couldn't agree more, What we do is manual work, it's outside and done in all kinds of weather conditions.
Cleaning a window might not be rocket science, but to be good at it and to be fast at it takes dedication and hard work, and some people are simply not cut out for hard manual work.
Earnings?
The average window cleaner who has been going a few years can be earning (by that I mean turnover and not income) somewhere around the 17k mark
4 to 6 houses an hour, day in, day out? Do me a favour :
Your average semi has 10-12 windows and as I have said many times on the forum, the average window cleaner will take 90 seconds to clean the average window.
Allowing for small windows and so on Mr Average will still take between 15 and 20 minutes to clean your average house.
And Mr Average will average 3 houses an hour, and over the day, which on average will be 5 working hours he will do something like 15 houses in his average day....providing he is cleaning the average semi all day long!
Prices will vary across the country of course, but for that average semi it will usually be somewhere between £6 and £10
Which would appear to make well over a £100 a day well within reach wouldn't it?
Over time though it just doesn't work out like that, and even to get up to Mr Average's time of 20 minutes a house will take most people many months of hard graft before you begin to achieve those times.
The sky is the limit though...but it all depends on the individual, your first years income will be low, it will take several months to build up a full round, unless you buy one of course, but even then it will take you several months before you are even close to getting around in the correct timescale.
With effort, and after a couple of years, most could hope to turnover somewhere in the region of 15-17k
But don't be deceived into thinking that equates to an income of 15-17k...it doesn't!!
You have all your overheads to consider, for most, the biggest will be tramsport...don't fall into the trap of think that, Ahh, but I would have a car to run even if I wasn't a window cleaner...the fact is that without said vehicle you COULDN'T be a window cleaner!!
For those that have waded through my terminally long post...if you want the true indicator of your income, look at your tax bill...if you are only submitting say...£15,000, once allowences and business costs have been allowed for your tax bill will be in the hundreds, not in the thousands.
If you are going into business then you have to look at the bottom line.
I personally know of one window cleaner who works mostly by himself and he turns over almost 50k, and he cleans mostly domestic houses, but he is an exception and it has taken him a great many years to get there too.
So a big income is possible, but it won't happen in the first year!!
And most will never attain an income of that size from window cleaning, because most of us are average...
Ian