Easy Steps To Profit From A Home Based 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.
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.
Do you see where we are going here? You should really look into this and understand that the demand is 'now' (and rising). This can only mean that you will have less competitors today than if you start in a year or two's time.
Please find below some of the main aspects you should know in order to set up as an Indpendent Cleaner.
Choosing a Name For Your Business:
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:
You need to know who your customers are going to be and where they live. You might not have your own transport, so this will have to be taken into consideration. If you have a car then you will be able to travel further a field and be able to do more cleans per day.
Finding customers who live near you should be a priority if you don't have your own transport. If this is the case, then you need to find out if these people have surplus money 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.
Costs for Set-Up:
Being a sole-trader within your own small business will require very little overheads and start-up costs. For example, most independent cleaners will usually use the clients' cleaning equipment and products. So in effect, you should not really need to buy any at all. For this reason, this is how you can make a great profit from the beginning!
Let's take a look at what you can spend a few dollars on to set-up shop:
o An apron/tabard
o Marketing
o Costs for travelling
Price Structure:
Setting a price structure is your next step. My advice would be to call your competitors, found in your Yellow Pages. Pretend you are an enquirer and ask what they charge.
Now that you have this information, you are in a position to set an hourly rate which is in-line with your competition. The bottom line is up to you if you want to charge the same, higher or lower than your competitors.
Advertising:
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.
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).
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.
Expansion:
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.
To hire a cleaner, simply place an ad in your local paper. The successfull candidate will then go with you for a few weeks on your cleaning routine. They will soon learn to work to your standards using your techniques.
Once you are happy and confident that he/she can go and clean on their own, you can then either have some free time to yourself or double your customer base.
Who says to stop at one cleaner, once your are in control, take on more cleaners.
Article Source: http://www.search-raven.com
About the Author
About the 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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by: ToniChainbridge
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