Window cleaning is a very popular small business for many. it has relatively cheap startup costs, a very fast learning curve and plenty of demand. Like most small businesses with these kind of benefits, you will find competition to be quite fierce. Window cleaners can be quite protective of their regular customers and rounds.
You may find that the type of customer you are looking for already has a regular window cleaner. Onboarding enough new customers from the get go can be very hard work.
Put simply, Window cleaning is a numbers game. If you really want to start a profitable window cleaning business, you need to have the numbers.
Each individual customer may only provide a small amount of income at the beginning. The only real way to make it work long term is to have lots of customers close together. These are called window cleaning rounds.
Most window cleaners will bath their customer together into “rounds” and do one area at a time so that they can split their days up into rounds. e.g Monday: round 1, Tuesday: round 2 etc..
Focus on one area / cleaning round at a time
Although competition is fierce and you may not be able to get a condensed round at first, the more customers you get the better your round will be in terms of travelling between jobs.
The good thing about that is many people need their windows cleaned and regularly pay a local window cleaner – finding work shouldn’t be too hard but in the beginning make sure you are targeting customers close together.
You don’t want to be travelling miles from house to house if you are focused on domestic houses.
Keep in mind that you might not have a choice in the beginning so a simple suggestion would be to build up your round on a weekend over the next few weeks/months.
DON’T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB
If you starting a window cleaning round, I think it’s a great idea to start your business working weekends until you have a decent round. Building up 50-100 customers isn’t just going to happen overnight.
Starting from scratch will mean you have to take whichever jobs you can and these will more than likely be spread out which means the time it takes you to get around to all of them, you may not be making much money per hour.
I would suggest building it up on a weekend. If you manage to build up a condensed and busy 1-2 days on a weekend that should be more than enough to give you the confidence to quit your job.
But you might decide that you’re absolutely raking it in whilst working, in which keep you job and have 2 incomes.
Finding customers
Like any other business, finding customers will always be the hardest part.
Word of mouth in window cleaning is a great way to build your business but in the beginning that may just not be fast enough. Heres a few other ideas:
- Get some flyers/business cards printed and post them yourself around your area – check out vistaprint
- If your feeling brave, you could knock on doors and introduce yourself and business
- Create a facebook page and share it with everybody on your facebook
- Speak with friends and family for a discounted service to get you going
- Claim your business listing on google using google business
- If your high end, consider a website
- Always check ebay, gumtree etc for window cleaning rounds for sale!
How much does starting a window cleaning business cost?
Starting a traditional window cleaning business
You can start window cleaning for less than a few hundred pounds if you plan to build up a window cleaning business the traditional way.
In fact, this might be a great way to start building your round up now if you don’t want to go head first into the business.
Ideally you will need a car to drive from job to job – as mentioned your window cleaning round may not be that condensed. A roof rack for your ladders or you could use extendable ladders which will also save money and space.
Now just buy your kit. Heres a few examples below. These are more than adequate to get your round up and running.
Below are some examples to suit your budget.
There are 3 options below. The first is the traditional method to start your window cleaning business. Option 2 is a bit of a hybrid between the first and second option for people who want to go the water fed pole route but don’t quite have the finances to get started just yet. Lastly is a water fed pole system.
Traditional window cleaning equipment
Otherwise if you want to go the water fed pole route, but are still on a budget, here are a few options. Otherwise you are really going to want to invest a few thousand in a good filtration system.
Cheap water fed pole backpacks if you don’t have the budget for a larger system
Full water fed pole system
The full water fed pole system can be used for a number of clients. You have the ability to reach office windows.
Apartment blocks alongside also standard houses. This means that you can combine your weekly round with both domestic and commercial work.
Commercial jobs will be much more profitable due to not needing to travel too much in between each job. Payment will also be much faster and easier as its one bigger lump and just a single invoice each time.
Water fed pole window cleaning business equipment
- 1 x 350 Litre Heavy Duty Flat MDPE plastic baffled water tank.
- 1 x 5 stage 300GPD compact Reverse Osmosis system complete with 3 stage pre-filtration and 10 inch membranes.
- 1 x Deionisation Filter complete with top grade Tulsion brand Deionisation Resin
- 1 x Digital Hand Held TDS Meter (more accurate than most inline ones).
- 1 x 100psi Shurflo Pump with Strainer and Fittings for 1/2″ Hose (Assembled).
- 1 x Flowmaster Digital Pump Controller. Both the Shurflo pump and Flowmaster are pre-mounted on a compact panel and pre-wired together ready to connect to your battery. – All you have to do is mount the panel!
- 1 x Outside Port Panel with Connector – This will allow you to work from the system with the vehicle fully closed and locked!
- 1 x Professional Metal Hose-Reel.
- 1 x 100 metre roll of 8mm ‘Microbore’ Professional Hose. Hose and Reel are pre-assembled as shown in picture.
- 1 x 17ft XTEL professional 17 foot water fed pole with braided hose.
- 1 x Rectangular Vikan Brush.
- 1 x Adjustable Brush Angle Adaptor. Pole, brush and angle adaptor all come assembled and ready to work with all required fittings.
- 1 x Tank Outlet Fittings Kit – Includes metal reducer, elbow, valve and fitting to join to 1/2″ hose
- 1 x 5m roll of 1/2″ hose to connect the parts of your system together.
- 1 x Comprehensive installation and operation guide.
Become your own boss with a profitable window cleaning business
Having the freedom to choose your own hours, work at your own pace and do the work you want to do is really one of the best feelings. The real beauty of starting a window cleaning business is job security.
This might sound odd because with all businesses there is a hefty amount of risk to take. But with window cleaning, your income and customer base is made up with volume.
Meaning that if somebody no longer requires your services or some other unforeseen circumstance happens, losing even 5-10 customers at once is not going to jeopardise you financially because your income may be made up hundreds of these.
Your income foundation once built and well maintained will look after you and be pretty solid.
