Start a Gutter Cleaning Business – Serious Cash in a Short Time Period

Gutter cleaning is, by far, one of my favorite shoestring start up businesses. Although the season can be short (depending on where you live), the potential to make a lot of cash in a very short period is huge.

I live in Central Canada, so the gutter cleaning season is very short here. People will always want their gutters cleaned after the leaves fall, but before the first snowfall. If you’re in a climate like I am, that means that you may not have any more than a month to work at cleaning gutters.

Personally, I can’t see this business being any more than a great part-time opportunity. And even then, it’s not your typical after work/weekend business. You pretty much have to dedicate the month of November to this business, and be willing to work seven days a week, from sun-up till sundown. In short, you need to use every available hour.

Remember that it gets completely dark here at around 5 p.m. So, if you start as soon as the sun comes up, you will be doing well if you get seven or eight hours of actual work done.

That’s a best case scenario. The reality is that in November, the weather can change drastically from one day to the next. One day you can be working in warm sunshine, and the next, you have to postpone your jobs because you got a foot of snow overnight. If you have a full schedule, it might be impossible to find enough time to complete all the jobs before winter.

I’ve been cleaning gutters now for a few years and I can tell you that the demand for this service is incredible – but only for a short period. My marketing efforts only consist of placing a classified ad in the local newspaper for the month of October, and distributing flyers to select neighborhoods in my town. Generally, I have to turn people away in November because I’m already booked for 30 straight days.

If I had a way to decrease my time per job, the profit potential would be unlimited. Although I’ve managed to increase my efficiency and pack more jobs per day, I think I’ve reached the point where any increase in productivity would result in a decrease in safety – and I will never compromise my safety.

Last year was very strange, to say the least. The last of the leaves fell around Halloween and our first snowfall happened on November 7. By this time, I had the entire month of November booked solid and I was turning people away. I lost at least eight days due to snow and ice on roofs – and because I kept postponing jobs, I ended the season in late November with dozens of customers that never got service.

So, how much can I make cleaning gutters? Well, on a good day with closely grouped homes, I can easily make $500. Of course, that’s assuming that I don’t run into any snags. Sometimes things don’t go according to plan and you run into difficult situations with landscaping, power lines, clogged downspouts, or poor weather.

I’ll be talking much more about gutter cleaning simply because, everything being equal, it has the potential to place a lot of money in your hands in a very short time period. It doesn’t take a lot of money to start, the demand is crazy in the fall, and it’s a necessary service that most homeowners will not attempt.