Hey everybody!
Just curious how many jobs y’all do per year?
are you working another job as well? do you have supplemental income?
I realize some of the answers are going to vary based on geographical locations but curious how many of you make PW a full time career vs. how many do it for extra cash.
Last year I had 70 with an average ticket price of 1600 April-Sept
I still work for the state but took the summer off last year. I intend on doing the same thing this year, dedicate my summer to exterior cleaning and see how much I grow in my third year.
I know @Racer wants me to continue working for the state but I have a hard time doing that with the way everything is going.
I honestly don’t know, my business is 70%window cleaning and 25% pressure washing by volume, 5% screen repair.
That being said PW makes three times per man hour more than WC so actual income is closer to 60-40. I now do concrete sealing so hopefully I can snug that up to 50-50.
I have thought about offering WC because I feel that it might get my foot in the door with clients I wouldn’t normally get. Do you find yourself able to get in there with WC and then upsell or is that an uphill battle?
I’m the opposite man, most calls are for WC but I get completely separate ones for house washes. 99% of the time they have window screens so it’s not like I can offer an external WFP wash afterward, it would be a full-blown window cleaning and customers really don’t have that money allotted. I do my very best to at least rinse the heck out of the windows to cut down on residue smearing.
In your case, you could DEFINITELY offer WC as you’re probably the only game in town. I will say the learning curve is a lot longer than PW so keep that in mind.
I have a few competitors in town that do window cleaning, and I let customers know external windows get cleaned during house washes but I do not offer specialized cleaning. I know my competition uses the filtered water and such…at least 2 companies that I know of, but it’s seemed like too big a pain in the butt while I’m chugging along making my money and I’m friendly with them so send those particular cases to them as they are better equipped. There’s enough work to go around in this town so far that it doesn’t seem to hurt me but I’m always wondering. My goal was 100 jobs in '23 and I hit 70. If I can squeak out 100 I think I will be golden once everything is paid off so my goal for next year is 125. Im starting to get the hang of advertising and hopefully building my brand with the last 2 years so im hoping to continue my upwards trend. I had a lot of free time so feel like I can do that much work by myself as long as there’s the opportunity, and still have a good chunk of free time for family time as well as long as the business and my body hold out.
1600? are you doing commercial PW?
That’s what I was thinking. I’ve had a few 1600 + jobs but average ticket price?? Jealous, lol
@dcbrock I’m also mainly windows and offer PW as an add on. Nothing better than bundling a house wash with a window cleaning service. How is your sales / estimate process? Do you try to get every customer to opt in for both services? I want to harp that stronger this year, if they opt for both services they’ll get a 10% discount or something similar. How do you quote PW, do you measure online and quote by sq ft or per ft, or go in person and measure or just wing it?
Just depends on what is needed, typical two story housewash runs about $275 and takes an hour. I try not to push ‘upselling’, people here get deeply offended if they feel I’m trying to get more money out of them.
I try to do the Google Earth thing but you ‘don’t know what you don’t know’ as it were, and weird crap pops up when you see it in person.
I’d say 85 percent residential, 15 percent commercial. Unruly roofs and commercial definitely bumps up my average ticket price. Some of the roofs i do is pure nightmare fuel 
Yup I can agree with the online quoting. I had a job last year that I quoted over google maps that took me like 4-5 hours for a house wash (house wasn’t washed in like 8 years and was only about 1.5k-2k sq ft). The house was BAD and a 2.5gpm PW doesn’t suffice, fortunately I got a better machine for this year.
I do prefer quoting remotely but in person is obviously better. Just gotta come up with a better quoting system.
No, you’re not. If you saw his operating costs you’d probably have a stroke. Living in one of the last free places on Earth ain’t cheap.
Some of the roofs you do makes me question how I even sell roof cleaning jobs. If my customers saw what you deal with they’d realize that their roof could be infinitely worse and probably just let it slide for a few more decades lol
oh, yea, just creeped on him and looks like hes up in alaska. I lived in Ketchikan for 2 years and can attest to the insane cost of living, but i sure miss that Husky IPA from alaska brewing company!
Everyone everywhere is like that… therein lies the educating the customer and building a relationship. I’d guess you’re doing both already, so it should be well received when you offer other ways you can help them with no pressure.
I’m in Florida and average about 200 new clients a year. Plus an additional 20-30 repeat clients. I do not offer window cleaning. Only pressure washing, house washing, roof cleaning, and pool deck/enclosure. My average ticket price for last year was $647. Commercial work is not included in that average ticket price. I also work alone unless it is a very large job. Then I will bring in additional help. I should also add, I only do about 10 commercial jobs a year. I mainly do residential, which I prefer.
