All newbies welcome...why heck, just 3 or 4 years ago I was a forum newbie too!
It's always good to see fresh faces
On the subject of the 'Summer Brigade', as all the other experienced pro's say, they've always been part and parcel of the window cleaning scene.
By and large window cleaning has always been one of the cheapest and easist business to set yourself up in.
An old ladder, a bucket, couple of tea towels and a car squeegee from halfords, oh, not forgetting the sponge from the local Spar shop!
It doesn't take that long for the 'easy money' ones to realise it is anything but.
It takes many months to build up a round, and longer still to become truly adept at the job, and many who start out eventually find it is easier to go work for someone else, get set hours, holiday pay and all the other benefits of the employed...
How many times do we here new customers tell us they can't find a regular window cleaner??
Times, they are a changing of course, with the increasing pressure from Health & Safety, working off ladders is slowly becoming a no-no, ergo this means that start up costs for those wishing to go the WFP route are much, much higher.
WFP is also a real catch 22 for the newbie, you waggle a brush on a stick with a bit of water squirting through the brush and hey presto! Job done
It isn't like that in reality, and the pricing of work, at least for the total newbie becomes even more important than before, just about everyone underprices to begin with, butthe impact on that if you start out WFP is far greater as initial investment and greater running costs have to be taken into consideration.
Much as it has always been, they will still continue to see what they can turn over in a single hour as their wage, then at some point in the future they will realise that they are actually earning peanuts
The upshot being that many of those that start out WFP thinking they are goingto be earning easy money and will be driving a 5 series Beamer in no time will fall by the wayside
I know I'm kind of meandering now with this reply! But I think the best way into WFP is via trad window cleaning, once you've learned the trad way, and you've learned how to price correctly, should you change to WFP (and you aren't stupid enough to start lowering your existing prices
) you will start to earn decent money,and if you were earning good money before as a trad window cleaner, then you'll probably go on to by the wife a 3 series Beamer to park alongside your 5 series one on the drive!
Ian (in musing mode
)