[andy roberts]

Give us newbies some idea what we could expect to earn carpet/upholstery cleaning in a year and fill in the poll.

[Liahona]

You need to find out the profit, not what is earned. As these vary so much between cleaners the results might not give you any help. Same as always, work out what you need as a profit and then find the work to do so. That will give you an idea of what market to "go" for as well. A lot of a little is the same as a liitle of a lot just more work. Best, Dave.

[andy roberts]

Liahona I disagree.

Last year my company gave £3k to charity and continued to sponcer a darts team which took a chunk out of our profits.  If I had asked for profit on the poll there is no telling what other cleaners are doing with their hard earned cash and would have probably given me a false reading. Also where I live, income tax & contributions are much lower than the UK, and we dont pay VAT, which would again have distorted the figures.

Furthermore, when one sells a business the gross annual turnover of the company becomes a relevant issue and often determines the sale price, so its more of an interest to me what my company may be worth in the future by adding carpet/upholstery cleaning as an additional service.

So far its interesting to note that the majority of cleaners are grossing over £46K   

[mark_roberts]

Carpetmate

Id say anyone with at least few years in this trade will be doing over £46k gross easily.

I know of one owner operator doing £175k.

Mark

[andy roberts]

Mark, thanks for that. (I had to check your profile cos my brothers name is Mark Roberts, thought he was moonlighting)  ;

I'll just have to jump in and start trading.

Regards,  Andy.

[craigp]

37% over 47k my arrrssse

dont believe that in a hurry,not solely carpet cleaning.

[the red carpet]

why not craig
Thats only £200 a day, working a 5 day week and you can take 5 weeks holiday a year.
I dont think thats hard to achieve after a couple years in buisness, im half way there already and still within my first year.
and thats working on my own with a portable

Then you have the option to

get a tm
take on a helper
work weekends
or raise prices, to earn even more

[Dave_Lee]

Many low end/low priced CCs cant even imagine £46K per year, because they simply dont have the know how to achieve it. I put my prices up by 50% in one go, crossed my fingers, had no repeat customer resistancs and in so doing just that one thing added £23.000 to my turnover the following year.
Dave.

[mark_roberts]

Craigp

Maybe you should buy fasttrack

Im surprised its not more than 37%.

Mark

[craigp]

behave, 37% 47k  reflective of carpet cleaners no chance, why over half live in council properties where i live then.? and go round in beat up old vans?


its possible yes, 37% no no no!

[craigp]

i know the competition they do NOT earn that, 1 or 2 might out of 60 !! c/c covering my area most (who are carpet cleaners only) earn between 10-20k

now why would you want to tell newbies any different.

[andy roberts]

Craig

I know what your saying. In my area by looking in the yellow pages Ive seen CC's come and go year by year, some survive others don't. A friend who has been doing CC for years had to start diversifying into other things cos he couldn't make a living just out of CC. The principle reason that there are so many in the game. He now does deliveries, sells products, removals. When you think its so easy to be a CC, just buy the machinery and away you go. You don't have to have training and alot of the time you can bluff your way through. Maybe the larger more established company's with office cleaning or some other source of income to support them earn that amount of cash, but I'm very weary of one man band operators who claim to earn £50 -£70k a year. One has to keep an open mind.

Newbies on here are often looking for the 'inside' information before they commit to buying expensive machinery & stock to see whether their investment would be financially viable long term. However, one seems to get conflicting opinions in this forum all the time (which is sometimes healthy) and can be confusing to newbies like me.

Regards,  Andy

[cleaning co]

i go with craig on this one

[cleaning co]

i only know of one carpet cleaner who earns this sort of money and must stress he only dos carpet cleaning and the reason he earns this amount is because he puts out 10s of thousands of leaflets week in week out all year  at really cheap prices  and has to do 5-8 jobs a day
ive bin just carpet cleaning for over 10 years and do about £25k max   my first year i might hav touched £10k if i was lucky
gary

[andy roberts]

Gary

If your gross turnover is £25k, what sort of profit are you left with?

I know that there are underlying factors as to why some earn more than others (depends on which area of the counrty you live in, how well you market your services etc etc) but I feel that surely one man using one machine can only do so much in one day and some of the quotes on here for earnings have been hard to believe.

Some cleaner's simply say to put your prices up, but if your competition aren't doing so and there just as competent and as well known as you are, then your the one going to struggle to find & maintain the work if you increase prices.

CC seems very labour intensive & competitive and could be a costly mistake if things don't financially work out. I respect your honesty.

Regards,  Andy

[cleaning co]

lol  not lot andy     p.s (only so much one carpet cleaner can do in a day ?)  lol  most carpet cleaners only work for few hours aday)

[stains-away]

As with any other business the level of earnings will to a big extent depend on the individuals ability to market themselves and the amount of time and effort put in, I've read on here before people saying that its down to creating a perceived demand, if someones pipes have burst they need a plumber, not want a plumber, if someone notices their carpets are dirty half way through the month then they may well say I'll get them done come payday, come payday will they remember, probably not, theyve got money in their pocket and theyve got better things to do with it, Andy

[craigp]

its gone up to 40% now,   

thats 40% of carpet cleaners earn 47k plus per year!!

eeerrrr, but they don't.

what im saying is that is not the true picture,

either its a big coninsidence that only sucessfull c/c ers write on this boards or somes telling porkies cus they got big egoes!

[Liahona]

Craig, dont forget mate it is the gross that we are talking about which is why I made the comment about profit not

gross. If say for example a cleaner gross's the $47k and no more........by the time you take out all the expenses that

 could be as low as £1000 a month but that will do as a figure......he would only end up with £35k....then take out his

 taxes etcetera etcetera and he could be well below £30k..... ....... With all this in mind it should be relatively easy to


 be able to gross upwards of £50k per year. Afetr all that is only 200 quid a day. Best, Dave.

[cleaning co]

MMMMMMMM