Start a House Cleaning Business
Starting a housecleaning service is perfect for anyone that has little or no start-up capital, and is intent on running the business as a one-person operation – at least in the beginning.
Although this industry tends to be geared more towards women, it’s not unusual to find male house cleaners – particularly in large cities. In many ways, being male will only help when it comes to physical work such as lifting a vacuum cleaner up the stairs, mopping floors, and moving furniture. With that being said, there are many clients that prefer female staff only in their homes.
For anyone wanting to start a housecleaning service, it’s usually just a simple matter of registering your business, getting any city licenses, and possibly obtaining liability insurance. Once the paperwork is in order, you can have fliers made up and distributed, or place a small classified ad in the local paper. If you decide to go with the newspaper, be prepared to keep your ad running for a while. Many times people need to see the same ad week after week before they decide to use a service.
If you decide to go the flier route, you will have much more freedom to choose the type of neighborhood you want to work in. Fliers also tend to get people to take action.
Ultimately, however, your biggest opportunity will come from direct referrals. The reason for this is because people are apprehensive to allow strangers into their home. When they see an ad in the paper or a flier arrives at their front door, they have no way of knowing who you are. After all, anyone can start a company and get a few ads out there. When you have a few customers, you should start getting referrals coming in. That’s when you’ll see the biggest increase in your customer base. Newspapers and fliers will only go so far – referrals are essential.
Many people will ask if you are bonded. If you’re not, you should at least be able to produce a police criminal record abstract.
The actual job of cleaning houses is not that difficult. Though you may struggle a little at first, you will eventually develop routines and streamline your tasks. As you gain more experience, you will start making more per hour and be able to give more accurate estimates.
There is not much difference between cleaning someone else’s house and cleaning your own. You will use the same procedures and products. Start with a standard vacuum, mop, broom, and cleaning products. Also make sure to have plenty of cleaning rags and a scrubber or two. The only upgrade you might want to eventually make is to get a commercial grade vacuum.
You should have some knowledge of how to clean various surfaces and materials – and what products to use on them. If you don’t know, find out or get some experience working in the housecleaning industry. One mistake and you can ruin a costly wood floor or granite countertop.
An average house cleaner should be able to make around $100 per day to start. After you get some experience, you might be closer to $200 per day. Of course, that’s assuming that you will be doing 2-3 houses a day.
Once you have a full schedule, you should be doing around $3000/month gross. Most of that will be profit.
Unfortunately, that will be the upper limit unless you scale your operation and hire some staff – otherwise, you have just created a job for yourself. And that’s exactly how some people like it – they do their own thing and have much more freedom than your average employee.
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