Martin
With window cleaning its all about skill and knowledge, yes its true that there are many newbies just like you are one.
But like nature, all do not survive, some just buy some fancy equipment and think its a magic wand from "Harry Potter" and hey presto clean windows and £5 thank you.
They also seem to start when the weather is nice ond sunny, but soon the winter sets in and its a diffentent game cleaning windows in sub zero temputures.
So what happens to all these newbies, just like in the days of the ladders the wilt away into the wilderness.
Franchising seems to be the next step that established window cleaners are looking at, it's the same progress that the trade went though 10 years ago with wfp.
A newbie starting up is still going to make mistakes and they will take many months or years normally to achieve what some cleaners are achieving nowadays, forums are great for finding help and advice, but sometimes the answers differ greatly or the answers you want are not what you will get.
Personally I see that although there are a lot of cleaners, there is room for a lot more, I believe that in the near future the industry will change, it will become more customer friendly not at the window cleaners bequest, that is why I feel that posters get attacked when they post topics that these cleaners don't like, it just the same as the agurments when wfp became more common place as a method to clean cleaners.
I know someone who years ago thought that computers were a fad, the internet was useless and they would soon dissappear into history, he still believes the same today.