Gutter Cleaning – High Pay For a Dirty, Dangerous Job
I love gutter cleaning season!
Of all the businesses I’ve started, cleaning gutters is in a league of its own when it comes to the sheer volume of money you can make.
Of course, one of the biggest drawbacks is that it is dirty, dangerous work. When you are cleaning gutters, 99% of the time you will be scooping smelly muck out of a high gutter while either perched on a ladder, or standing on a roof. Occasionally, you run into a dry gutter that can easily be cleaned with a leaf blower – but that’s not too often.
If you get into the gutter cleaning business, you will have to deal with much criticism from friends and family (at least I did). In fact, a few of my brothers didn’t even want to know me after they found out what kind of business I was starting. In their opinion, such a job was beneath anyone with more than a grade 8 education. In other words, they assumed that the type of person that would go around cleaning other people’s gutters, was a person that had no other options and had fallen to the bottom rung of the social hierarchy. I really had to laugh because they had no idea how much money people were paying to have this job done, and how quickly I could complete it.
So why do people pay so much to have their gutters cleaned?
Well, I think it comes down to the fact that, under normal circumstances, the homeowner will take hours to complete a job that I can do in a quarter of the time. Not to mention, the danger factor is more than enough to put people off and convince them to hire a professional to do the job. Are you going to spend $100, or risk a serious injury, or worse.
Like any business, I have specialized equipment that I use in my gutter cleaning business. This allows me to complete jobs in a fraction of the time it would take the average homeowner. Because of this efficiency, there are times when I can be making $100 per hour – that’s no joke. And people don’t bat an eye when they hand over the payment – they are just glad to have the job done.
So, I suppose what it comes down to is the fact that you are risking life and limb to do an extremely dirty job, and you are getting paid well for your trouble.
Gutter cleaning is not for everyone. Although it sounds fantastic to be making $100 per hour, you really have to experience a few jobs to understand how difficult it can be. Not to mention, many jobs don’t go according to plan and you wind up wasting a lot of time. It’s amazing how your per hour rate can plummet if this happens.
I remember a job I did last fall that should have been very straightforward and I was hoping to make at least $75 an hour. Well, as it turned out, all four downspouts were plugged up so solid that it took me an extra three hours to unplug them – so a normal job that would’ve taken under an hour, ended up taking me four hours. At the end of it all, I was making $12 an hour and I was covered from head to toe in smelly black muck!
So, why would an educated guy stoop to do a job like this? For the money, of course – and nothing else. Although it only lasts about a month, I can make enough money to get me through the winter. This allows me to work on my other (less profitable) businesses during this time without having to worry about paying the bills at the end of the month.
Hey, whatever works.
