[francis]

Mark

I just love some of the figures that are trown around.  I hope that any members on this forum who are new to the business just don't take them as gospel

[Shaun_Ashmore]

Alot of cleaners who are fresh to the industry perhaps may be shy of charging some of these figures but they should be looking to aspire to them. Charging lower end does not pay for a rainy day, although every job is a God send but you don't want to be looking at a job as a dayly rate or an hourly rate you should be looking at what you have for the week.

I've been at the low end of the market, when you get 3 jobs a day at £25 each or less in quiet times you know you will struggle, if you get 2 jobs at £150 you feel alot better and richer.

If you dare be brave you will have a longer and prosporous carear and life ahead of you.

Shaun

[Mike Halliday]

don't any of you lads go out drinking all these questions while I've been out,

answer tomorrow

Mike

[Matt Lindus]

Grand a day for washing flag stones Mike!
You could train a monkey to hold a lance and blast the ground clean, then pay it with a banana.
Some people come out with the most ludicrous s**t its almost pant wetting stuff to read.

Give us some real facts and stop making us all look like a load of gullible fools.

Matt

[Mike Halliday]

Matt, do they sell monkeys at the pet store? I've just bought another pressure washer i could do with a reliable worker who'll take payment in bananas.

lets just put this straight, i have never earned £1000 a day for pressure washing what I said was if I worked a full day pressure washing I'd earn around a £1000. I've just booked a housing association complex at £1150 which will take me a very long day.

I've done lots of jobs this year and they all earn around £100 an hour, these are medium sized driveways that take about 2.5 hrs, I don't re-sand them (but offer to bring the sand so the customer can do it themselves)

last year I had more £700 days (including lots of £450 jobs) than i can remember I i never finished later than 4.

in some ways i agree with Francis, that some figures on this forum shouldn't be believed. but what is worse than people inflating the amounts they they earn is the daft people who are charging stupid cheap prices and try and convince any new starters that this is all the can expect to earn.

I see it all the time. " you should be earning £25 an hour for carpet cleaning"......."no one will pay over £80 for a suite clean"....." no one will pay £300 for pressure washing"

believe what you like.

mike

[Liahona]

On another post Mike had given me the advice of charging per hour to clean some roofs I had booked up.  I have pressure washed for years but had never come across having to clean a roof before.

His advice and I took it was to charge per hour which accordingly I did.  These roofs take about 12 to 15 hours to do.  12 was the smallest and of course 15 was the biggest and there has been some inbetween.

With charging anywhere between 100 an hour to 250 depending how many machines I have going it is easy to get over a thousand a day.

The difficult part is getting the amount of "surface" to be cleaned.  Be it carpet, upholstery, concrete or any other textile you can think of.

Mike and I hope most cleaners will get 2 or 300 to do a driveway.  If it takes 2 or 3 hours to do it is no different that what I am fortunate to get for the roofs and other hard surfaces that I clean.

I have a load of dwarf walls, walkways, kerb stones, mowing strips and similar to clean this Monday and Tuesday.  On Wednesday I have a large roof to clean.

I am guessing it will all take about 72 man hours to do.  However long it takes rest assured I will not be charging £360 as has been suggested is it's worth.

If you want to have work day in and day out then carry on charging the stupid low prices that are being charged.  If you want to run and own a business then charge accordingly.

To the "newbies", whatever you are cleaning, listen to the advice of people like Shaun and Mike for their advice is fair and sound.  Don't be charing at the low end of the scale for if you do thats the type of work you will get.  There are pessimists on here that think we should earn minimum wage, why?  Is it because thats all they think they are worth, or is it thats what they think cleaning is worth.

I happen to think, rightly or wrongly that I am worth a fortune and so I charge accordingly.  Doesn't matter if I am worth only pennies I will still charge as high as I can for what I do.

Why else be self-employed and create the life-style that I want to lead?

Why also is it that when cleaners on here do well everyone else is quick to condemn them.  Especially when it comes to prices being charged.

Paul Moss has got a very good contract which he advised on here and then was slated, suggesting an April fools post.

He will be charging way in excess of what a lot of people on here rather cautiously charge.  Why aren't we pleased for him?  Why should he take the stick of the return posts he received?

I say fair play to the man for getting the work that some idiots on here suggest isn't out there to be had.  He even offered to pass on some of the work for an amount that the same idiots say isnt attainable.

It is attainable and this is what the "newbies" need to be aware of!!!!!

Best and Happy Easter Sunday, Dave.

