You will not hesitate to charge that much, and more, when you find your wet finger tips freezing in the cold, or the first time a 30 pound glass panel falls shut on your wrist.
I got just as much business from cleaning companies as direct clients.
You can spend half your time unhinging ancient sliding glass windows, melting 50 year old pain that has sealed them shut, removing storm-windows and screens, tip-toeing on white new carpet while carrying a desk-sized piece of dust and cobweb infested panel. And oh, the fun you will have scrapping plant matter, dead insects and scum off of garden-facing windows. How about the demented old lady who forgets who you are and dials 9/11 at your "sight", right after she calls you a nigger several times and sicks a dog on you?
It's not all get in and get out, but it taught me how to run a business, and my subsequent ventures after that were all a breeze compared. However, it is the most lucrative business with little upfront investment.
Not difficult at all - I remember paying £25 for someone to clean the 4 windows of a flat I was living in, which was on the 1st floor of a house.
How long do you think it takes to do 4 windows, exterior only, with a mop on an extended handle? (the answer is: not very long at all)
He was cleaning next door's windows, so I spoke to him as I walked past, and he dropped an invoice through the letterbox. And then 4 weeks later, he cleaned the windows again, as if I'd signed up to a subscription... So I paid £25 again, for not much.
If you can schedule a route of cleaning, you can do 12 houses in just a couple of hours.
12 x £25 = £300 (which isn't far off $500; $475 at today's exchange rate).
You'd need to deduct your van costs and cleaning equipment out of that though.
We pay £3 a fortnight to have about 6m^2 of window (ground floor) cleaned to retail spec including wiping down the paintwork afterwards and a free internal clean every 6 months or so.
It takes probably as long for them to take the money as it does to actually clean (about 5mins I reckon).
I think you are misunderstanding. It didn't cost his customers $500/day, it cost 5 of them $100 how ever often they needed it (probably once when they moved out of their apartment). Would you seriously spend so much of your own time doing such boring work if you could just pay a profession a measly $100 to do it for you (probably faster and better than you would do).
>Would you seriously spend so much of your own time doing such boring work if you could just pay a profession a measly $100 to do it for you (probably faster and better than you would do).
Working off $100 as near enough £60 then it would have to take at least half a day for it to be worth doing IMO. Sure if you're on £60 an hour then it's probably worth paying someone that for the 15mins they take to clean all your windows.
Seems a bit steep to me though - I could buy the ladder, squeegee and sponge and do the windows and still not be down and of course next time I'd have the ladder, etc., already.
If you had to buy the Ladder etc then it ends up not being $100 saved right? Besides, the setup time plus actual window cleaning would take considerably longer than 15 minutes.
