Entrepreneurship Archives -

November 28 2018

How to Start a House Cleaning Business

Are you for certain that you want to start a house cleaning business? Do you like cleaning? Or did you hear about the massive amounts of money that can be made while operating a cleaning company, so you decided to see if you can tolerate it? I say this for a certain, if you’re doing it for the money, it may not last long term. If you answered yes to the first two questions then keep on reading.

How to Find Unique Words for a Business Name

Branding properly with a catchy house cleaning business name may make or break your company somewhat. There are many different ways to brainstorm unique cleaning business names. Naming your company is important because the name that you choose sets you apart from your competitors and will also be used to file legal documents. When choosing a name for your company keep your industry in mind. When someone reads the business name, you want them to be able to verify that you are in the cleaning business.

You want to look like a professional so potential customers will take your company seriously. The best way to come up with names for your home cleaning company is to use an online business name generator. Follow the instruction on the page and select a name you love. When choosing the name try to keep the words to a minimum of at least 2-3 words. You want the name to be a brandable and memorable name that people recognize.

How to Check If a Business Name Is Available for Free

Aren’t you excited that you at least know what you want to name your company? Now take the name and head over to knowem.com and put it in this online database this is how to find out if a business name is taken already. This website does a few steps for you all in one shot. Knowem will tell you if your business name is available for trademark if that’s something you may want to pursue. It also gives you a list of just about every popular social network that has that name available. An added bonus. If you want a website for your cleaning company and I highly recommend you to have a website, they’ll show you if that domain name is available too. You can use their service if you can afford it, or just do it all on your own.

I almost forgot to mention, you’re going to need an email account when you begin to sign up for various things so head over to any one of the FREE email service providers and grab an account. Use the business name that you just created to help keep everything nice and organized.

How to Make Your Company Legal

The first order of business is to contact your local county tax collector to see if you need some sort of license. For the most part in most states, you don’t need a license to operate a cleaning company. The same time that you contact them about that information then go ahead and register for a fictitious name or DBA for your cleaning business. Use the business name and email account to sign up for any and all things related to your cleaning company.

The Inner Workings of a Cleaning Services Business Plan

This is the inner workings of a cleaning service business plan so please take notes. If you’re considering writing a business plan for a cleaning service, you really need to watch this video until the end. please take action and make goals along the way. You can do this!

List of Professional House Cleaning Supplies

You must have the proper tools. Your house cleaning business supplies should look like what’s listed below. Many of the cleaning supplies that you and your staff will be using are supplies that you can pretty much find at home. We’ll add the most obvious ones here and also add some complementary tools that work seamlessly together. When clients tell you that they have their own cleaning supplies, still bring your own. Always look like a professional at all times.

Supply caddie
Corner brush
Grout brush
Heavy duty toilet brush
Granite cleaner/polish
Wood polisher
Microfiber Cloths
Squeegee
Telescopic pole
Broom
Mop
Bucket (small)
Stainless steel cleaner
Wood furniture polish
Multipurpose cleaner (Pinalen sold at Home Depot) Do not buy the red one it somehow leaves a stain when used.
Scrapper
Industrial spray bottle
Duster
Air freshener

Ideas to Transport Cleaning Supplies Incognito

Have you ever seen a housekeeper or maid struggle to carry all of their cleaning supplies all at once? Yes, we know your proud of what you do professionally, but everyone doesn’t need to know that’s what you do to earn a living. Well, there’s a better way to transport all those some time annoying cleaning supplies. We listed below somethings that will assist you in making this happen.

’36 inch -40′ inch duffle bag with wheels

You can find a durable duffle bag just about anywhere. My recommendation is that if you’re going to use it for a really long time, get a name brand duffle that can withstand the everyday abuse.

Telescopic pole

One of the best telescopic affordable poles that you can get is one sold by a company name holenshamee they sell the full tool that does other cleaning tasks, but you’re just making the purchase solely for the telescopic pole. They sell them at a few places such as Publix, Walmart, Target, Walgreens, Wind Dixie, CVS, Navarro discount pharmacy, Fresco mas, Ace Hardware, True Value, Valsan, and Dollar General. We’ve seen the telescopic poles priced at $8.99.

Mop head

Take your newly purchased telescopic pole with you to fit it on the mop head.

Broom head

Take your newly purchased telescopic pole with you to fit it on the mop head.

