Up Costs:

With your own small business, trading as a sole-trader you will find that you need next to zero start-up costs. Many cleaners who work on their own will normally use the cleaning products & equipment based at their customers' home. Do you see how you can start profiting immediately from this business?

Below you will find an outline of what you may want to spend a little money on:

o An apron and tabard

o Advertising

o Money spent on travel

Pricing:

You now want to set youself an hourly rate. Find your Yellow Pages and ring around all the other Independent Cleaners in your area to figure out what they charge. Tip: pretend to be an enquier, don't tell them you are going to be one of their competitors!

Since you have completed your price research you can decide if you want to set your rates lower, higher or in-line with your competitors. Tip: don't charge too low, cheap sometimes reflects shoddy work!

Marketing:

If you don't carry out advertising activities, then know one will know about your cleaning service. The best and cheapest way to do this is to create small flyers and to put them directly into your potential customers' mailbox. Make hundreds if not thousands of these.

To make your flyer, have it typed up in a word document either by you or someone else. The idea is two have two versions of your flyer on one page. Print them off and take to your local library or printers to get them padded out hundreds of times - or as much as you can afford.

Put your flyers out by the hundreds if you can. You will be surprised at how quickly this actually takes. Hopefully by the time you get back home, you might even have your first phone call.

In addition to flyers, depending on your budget, advertise your cleaning service in the Yellow Pages. If you cannot afford this from the onset, once you start making some money you can then think about placing an advert then.

Expanding:

Seriously think about hiring cleaners when your diary gets too full. You can start to make double, triple, then quadruple the money. It's worth thinking about for the future.

All you need to do is advertise in a local newspaper. When you have chosen someone who you like, simply take them with you on your cleans and they will soon pick up your cleaning routines and methods.

Gain new customers and let your newly trained cleaner take on those extra clients!

Once you are totally confident with managing cleaning staff there is no reason why you can't hire more cleaners.