I think there is a tendency to want to show people that our profession is a viable form of employment these days and shove their condescending attitude towards the steroetypical image of window cleaners down their throats. Hence the urge to almost be saying:
" hang on...do you know what I am earning??"
I do not believe any of our customers would get out of bed to access a forum like this to obtain information about earning potential.
Even if they did, there is such an enormous divide in earnings from one cleaner to another never mind county to county. No-one could nail down precise earnings of an individual.
Competitors in the commercial sector may very well use information gained on here to submit a lower price, but in the domestic world, someone would have to not only want to work in your precise area, they would have to follow you and get the addresses of where you work and then they have the obstacle of the customer being happy with you and not being prepared to offload you for a £1.00 coin.
I can honestly say that I would find it difficult to think of more than 5 customers who may do that after our window cleaning Serpico has done several months of stalking and detective work and offered my customers a cheaper clean.
It is also very unusual for anyone to hit a rich seam of customers from day one. So, any fears of Joe Bloggs reading this and throwing away his job in the office on the say so of a few unknown window cleaners are, in my opinion, completely without foundation.
There may be the odd one of course and if he does jump on the bandwagon, he will very shortly be introduced to reality.
At this point, he will say:
"they bl**dy well deserve it...I`m off !"
or he may say:
"I`ve got a chance of success here...I`ll stick with it and go for it !"
In either case, good luck to them...we have all been there.
If the Inland revenue want to question my tax return, they are free to do so...they are also free to waste thousands of pounds of public money following me round every customer and asking every customer to make a statement about when I clean and how much I charge.
In all honesty, do you really think they are going to do that?
If they did, they would find nothing they do not know anyway but would also incur the wrath of many letter writers to the local press about the terrible waste of money the investigation has cost.
In short, what you have built is something to be proud of...it took time, effort and perseverance.
If you are above board in all your accounting, fear nothing.
If you are commercial...keep schtum!!
If you are domestic...be proud and if you want to, sing your salary out to the masses...
they probably aren`t listening