Maid Service

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In some parts of the country they call it maid service, in other parts they refer to it as a house cleaning business. But, no matter what you call it, it can be an excellent opportunity for you. We recently created a twenty page report on the subject which we now give away free with our manual.

We've provided three lists to help you decide which type of cleaning business you prefer, commercial or residential.

 Advantages of providing house cleaning services 

1. High profit margins in maid services.
2. You generally get paid immediately after cleaning a house. In commercial work there is often a delay of a month or more.
3. It's mostly a Monday through Friday, daytime business.
4. Most new business comes from referrals.
5. Lots of secondary services you can provide to increase profits.
6. You compete on quality of work, not price.
7. Low startup costs.

 Disadvantages of providing house cleaning services 

1. House cleaning customers have higher standards for cleanliness than commercial customers.
2. Scheduling and routing crews to different homes all day is complex work.
3. Pets and kids -- need we say more?
4. Your residential customers will try to steal your employees from you.
5. House cleaning crews spend lots of time (which you will pay them for) moving from home to home.
6. Your customers will have more expensive and breakable items to clean than commercial customers.
7. Homeowners are much more likely to reschedule work at the last moment.
8. Wide variability of houses makes it harder to estimate jobs.

 Advantages of doing both residential and commercial cleaning 

1. You can sell to two different markets in the same area.
2. House cleaning is done during weekdays, commercial cleaning is done nights and weekends.
3. You can split administrative costs for lower overhead.
4. If you know how to run one type of cleaning business you can quickly learn the other.
5. Window cleaning, carpet cleaning and other commercial work can be done on houses as well, increasing your profits with both businesses.
6. When one business is slow, you can expand in the other.
7. With two businesses you will have more buying power with equipment and supplies.

Copyright © 2003 by The Cleaning Institute.