[StanA]

£26.66 per hour might sound a great income if you are an employee, but it sucks if you are self employed.

Your wages and your business turnover are two very different things.

If at the end of your financial year and after completing your accounts the income you draw off your business turnover is £55,452.80 per year then WOW! fantastic income.

for a 3 bed house the price does sound excessive, but also the time taken too.

For instance; WFP outside = 20 minutes absolute max for one person.
Inside trad = 40 min max for one person, depends of course on how awkward the insides are, ie, furnishings, carpets, window sills full of ornaments and whatnot.

But if you are earning £60.00 an hour doing little terraced properties, what on earth is the point of taking on a house that will actually cause your income to drop?!

Pricing per hour on individual properties is not a good way of going about it, for one thing, as you get faster at a job you end out doing more work in that hour, ergo if you start out that way from the beginning your relative income for work done will keep dropping as your speed increases!!

You are not being paid for how long a job takes you, if I did that I have some shop fronts that I'd only have to charge 50p for!
Some window cleaners will be 2 or 3 times faster (or slower!) that other window cleaners, does this mean that its perfectly ok for the slow window cleaner to charge 3 times more than the fast one??

And if you are a London window cleaner your rate will also need to be higher due to the higher cost of living there.

Window cleaning is a manual job, just about any grunt can do it, but it is also a business and a great many just do not have a clue as to how to run a business, they look at one job (for instance) where they earn £30 for an hours work and then convince themselves they are on a rate close to 60k a year.
When they see someone claiming to have work earning them £60.00 (or more) an hour they shout out that they are rip off merchants...though that £60 per hour will not mean they are earning £60 an hour 40 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year.
Far from it, I have plenty of work at those kind of apparent rates, but my ACTUAL income from my business is a fraction of that.

Ian

Well written Ian.  I have a couple of jobs which, if the rates were matched on the rest of my work, would net me a turnover of £150k.  The reality is vastly different of course.  By the time I've paid my taxes/NI, business overheads, and had a little time off for a break or for illness, general down time, I doubt I take much more than £20k.  By the time capital allowances are taken into account, it may not even be £20k.  Mind you, I doubt there will be any big outlays now until the next van change (unless something big goes wrong with it).
Don't get me wrong.  It's not a bad income for a job with relative flexi time but it could be so much better.

[StanA]

£26.66 per hour might sound a great income if you are an employee, but it sucks if you are self employed.

Your wages and your business turnover are two very different things.

If at the end of your financial year and after completing your accounts the income you draw off your business turnover is £55,452.80 per year then WOW! fantastic income.

for a 3 bed house the price does sound excessive, but also the time taken too.

For instance; WFP outside = 20 minutes absolute max for one person.
Inside trad = 40 min max for one person, depends of course on how awkward the insides are, ie, furnishings, carpets, window sills full of ornaments and whatnot.

But if you are earning £60.00 an hour doing little terraced properties, what on earth is the point of taking on a house that will actually cause your income to drop?!

Pricing per hour on individual properties is not a good way of going about it, for one thing, as you get faster at a job you end out doing more work in that hour, ergo if you start out that way from the beginning your relative income for work done will keep dropping as your speed increases!!

You are not being paid for how long a job takes you, if I did that I have some shop fronts that I'd only have to charge 50p for!
Some window cleaners will be 2 or 3 times faster (or slower!) that other window cleaners, does this mean that its perfectly ok for the slow window cleaner to charge 3 times more than the fast one??

And if you are a London window cleaner your rate will also need to be higher due to the higher cost of living there.

Window cleaning is a manual job, just about any grunt can do it, but it is also a business and a great many just do not have a clue as to how to run a business, they look at one job (for instance) where they earn £30 for an hours work and then convince themselves they are on a rate close to 60k a year.
When they see someone claiming to have work earning them £60.00 (or more) an hour they shout out that they are rip off merchants...though that £60 per hour will not mean they are earning £60 an hour 40 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year.
Far from it, I have plenty of work at those kind of apparent rates, but my ACTUAL income from my business is a fraction of that.

Ian

i have to disagree with some of what you say ian £26 an hour is a decent rate you only have to look at some other cleaning tasks to recognize window cleaning is very well paid in comparison, i have work that is priced at well below £26 an hour and yet make a very good profit margin from it i have other work priced well above £26 an hour and i also have some work priced at about £12 an hour and still manage to turn a profit from it so i keep this work on as it keeps my men in employment to cover the better priced jobs if i was a one man band i couldnt make some of these jobs worthwhile but it is all a numbers game some really large companies can work at profit margins of just 3% and still make large amounts but for the average firm this wouldnt be worthwhile, there are lots of debates on here about prices but everyones situation is different so there is no set price structure apart from what each individual is willing to work for and then it is up to the customer to decide which service to take i think simon was right to take the job as he can obviouly make the job pay for him.

Yes I suppose it is a different ball game if employees are involved Trevor.  Even a small profit is still a profit.  I suppose it's a bit like the corner shop (sole trader) or the supermarket (employer) really.  With the first item, the business owner's wage is a higher proportion of the turnover.

[Martin ccs]

maybe £110 is too much but it was in and out. if it took 2 blokes that long then maybe your price is too low - bet you wish you had charged more when you have done the first clean.

i dont think £50 odd per hr for 2 chaps is alot to be honest.

wc can be a strange way of income ratio - one house at £15.00 could take 40 mins but then you could have 4 smaller houses at a tenner each and it takes 40 mins.

you could work all day on houses and earn £200  or  do one commercial job and earn £500 in half the time.

[simon knight]

Thanks for all the input guys. Some of you have made good and sensible comments.

However I still think £110 for a 3 bed house is utterly ridiculous and it's this kind of rip-off pricing that gives the industry a bad name.

[Sir Squeaky]

Agreed. Don't listen to the hype on here.

But I'd definitely want more than your quote if it took as long as you say.

Like Ian said though, 15 mins or so outside, maybe half hour inside really.
If it's what you say it should be 50 mins to an hour max.
And if so, then it's not even a £40 job. More like £25-30

[AuRavelling79]

Thanks for all the input guys. Some of you have made good and sensible comments.

However I still think £110 for a 3 bed house is utterly ridiculous and it's this kind of rip-off pricing that gives the industry a bad name.

But at the other end of the scale it's the newbie/numpty charging £10 at the other end of the scale that augers this industry's reputation (especially ooop north) into the floor.

[simon knight]

Thanks for all the input guys. Some of you have made good and sensible comments.

However I still think £110 for a 3 bed house is utterly ridiculous and it's this kind of rip-off pricing that gives the industry a bad name.

But at the other end of the scale it's the newbie/numpty charging £10 at the other end of the scale that augers this industry's reputation (especially ooop north) into the floor.

Now there I agree with you, stupidly low prices doesn't do anybody a favour, not even the customer in the long run because newbies eventually wise up and dump the job.

To me the pricing is a fine balance:  I want to do this house regularly and therefore I must price to make it attractive for the customer to have them done regularly.

The £110 merchant just prices on the basis of perceived customer ignorance coupled with what they feel they can get away with. The £110 merchant must realise that the chances of a repeat clean are 1000s to 1 against.