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How To Profit From A Home-based House Cleaning Business |
By:
Toni Chainbridge |
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How To Profit From A Home-based House Cleaning Business
Toni Chainbridge
House cleaning is one of the few home-based businesses where it is relatively easy to profit from. You want some proof? I can show you now how you can easily start and profit within a few months from your own house 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:
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!
An identify for your business is very important and a good name helps provide this. Just because you want to work on your own as an independent cleaner doesn't mean that you should not take your business serious, because you should.
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.
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.
The bottom line is that you must find out who is willing to pay for a cleaning service. These same people should ideally live in a 2-3 mile radius of each other. Cutting down on travelling (either your car or public transport) this way will ensure more cleans, meaning more money!
Set-Up Costs:
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!
Below you will find an outline of what you may want to spend a little money on:
o An apron/tabard
o Marketing
o Money spent on travel
Price Structure:
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!
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.
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.
Get your flyers distributed by the bucket-load. This doesn't take as long as you think. You never know, when you return home you might have a message on your answer machine!
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.
Expansion:
Once you are well on your way of having a full, jam-packed diary you might want to think about expanding your cleaning business. By now you will be beaming with confidence of what you have accomplished all by yourself. So thinking about hiring a cleaner to help you expand should not be too daunting.
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.
About the author: Toni Chainbridge will show you how to set up and successfully manage your own http://www.homecleaningforum.com/house-cleaning-business) house cleaning business. Also, why not visit Toni's site to find out some of the top http://www.homecleaningforum.com/ house cleaning tips.
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Article Source: http://www.statssheet.com/articles/article70147.html |
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