Okay, so after my extensive experience gathered through a whole month out on my own, I have a few tips for the new guys.
1.) Kijiji/Craigslist type of sites - Any advertising website which you can put ads up for free is a great way to find some initial residential clients. I put up 2-4 ads (same ad, copy & pasted) on Kijiji a day and have gotten 4 clients in about 2 weeks. The only downside to this is that usually the people here are bargain shoppers, so you might get haggled down a bit if you want to land the job.
So far from this route I've made $390.00 in about 12 hours. That's only $32.50 per hour but it beats sitting at home on my ass making nothing!
2.) Flyers, flyers, flyers! Okay, so I've been lazy and handed out only 8 flyers and got 0 calls lol. But I've read enough on this forum and over the net that this is the way to go.
3.) Bend but don't break - I've lost a few estimates because I was unwilling to budge from my price. I wanted to make $70/hour from the get go. Be willing to lower your bid a little if the customer tries to haggle it down, but don't bend over backwards. Look up threads here on landing 80% of your bids.
4.) Invest in a good ladder - I dished out a bunch of cash on all my tools but decided to skimp on the most important one... and by skimp I mean just use an old shaky ladder the previous homeowner left in my yard. Picked up a nice ****** 24 foot aluminum extension ladder and showing 2nd story gutters and windows who the boss. :cool:
5.) Don't wear fancy dress shirts to clean anything - Yeah, you want to look good, but you end up with black oil stains that won't come out!
6.) Slow ride, take it easy - Go at a pace you're comfortable with. Don't try to rush jobs because you will most likely end up doing a shitty job and get no repeat business. Oh, and you can injure yourself too.
7.) Read these forums until your eyes hurt and you develop migraines - use the search function to answer any questions you have and don't be afraid to ask for help!
Sorry if all this info has been posted a bunch of times before or not helpful in any way lol... this is just me learning from my mistakes after my first month as a semi-professional window & gutter cleaner. ;)
1.) Kijiji/Craigslist type of sites - Any advertising website which you can put ads up for free is a great way to find some initial residential clients. I put up 2-4 ads (same ad, copy & pasted) on Kijiji a day and have gotten 4 clients in about 2 weeks. The only downside to this is that usually the people here are bargain shoppers, so you might get haggled down a bit if you want to land the job.
So far from this route I've made $390.00 in about 12 hours. That's only $32.50 per hour but it beats sitting at home on my ass making nothing!
2.) Flyers, flyers, flyers! Okay, so I've been lazy and handed out only 8 flyers and got 0 calls lol. But I've read enough on this forum and over the net that this is the way to go.
3.) Bend but don't break - I've lost a few estimates because I was unwilling to budge from my price. I wanted to make $70/hour from the get go. Be willing to lower your bid a little if the customer tries to haggle it down, but don't bend over backwards. Look up threads here on landing 80% of your bids.
4.) Invest in a good ladder - I dished out a bunch of cash on all my tools but decided to skimp on the most important one... and by skimp I mean just use an old shaky ladder the previous homeowner left in my yard. Picked up a nice ****** 24 foot aluminum extension ladder and showing 2nd story gutters and windows who the boss. :cool:
5.) Don't wear fancy dress shirts to clean anything - Yeah, you want to look good, but you end up with black oil stains that won't come out!
6.) Slow ride, take it easy - Go at a pace you're comfortable with. Don't try to rush jobs because you will most likely end up doing a shitty job and get no repeat business. Oh, and you can injure yourself too.
7.) Read these forums until your eyes hurt and you develop migraines - use the search function to answer any questions you have and don't be afraid to ask for help!
Sorry if all this info has been posted a bunch of times before or not helpful in any way lol... this is just me learning from my mistakes after my first month as a semi-professional window & gutter cleaner. ;)
from Window Cleaning Resource http://ift.tt/1fLc03Y
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment