Carpet Cleaning Business

lincroft1710

diesel01 wrote: »

they will build a 8 page website

Why would you want an 8 page website?? Is anybody looking for a carpet cleaner prepared to read an 8 page website?

paddyrg

Website, what on earth would you put on pages 2-8? Email more or less comes with the domain, usually at nominal cost or free if you know how to set it up. Phone number, look at dmclub, Sipgate for PAYG options. SEO is pretty much all woowoo to sucker the unwary. Google don't pay much attention to any 'tricks' to try to increase your page ranking beyond the obvious one of good, relevant content. When you and I do the same search, we get different results, so anyone promising you 'page 1 on Google' is full of it and misrepresenting heavily.

Insurance £250/ month, £3k/year, blimey. Either that policy includes two free meerkat toys, or someone's having a laugh, find a better broker. I pay £9 plus change a month, admittedly in a different sector, but crikey.

Demand, is it really there? A website won't drive demand, it'll just provide more information for anyone to follow up from a flyer. If you had a regular cleaning service, where you get weekly repeat business, then quality is a distinguishing feature. For a service I'd use every few years, I'll likely be starting fresh each time. At the very least offer bronze/silver/gold services, gets you in the door on price, then upsell. Bronze is for lightly marked carpets with generic chemicals and a cursory wipe on a prepared floor. Silver for inspections and for you to manage furniture. Gold if there are pets, grease, deep marks, whatever.

Platinum, you'll do their car as well ;-)

motorguy

diesel01 wrote: »

Hi Paul,

Thank you for your advice :

Regarding the website, they promised they will build a 8 page website, give me a business email address & give me a landline number that will be directed to a mobile, is there a different way of doing it? I could do it myself, however I want to be found on google, I don't want to be on the 58th page on google.

As I will not be getting the truck mount system anymore I'm looking at a Peugeot partner, insurance is in the £1000 mark per year.

Further advice is much appreciated.

Paul, I have done outside valeting for cars, believe me, it can take up to 10 hours for a professional job or you can do the cowboy style for £50 in 2 hours. Even car valeting will take more than a double room.

The price point for a valet is £50 tops. The eastern europeans near me are doing it for £45 on their car wash site. Theres a handful of them all over your car like a rash and its all done to a decent standard in no time.

If you're taking 10 hours to do one car, then you've got a real problem, both from making it financially viable for yourself and from getting people to commit to you have their car for 10 hours.

You seem determined that spending longer on a car or carpet and charging more is the model that people want.

As has been asked already, whats your supporting evidence of this? What makes you think you're going to be able to tap into two very price sensitive markets and charge more and take longer?

motorguy

Ad on gumtree (free), replace it every other day to keep it at the top, advertise in local newspapers, shop windows, notice boards.

Talk to estate agents and letting agents. See if you can get any whole house or flat business from them.

Buy a load of business cards cheap. If someone is happy with your work, ask if they could pass on a few business cards for you to friends or colleagues.

Local businesses - see if they need work done. Ask if you can leave some cards in reception.

I would definitely not be getting an 8 page website set up with a monthly maintenance bill attached. Get someone to do you up a quick one pager and have the domain in your own name.

diesel01

@motorguy, At the moment I dont have any evidence or done any reserch on why someone will be choosing me over a "cheap carpet clean, in & out guy).

I was thinking to deliver 3000-5000 leaflets in an area and then target the same area again in 2 weeks or so.
Advertising in shops
Going to estate agents
Give business cards/flyers to friends who are cleaners
Target hotels for matress cleaning/ carpets
Talk to local man & van guys, swap some cards

To be honest with you I have a full time job, If i can get 2-3 jobs per week that would be amazing.

I would also like to do car valeting, its a hobby for me, obviousely I will not be holding your car for 10 hours (sorry, i watch too much work done by KDS).

KRDmum

There is a lot of sound advice there! From pricing point of view and whether people not do it themselves nowadays, well from somebody who owns a carpet cleaner and hired the rug doctor, I'm going to use professional services the next time (cream carpets and kids do not go hand in hand). The guy that I was recommended charges from £22 per room, with furniture in place. My next door used him whilst selling her 3 bed house and he charged her £130 for 3 bedrooms, stairs and living room, the whole job took about 3 hours. Btw, we live in Scotland, so prices in England will be slightly higher

Hermia

diesel01 wrote: »

Thank you all for your kind replies.

I have now decided not to go for a truck mount system to start of, I want to see how it goes with the portable and then if things go really good I can upgrade to a truck mount.

You see, here is the problem with people who want carpet cleaning, everyone wants CHEAP , that's not possible unless you don't use the right chemicals and the right equipment.

@ Hermia- can you please let me know if the guy you used to clean carpets did the following things:

1) Inspect the carpet with you

2)Move furniture if needed (there are some special things that go under the bed and you can roll it really quick without leaving marks on carpet)

3) Vacuum the carpet

4)pre-spray with solution to remove grease, oils & dirt

5) Agitate the solution with a special machine (just by doing this carpet looks 50% cleanner

6) extract with hot/cold water

7) treat bad areas where the above method did not work.

8) stain protection (optional)

9) put furniture back

10) post cleaning inspection to see if you are satisfied

What most cowboy carpet cleaners do is advertise £20 any room, any size, they do a IN & OUT JOB, they do 10 jobs per day with rubbish quality, I want to do less jobs per day but offer quality.

No, but I was just moving out of a flat and just needed proof of a professional clean for the lettings agency! The guy was saying that most of the business in the area was from tenants just wanting an end of tenancy cleaning. He felt home owners tended to buy their own carpet cleaner.

mrshaz

I can't help but think that you want to just throw money at the business in a hope to make it successful, some of the best businesses start with very little just the bare minimum with low advertising/website costs then build up to more. You haven't even done the research to see if you can get the work. Yes money can make money but only when done right.

motorguy

mrshaz wrote: »

I can't help but think that you want to just throw money at the business in a hope to make it successful, some of the best businesses start with very little just the bare minimum with low advertising/website costs then build up to more. You haven't even done the research to see if you can get the work. Yes money can make money but only when done right.

+1

Throw sums of money and the running costs of a van at this is a very bad idea.

Start it small and keep it simple. Then build from there.