[john tomkins]

As this week illustrates if window cleaners earned just £10 an hour, when you have a week off you would struggle trying to catch up to pay bills every time it rains!!!

The other side of the coin is that a person earning £10 ph works 6 hours a  day and gets £60. Obviously he can pay his bills and is happy with that amount.
If he loses 3 days due to snow/rain/wind/illness whatever, he loses £180.
You say you do £25 an hour and work those same 6 hourly days and lose the same 3 days in that week and you'd be down £450.
The £10 per hour guy would be better off

[geefree]

I just dont think its a good thing to advertise what anyone earns on any forum.

especially in this economic climate,

 

[windowcleaninginessex.co.uk]

If you tell someone ( a normal person with all their faculties intact)  the price for the job and they agree that they want the job doing at that price, whatever that price is, how is that a rip off?

In my mind that is a completely fair transaction. Not that I do overprice, as I find that they are the first jobs to cancel.

Example of ripping off in my eyes: A tv in one shop costs £650 in next shop costs £450, we would all say  what a rip off that first shop is don't go there.

So why is difference to us window cleaners when one charges £10 per hour and what charges £30+ an hour when in the end we all do the same job..

 I know hourly rate is in possible to do as we price by the job, Its just an estimate

[jaykie]

so is £30 too much or £10 too cheap, who is going to decide what it should be,
well that will be more as im my own boss, i give the price to the custy and they choose.

Chris

[Justen Uff]

Can't believe how many times this subject comes up on here.

It really proves one thing to me....What a bunch of amatuers must be on this forum trying to find out what they can get away with as a windowcleaner.

What are you worth?

That's the question to be asking yourself.

If your strength is small then don't carry heavy loads, if your words are worthless then don't give advice!
If you want to know what you're work is worth - just quote what you think you're worth, do the best job you think you can and charge what you think you should.  If the clients have paid somewhere around what they think they should then they'll generally let you know.

It's something you get a general feel for.  You can't gauge what you are worth by someone else on the internet. 

Robbie Williams was 10 times better than Take That when he went solo, my how things change!

Your customers will soon let you know if you're worth it or not!

Enough, already!!

[jaykie]

This Question only ever seems to come up on CIU, the other forums im on never seem to get this question.

[mikethechamois]

ewan you are showig again that you understand business

some of the replies on this thread are worrying, not for me, if thats the state of my competition then im laughing all the way to the bank

some of you do really need to get a grip of how to run a successfull business

business link run some excellent courses on how to manage the financial side of your business..............including  how to price your service in order to make enough profit to sustain and grow your business

i could easily put it all on here but i feel that those that really need the help will just stubbornly argue to the annoyance of those that already have it sussed

looking at the results of the survey those that ticked 30 + are not the problem,even those that bigged up their hourly take are not aproblem as it shows that their thinkings in the right place even if their customers are struggling with the concept of employing a professional wc

whats worrying is those that are charging less than £10 per hr

by the time you have paid all your running costs,insurance  etc your earning peanuts,

What is going on in your world
 

[jaykie]

Put up a pole on who doesnt want a licence and a majority that put £10 a hour will probably select they dont want a licence. That or they dont want newbies to think its good pay.

[Slash]

I would gladly go for a lisence for WC's,would make us all more professional and would come across as a more ligit buisness.
To be honest I have quoted low for very small properties that I think would be reasonable and only charge say £5.00 and the person would say.."God,thats cheap" but they only have 2 -3 windows per flat on first floors,the higher I go the bit more I would add.
I would rather do a load of flats together than just one as I have had trouble with occupiers underneath the flat I am cleaning and is it really worth it cleaning just the one flat for £5.00 with 2-3 windows,getting ladders off vans or reeling in/out etc.I think not and thats why I try to prevent doing one,maybe 4-5 flats make it a little bit worth while.
As for WFP and trad the price is the same for me.