[trevor perry]

i wish  i could get some of the rates you are charging we have been in business since 1960 and can honestly say we never achieve the high rates stated by mike we have all the latest machinery to do the job faster and so be more competitive and yet for powerwashing would be extremely happy if i could achieve £300 a day which i sometimes do but rarely so mike if you get to busy pass the work to me you can sit at home make a bomb and i would be happy with what i got.  like said earlier when i try priceing higher people look at me like i have broke in their house and sh..t in their shoes. 

[carpetguy]

Happy Easter

A good time to look at your business and where you would like to be in the near future...........what Dave , Mike and others say, should be an inspitation, to people who are either new to the business, or have never realised their potential.

I have been criticised for suggesting, that newcomers should gain experience and competence before attempting to earn the same as the highest earners, but continue to believe this.

However and Ive always said so...............when you become competent through training and experience, you should aim to earn considerably more !!!!

But................

This is where a minority, will earn a lot more than the rest, not because they are better, some will be pretty average, but they will be blessed with, DRIVE / SELF CONFIDENCE / GOOD COMMUNICATION SKILLS and some will just be BRASS NECKED.

I'ts not about BEING INFERIOR or COWARDLY or a lack of self esteem..................it's about HUMAN NATURE and it's just been illustrated perfectly, by a gent, who has decades of experience and quality equipment, which probably gives  his clients a high value service, but he fails to get the return he could.

Not everyone can be great at marketing , or selling and it's simply a human failing.

What these people need, is to have someone else doing the marketing on their behalf, because, they will NEVER break the mould.  They are, what they are.

This is not being negative, it's simply a fact of life and it exists in every service industry in the world, where the majority GET ON WITH IT while a minority are naturally gifted, or become inspired through others example.

To the high earners....................it's great that you are setting an example to others, some of whom will become inspired and simply attempt to charge more......................others will attempt to discover YOUR SECRETS ...............others still, will find it impossible to believe, what you earn........................while others still...............will carry on, doing the same, that they did last year and the year before.

What the OTHERS have to realise, is, these guys MAKE IT HAPPEN they don't daydream or wish it could be different...............THEY MAKE IT DIFFERENT.

What you have here  is the TRUE FAST TRACK IN ACTION

rob

Me.............I've been there / done it / 20 years ago and was looking for a quieter life............BUT .......guess what............I'm about to resurrect the business that gave me £2000 a week in my pocket 20 years ago. Well I'm only 62 in a couple of weeks and my heart condition has stabilised and it's the time of year, for miracles.

[Liahona]

Trevor, I would be interested to know which machines you are using, however thats a side issue.  

My comment would be.......... You are suggesting that you are trying to be competitive, I pressume you mean in price.

I am not saying it works for everyone but the way I do things is to not be competitive.  Else I am after the same work as the "competition".

 If you go after a £300 pound job would you do it for say, £275.  If the answer is yes then you will always struggle to get a higher price for your services.

If I was going after a £300 job (which i wouldnt) then I would charge maybe 600 or even 900.  It realy doesnt matter if I get the job or not.  As long as I got one in three we would be at the same place so to speak.  If I got the one in three which I would as I do (I get everything I go after) then I would be working at the best part of a thousand a day, getting a reputation for doing good work as I am sure we all do and best of all GETTING the recommendations for the next job which in effect you have already sold for hopfully a £1000.  Bad English but I hope you get the point.

You must be good at what you do, so the next job you get that you think is worth 300, ask for 4 or 5 or 600.  Just dont ask for 3!!  What do you have to lose?  If you ask for 5 and the client barks at you then discount it to 375 or 400 and I am sure you would still get the job.  

Mike must have a reputation for his 450 and 700 jobs, no reason you cant have the same.  I am sure you have a reputation for the 300's that you do so there is no difference, just the price.

Best, Dave.

P.S. I would still be interested to know the machines you use to power wash with.

[Liahona]

Rob, good post.  Glad to hear about your heart.  Good luck with your business, keep us all informed with how you get on, again good post.  Best, Dave.

[Mike Halliday]

it seems this has gone day-rate for carpet cleaning onto pressure washing.

One thing I will say is, often I hear people say (and it is often written on these forums that;

 'why would people pay me £350 to clean carpets/driveways/suites etc..etc when they can get my competitor to do it for £150'

...or...