Squeegee head

Take your newly purchased telescopic pole with you to fit it on the mop head.

Duster head

Some duster on the market has threaded bottoms on them so you can interchange to gain access to high dusty areas such as a ceiling fan.

Stick vacuum

Purchase a stick vacuum that comes apart in pieces so you can fit it comfortably in your duffle bag.

Small bucket (small-medium)

How to Find the Best Vacuum for a Cleaning Business

If you don’t know how to find the best vacuum cleaner for a house cleaning business, you are in really big trouble. The vacuum is maybe the most important cleaning tool that you’ll ever use. If you don’t have a reliable, function flexible vacuum, you will be in for a hard day at work. The majority of homeowners have pets so you need a vacuum cleaner that can suck up massive amounts of pet hair. Let’s not forget about all the crevices and corners where dirt will hide. Head over to amazon.com and read the reviews and we’re sure you’ll find the best vacuum cleaner for your house cleaning business.

How to Set Your Cleaning Business Hourly Rate

Knowing how to set your hourly rate for house cleaning is crucial to your business survival. You don’t want to charge your customer too much or too less, you want to be right at the sweet spot for ultimate profitability. One of the easiest ways to know what prices or labor rate to charge customers is to look at what your competitors are charging. Go to google and put in the search bar cleaning services and your city name.

Look at the first 10 websites that show up and do some sneaky intel. Soon you’ll see what the majority of your competitors are charging and their hourly rate. The national average for an hourly rate for home cleaning company is anywhere from $30-45$ per hour.

If you grow in the future with a full-time staff, you can pay a staff member as much as $15 per hour to clean and you can keep the difference.

Business Filing Taxes & Asset Protection

The legal structure and tax structure is important to your company. When its time to pay taxes there are many benefits to structuring your company a certain way. For the most part, many cleaning companies launch as a one-man team and then expand in the future to a full staff. If you want to do a part-time or freelance basis and not incorporate you can file a 1099.

The companies that send you referrals and pay you for performing services if wages exceed the $600 threshold are required by law to send your IRS 1099 form by January 31. Please consult with an accountant or CPA to get the optimal tax advantage and maximum asset protection for your company.

How to Get Clients for your House Cleaning Business

Let’s get some money in your pocket. There are a few different ways you can get your first customer. Here is a list of resources to help you accomplish it. When you get referrals from the companies listed below its very important to know you must not ever solicit any customers to bay pass the company that referred you the lead. I must say if the customers solicit you to work with them privately you need to think about the agreement that you and the company have so you do not break any contractually binding agreements.

Sign up for google my business
Sign up for yelp business
Sign up for task rabbit
Sign up for thecleanr
Sign up for homeaglow
Sign up for Angie’s list
sign up for takl
Post job on craigslist
Sign up for handy
Sign up for tidy
Put out signs and business cards
Google ads
Facebook marketplace
Facebook ads

How to Build a Website for Your House Cleaning Business

No, you don’t absolutely need a website. I would hope building a website for your business is one of your top priorities. Owning and operating your own website offers many benefits. Remember earlier in the discussion when we talked about the domain name? well, hopefully when you used the knowem system your domain of the business name that you selected was available.

Like I said you don’t have to use the knowem system to register your domain name you could do it on your own and register your domain with a website hosting company. You can find a curated list here. With the list that was provided just narrow your selection to the top 3 hosting services. There is a basic cost associated with owning a website. You have the hosting which is paid every month and can range from $7-$150. 90 percent of website owners pay $7-$11 per month.

The other cost associated with owning a website is the domain name purchase which is paid yearly to keep owning that particular domain name. Domain registration can and yearly fee can cost anywhere from $10-$1,000,000. The big money domain names are domains that are highly sought after. In today’s, technological landscape things have been simplified to a point where the average consumer can do just about everything that a certified professional can do. You don’t need to hire a full-time website developer but you will need one for some complex parts of your website that you may not understand.

So, for you to have a complete understanding in knowing how to optimize your site with keywords you will need to install an easily editable content management system. Your hosting provider can assist you with setting this up. Our website here at thecleanr is built on a WordPress content management system. It’s 0ne of the most popular and content management systems and one of the easiest to use.

