How To Profit From A Home-based House Cleaning Business
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by: ToniChainbridge
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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.
Home cleaning is becoming an exceptionally popular service today. Why? Because more and more people's lifestyles have changed. In general people are much busier than what they were a few years ago and people are seeking help from services to help them out with house-hold chores.
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:
For advertising purposes you really should give your cleaning service a name. It could just be your own name, i.e. 'Joan Walter's House Cleaning' or you could give it a more generic name i.e. 'Your Sparkly House'. Well, you get the idea anyway!
Having a business name forms an identity for your business. If you are serious about making a profit and an income from this, then you need to take your little business seriously and it all starts with a name.
Choose Your Territory & Customers:
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.
If you don't have your own transport, then you should try and target people near where you live. But you will also need to identify if the people in your area have the money to pay for a cleaner.
So basically you need to know who can afford to pay for a cleaner. You also need to know if there are enough of these premium customers within a certain proximity of each other? Ideally you would want as many customers as close to each other as possible. This way you can do more cleans per day and not lose too much time travelling from one customer to another.
Costs for Set-Up:
As an Independent Cleaner, there is very little you need to buy to start your own business. Most Independent Cleaners tend to use the cleaning products and equipment of their customers. So you won't need to buy any cleaning products. This is the main reason why you will make a healthy profit!
The following are what you will probably have to spend some money on:
o An apron/tabard
o Advertising
o Travelling costs
Setting The Price:
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:
Let everyone know about your new service. Target your target customer and put flyers through their mailbox. This is by far the quickest and cheapest method of advertising. You want to put hundreds of these flyers out.
Produce your flyer by typing it up in a word file. If you can't do this then find somebody who can. Ideally you will want two flyers on a page. Go to your local printers or library and have them copied as many times as you can handle or can afford (hopefully a few hundred copies).
Post hundreds of flyers out through prospective mailboxes. This will keep you fit and really doesn't take that long. A surprise telephone message might be waiting for you when you get back home!
Depending on your budget, you could think about putting an ad in the Yellow Pages. Don't worry if you can't afford it, put one in next year instead.
Expanding:
Now that you have a full client list of your own you might consider hiring some help. This is just the start of things, you could end up hiring dozens of cleaners and put your own feet up!
Put an ad in your local newspaper advertising for a cleaner. Once you have chosen a satisfactory candidate take him/her with you on your cleaning rounds for him/her to get used to your cleaning methods and techniques.
Now that they are working to your standards, you can leave them to do their own cleans with new customers.
Once you are totally confident with managing cleaning staff there is no reason why you can't hire more cleaners.
About the Author
Author Toni Chainbridge will show you how to set up and successfully manage your own house cleaning business. Also, visit Toni's site to find out some of the top house cleaning tips.
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