'the price around my town is £55 for suite cleaning, so no one will pay higher than that'

these 2 statement rely on one fact; that the person they are quoting for has a comparison to compare your price to. I could quote £300 for a drive and tell them that is a really cheap price and I'm doing them a favour to do it so low. unless they have had another company quote £100 they will believe me and think that £300 is the going rate for their job.

most people have no idea what price something is until we tell them. I have a set value for my time and this is what I charge. If they can't afford me that's OK,

Mike

[carpetguy]

Good positive stuff Mike and Dave.............rob

[trevor perry]

hi liahona
         i have my pressure washer  mounted in a box trailer that is all sign written the same as the van,the trailer has a door at front to store whirlaway surface cleaner 3 lances , turbo nozzles spares and waterprooofs fixed behind this is a 1000ltr baffled tank which keeps me going for apprximately 70 minutes without having to fill which is ideal for jobs where water access is an issue , my washer is positioned behind the rear door it is a lavor thermic 17 it runs at 21ltr a minute and a pressure of 3000psi the temperature can  be adjusted from cold upto 150 degrees the pressure and flowrate are also fully adjustable,at the front of trailer i have a high pressure hose reel holding 60m of hose but i have run the machine with much longer than that, i can also split the hose to run two lances ,the pressure remains the same on each lance but the flowrate is halved this is ideal for chewing gum removal where two operatives can work at once . we also use telescopic lances for facia cleaning and feed chemical through a ventura.
any questions please feel free to ask

[trevor perry]

carpet guy i certainly agree with you about marketing , this is certainly one of my downfalls and find i dont bother with it. I feel i am extremely good at my job and when i speak to my customers and hear some of the garbage they have been told by ones so called marketing their business it makes me cringe. I know that all businesses are marketing more and more but we only have to watch watchdog and realise that a lot of these marketing strategies are nothing more than false promises and lies. I can honestly say if a workman turned up at my house did 8 hours work and billed me £1000 he certainly wouldnt get any recomendations from me and i certainly wouldnt use the firm again so my question is are these high charging firms getting much repeat work or are they constantly chasing new accounts to stay in business.

[mark_roberts]

Im more interested in HOW you can make more money per hour/day in terms of procedures and techniques.  therefore my question to Mike and Liahona is how do you do it for both residential carpet cleaning and powerwashing.

Ive no problem with the amounts made its getting the right work. 

Mark

[francis]

I think that what has to be clearly pointed out when you start reading about a days work in the thousands, is a paragraph Liahona posted above which says:-

"with charging anywhere between 100 - 250 per hour depending on how many machines I have going, it is easy to get a grand a day"

I do a bimonthly  pressure washing job for £1600 and it has to be completed in a day. I need to run 2 machines to achieve this and ergo 2 operatives.

Would be misleading if I were to post here that I can get £1600 a day for pressure washing without giving the full details of how many people I require to do this.

[Mike Halliday]

Mark, I don't completely understand your question, I'm sure with carpet cleaning my procedure is just the same as yours, although I work as a 2 man team

as for pressure washing, I use a petrol pressurewasher  hooked upto a turbo lance  ( I have a flat surface cleaner but prefer the turbo) the only difference i think I do from other P/w companies is I use my T/M to suck up the water as I clean so i don't waterlog everything.

the only way i can see to make good money is to price high, I don't get all of the jobs i quote ( i think I get about 60%)

at the beginning I said for carpet cleaning i would want a day rate of £650, but this is what I would want it I was at 1 job working none stop for 8hrs, in this time I would clean a massive amount of carpeting probably 3 times as much as i do now on a normal day. So when you put it like that £650 is not an extreme amount of money

you also asked about getting the right work, but this  is more about getting the right customers, which is a whole new topic.

but its not about what equipment you have, Trevor has an impressive set up but says he can't make £300 a day, my gardener offers a P/W service and uses a £500 second-hand electric machine,  and he often earns over £300 a day

Mike

[Len Gribble]

As an average my ticket range from £0 to £2k commercial cc that is! I sometimes have one helper and sometimes have up to 4 porty-boys (they work I rest in a manor of speaking) but my profits are good.

It’s been about two years since I targeted domestic work (have the regulars plus referrals) so am out of touch with today’s market, would you say Whole house cleaned £210. 2bed house, carpets-curtains-upholstery-window, kitchen & bathroom, or the premier gold line service £105. 3bed house 2 receptions & hsl, deodorized & stain protected.

Would you say this more realistic day rate pricing, subject to cleaning requirements and size?

Mike

Do you use a Hydofilter when using the spinner?

Chris

Stop being curious and get back to the sink

Len

[John Gregory]

Mike i too have a petrol 13hp pressure washer ,flat surface cleaner and power lance i would love to no how you use your trunk mount to suck up the crud and excess water
Thanks John

[Mike Halliday]

i don't suck up crud, only water. all i do is stick the hose into a hollow piont and suck away, i do use a hydrafilter to stop any really big crap going into the tank.

mike