Do your research an make the best decision that suits your skill. Many of the content management systems that are out there have a FREE version that you can use. I advise you highly to not use the FREE version. Any written words that are on the FREE version you do not have total control over, and if they change their policy one day you may find yourself without a FREE account or possibly lose of all content that you worked so hard to create.

When you first login into your content management system backend, you will feel overwhelmed and confused with not knowing how to operate the backend. I promise you if you spend a few days in backend poking around you’ll soon see it’s not that bad after all.

How to Find Low Cost Website Design

It’s time to make your dream a reality by designing your website. Look only to see what website design ideas you can come up with by looking at a competitors site. PLEASE DO NOT COPY any one’s website.

Today’s ever-changing tech landscape allows for many ways to find cheap, talented, professional who can build websites. You can actually get a website designed for under ‘$100 depending on how many pages will be on the website. There are professional freelancers all over the world with their services on websites that allow us to communicate with them and get what we need to be done.

We’ll list a few websites here that you can use to get your website designed affordably.

How to Find a Designer for Your Cleaning Business Logo

Your logo should be recognizable and really represent what your company is all about. Logo designs are still pretty expensive based on where you get it done. Thanks to many changes in the word of freelance work you can get a log designed for little cost to you. We listed websites in the previous paragraph. These websites have designers on hand too that will bid on getting your business and you can choose the best logo that describes your business.

How to Get Free Targeted Traffic to Your Website

Yes, I said FREE traffic. With a little learning, you can perform search engine optimization on your own website. Put simply you put specific keywords and phrases on a web page and Google and other search engines will place your site according to the keywords on a page, the age of the site, and how many other websites that have your website’s links on them better known as backlinks. Once you begin to get familiar with the backend of your website, you will learn what a meta title and meta description are.

In addition to keywords being placed in the contents of a particular page, you need to write keyword specific words and alternative words to that keyword for every meta title and meta description page on your site.

How many backlinks do I need to my cleaning website?

The more websites that post your company’s website link on their website is what gives your website authority in its industry. When search engines see your website’s links on a lot of websites, its equivalent to a vote that simply says we like and trust the information on your website. A backlink can be naked URL and not hyperlinked with words or hyperlinked with a word. When websites link back to a website with a keyword that is related to the content on the page, search engines love that and reward you with FREE traffic. This is one of the main things that give a website massive amounts of traffic, so go get lots of them.

One of the easiest and fastest ways to get backlinks to your site is to head over to knowem.com and type your company name in the search bar. Knowem will display results of every website that you can get any easy backlink from. You can either use the knowem system to sign up for these sites on by one or do it all on your own if you’re strapped for cash.

How to Do Local Keyword Research for Your Cleaning Company

Your customers need to find your services and the only way to lead the right customers to your business is to find keywords that match their search query. I give you a list of general keyword phrases that customers commonly type into the search bar on most search engine sites. Keyword research tip: When you search from the search bar and it returns a result, there are recommended keywords displayed at the bottom of the page. Use those keywords where they make sense on the page you are optimizing. Feel free to use the keywords as they are listed below just add the city modifier to make it relevant to your city.

cleaning services (fill this section with your city name)
Maid service (fill this section with your city name)
Cleaning company in (fill this section with your city name)
The best cleaning company in (fill this section with your city name)
Move out cleaning service (fill this section with your city name)
Move in cleaning services (fill this section with your city name)
Green cleaning service(fill this section with your city name)
Post construction cleaning service (fill this section with your city name)
House cleaning services (fill this section with your city name)
Home cleaning service in (fill this section with your city name)
One time cleaning service (fill this section with your city name)
Deep cleaning service (fill this section with your city name)

Please watch this video to better understand how to do SEO on page optimization.

How to Write Meta Title and Description for your Website

Knowing how to write a meta title and meta description is a learned skill. Don’t get intimidated by the process. Everyone that has ever done it started where you are. you got this!

How to Find the Best House Cleaning Business Software

When you finally begin to pave your own path and getting clients from your own marketing efforts, I highly recommend that you to systematize almost everything that’s related to your business.

There are many services based software out in the marketplace that can assist you in streamlining and organizing your customers and their data. One of the things you can do is head over to the google search bar and type: services based software, cleaning business software, housekeeping company software, or maid service software. You’ll have to visit the sites to see which features best suit your company goals.

We hope this article was very helpful to you. please share it with someone who can benefit from the information.