[sparklebright]

The main problem with this poll, is that it does not reflect how much someone earns.
Once you take into account your costs you are not earning the headline rate. It is this sort of thing that encourages newbies who work for X per hour to become windys and bring down the price.
Let's list some costs:
Accountancy min £250 a year (mine is £600)
Fuel  min £1200 a year (for local work)
Vehicle costs min £1000 per year.

I'm sure there are many more costs I haven't listed. My running costs are more than £600 a month and doesn't include subbies.

So if you tell some poor sod I make £30 an hour when he works in an office for £10 it doesn't tel the whole truth, does it.

We have all lost work to some muppet who arrives and works for £120 an hour top line rate, who finds he is not making any money after costs.
Window cleaning is an ok job, which delivers a good wage but only if you do the work.

[sparklebright]

Sorry that should have said £10 an hour

[groundhog]

I work at least twice as quick as most other window cleaners.... does this mean that I should charge half of what they do?... I think not!!!!

[steve a]

I rarely do under £25 an hour, but that doesnt mean i earn £52000 a year (40 hours a week at 25 is 1000 x 52 weeks) Nowhere near it yet in fact....

So hourly rate means nothing!!

As this week illustrates if window cleaners earned just £10 an hour, when you have a week off you would struggle trying to catch up to pay bills every time it rains!!!

Think you will find thats due to the loss factor usually 2 hours per day. You may go out to work for 8 hours say 8 till 4 but with travel and breaks (brews etc) you prob only work 6.
Bet turnover is more like 32k which is 32hrs at 25 per hour

[mikethechamois]

thats right steve it does work out like that

when i started i had all my costs worked out , or so i thought

i ws making money but not what i thought i was going to

i now work out my costs on a 40 week year to take into account bad weather, days off, and holidays

6 hrs working day as that is what you actually end up working

its then down to how long each job will take you with travelling

since the year stared i have written off 4 weeks work and  next week is not that promising but working things out ths way has allowed me to do that

so newbies take  note of above and get your calculators out

work out your breakeven point per hr and once you know that figure you have a constant check on your earnings..............by the hour

thats why wcs wrk to an hourly figure rather than per job,  you charge per job but convert it into an hourly figure for your own peice of mind

if anyone needs advice on working out their breakeven, its a simple exercise and i will advise

the old hands have sussed it years ago andd wont need any help

[dai]

I guess that most of us have some work that pays £30 an hour, and a hell of a lot of other work that doesn't.
For me it's not so much what I earn per hour, it's how much I manage to save every week, that's the bottom line as far as I'm concerned.
My average after expenses is about half of the above figure, but I did take my family to Bali for a month last year.

[Rob.Hall]

When you take out the actual days lost through bad weather etc, you will find that it will be far less than what people say they earn an hour.

[Davo]

Its the same topic again, and again the question of "rip off" comes into the mix.  If the customer is happy to pay the price for your service are they being ripped off? Someone, no matter what business it is,is always cheaper, so does that make any one dearer for the same service a rip off merchant.

If a man can get £15 for a job that most may only get £8 for, is he a rip off merchant or is he smart?

Maybe there should be a national tariff for cleaning that you MUST work to, there again some will earn more per hour on set cleaning rates because they work more quickly, so they will be ripping off customers because they arent taking long enough. Where does it end?

Maybe for the more socially conscious you could set up a cleaning cooperative and give all the profits back to your customers as a dividend.


Mark

[ftp]

Still not cleaning windows Davo?
You have a strange interest in earnings of windowcleaners why is that?

[Davo]

Still not cleaning windows Davo?
You have a strange interest in earnings of windowcleaners why is that?

No i dont actually clean windows, i rent some work out and sub conservatory cleaning work. As to the question of a strange interest in earnings, what you earn or dont earn makes no difference to me, but ive been on the tools and seen men who undervalue their skills when they start to work for themselves.

Just because you might not pay a certain price for something doesnt mean your customers wont, everybody values the price of things differently.

Mark