Cleaning business

vintagebrighton

I think a lot depends on where you are in the country. I live in Brighton but I don't have any cleaning clients here. Why? Because there's a huge student and immigrant population who will work for minimum wage self employed. I get the bus to the next biggest town where the area is rich and very 'middle class', people get cleaners by 'word of mouth' and there's plenty of work. All I have to do is plan my jobs round each other to avoid travelling time between them. I don't get holiday or sick pay. All my clients are flexible. BUT, it works both ways. You have to be prepared to not have work for the times they have holidays or are sick. That may not be possible at first but you soon work out who you can work long term with and who you won't have such a good relationship with. Also, don't forget a one-off cleaning service is great for getting your name out there and for getting a feel for an area. HTH

talkinpeace

I still rest my case that once expenses and time and off days and the like are taken into account, you'll be on less than NMW - and the agencies around who use East Europeans will still undercut you.

Office workers generally have no idea how hard manual workers toil - and the standard of toilet rim cleanliness expected by other housewives - far higher than they will ever do themselves - will shock you.

phill99

keigcf wrote: »

I have passed my accountancy exams and worked for 20 years so I do know!

Really.....?

talkinpeace

I passed my accountancy exams 19 years ago.
I have clients still paying off negative equity on houses that were repossessed 20 years ago.
I have a fairly jaded view of what it takes to survive in business.

cavework

talkinpeace.
I have run a cleaning company for 12 years and none of my staff are on minimum wage.far from it, they get 20 days holiday a year plus bank holiday pay .
We started alone , just the 2 business partners and worked 12 hours a day 6 days a week. for the first year We now have 7 full time staff one part timer and five vans on the road.
Hourly rate should have built in travelling time , use your own cleaning products , source them ,do not buy from a supermarket , these reduce the time on the job
Use your own cleaning equipment , vacumes etc.
There is a whole host of products avaliable to cleaning companies that reduce time on a job out there , do the research
It takes a lot of commitment at the start up , but building up a reputation , works far better than advertising.

Timay

ellas9602 wrote: »

Hi
Another cleaning company thread!
my sis is an accountant and she has been made redundant. I work in IT and redundancy looks probable this year for me too so we want to try our hands at starting a cleaning business.
We want to research the idea further by actually doing it. We feel that if we can do enough marketing and offer 'tasters' to willing clients we can make a success, we're both hard working and trusting of the other so I guess my question is what do we need to have in place as a minimum to at least give it a try? I understand the PL insurance is a must. Do we need to be registerd as a business? Can we just call ourselves self employed initially?

Anything else? We feel that we have nothing really to lose by giving it a try and just want to get stuck in.

Any further advice would be appreciated - Thanks

In my opinion your best of staying clear of the cleaning business and spend your time and money in a better place.

While it is certainly possible to make a living from cleaning it is not as easy as everyone assumes especially with a lot of competition, just search cleaning companies in your local area and see how many show up and that will not even be half of the companies actually in business.

A lot of people in your situation which tend to happen during economic down times decide to set up a cleaning business meaning their is a lot of competition but also during these poor economic times business first port of call when it comes to saving money is the cleaning costs.

So basically there is more businesses but less business to go around.

Also as others have said have you considered all the costs you will have to pay out, such as public liability insurance, any cleaning equipment you will need etc

Also what about if you can not make it one day because of illness or any other problem that prevents you from going to work, will you have anyone that can cover for you?