Cliff,
Youre in the South, so you should be earning more per hour than me. If youre comparing earnings with your old job of 50 hours a week, lets look at what you could do in 40 hours (8 a day). After all, you also have to run the business and you didnt start doing it to work harder for less than as an employee.
With not very compact work (guessing on your definition) I think you should be doing a minimum of 15 houses a day in eight hours. There is no reason at all why in Newbury you shouldnt be averaging, £18 a house (based on what I read on here), which is £270 a day. Multiply by 40 weeks (allows 10 days bank hols, 5 weeks holiday a year and another five weeks lost to illness/bad weather so all worst case) and you're looking at turnover of £54,000 a year.
You went doorknocking today and got one. If thats a 4-weeker at £18, youve just added £234 to your annual income. In your old job that would have been a 2/3% pay increase. How often did you get one of those.? Rejoice! Also, how long were you out to get one customer? Five minutes? Eight hours? How many people did you actually talk to? Your result could be excellent or awful depending on that.
But - this is the difficult bit - it's not like a job where work comes to you. You need to go out and win customers. We can all say there are lots of other windys in our area. Well, you need to convince yourself and your customers that you are better than them. They wont come all winter, you will. They wont come back every time, you will. they wont guarantee their work, you will. If you want to earn more the only person who can do it is you.