which proves my point, why book £30 jobs over the phone

dont get me wrong i aint one of these people to slag you of because i have done it myself.
But theres no money in it "FACT"
Untill you realise it you will allways struggle
You will get let down from time to time
You will have days when your van wont start
You will have days or even weeks when your ill
you will have days when the machine packs up and as well as costing you a days work it could easily cost a couple hundred to put right.
You will get days, some people get weeks where there is no work, the phone just dosent ring.
And if everything does go right and you do actually take the grand old sum of £30 you will have to take into consideration your advertising costs and time be it yp or flyer or whatever. The ware and tear on equipment, the diesle for the van and the ware and tear on the van. Becuase if you keep driving it back and forth to £30 jobs it will within a few months be asking you for new brakes and a new clutch and new tyres and the unfortunatly do not cost £30.
You have gotta pay the line rental on whatever phone they are calling you on, and you should be paying public liability, treatment and van insurance.
Then you gotta put chems in the machine.
If you sat down and worked it out it would probably cost you money to do the job for £30

So you would need to charge a bit more just to just to turn a profit, so say £40-£50? but then what happens when you waste a morning like you have with this customer, any profit you thought you made goes out the window.
I charge £59 minimum charge, and everytime i go to one i kick myself for it because i know i havent earned a penny

the trouble is what do you charge because if you took time to work it out on these small jobs you need to charge £80 -£100 to remove say just a small wine stain to be profitable.
And try telling people that there 20 second drunken mistake is gonna cost them £100 and your fighting a loosing battle
