I think the only way forward is to ensure the quality of your work, I am a bit OCD possibly take 10 mins longer on some of my houses to what other cleaners would but I am getting 3-4 referrals a week from my customer base,I have only been going one year but have taken so much work from others due to quality only, I have also learned if you target your customer base carefully some prefer to pay for a decent job so it all comes down to your marketing strategies and how professionally you portay your business when onsite, back to pricing, if all customers shopped by price only marks and spencers would be bankrupt and there would be 5x the amount of nettos and lidl's
Graham