I hear you Groundhog but: At £25ish ph I get all the work I want and have not too much fear of being undercut. Also at £25ph Mrs Smith is happy for me to have me back 6 or 7 times a year...at £50 it'd be 2 if I'm lucky.
But when all's said and done barring petrol £25 is net money...I might replace a scrim/rubber from time to time :
I haven't canvassed for 18 months as all of my new work is from Recs.
I never took up w/c ing to make a fortune...just a nice living being my own boss.
Simon
You say that you are happy with earning £25.00 per hour, which on it own looks like a good figure to earn.
But you are not earning £25.00 per hour, you say that apart from petrol you only pay for scrims/rubbers from time to time.
What happens if you have a holiday or day off, what if you are sick and can't earn, this comes off your £25.00.
You pay for petrol but what about the insurance-road tax-breakdowns and even replacing the vechicle when its worn out.
You buy shoes and work gear because of you job this also comes off your £25.00.
You might have public insurance, but you will have to pay Nat Insurance and Income Tax.
Every year you have to do your books for the tax man, you can either pay an accountant or spend xxx amount of hours doing them yourself, this also comes out of you £25.00, if you get them wrong and the tax man fines you then this also comes out of your £25.00.
Do you pay for a pension, more from that £25.00.
At the end of the day, its dosen't matter what you charge per hour its what that figure is really worth when you take all of the deductables from it.
You say that £25.00 is a good amount to earn from an unskilled job, don't run yourself down, window cleaning is both dangerous and skilled and you should charge accordingly.
If you ask Mrs smith how much she pays a plumber-electrian-decorator just to turn up then you are charging a pittance for a skilled job.
If you want to earn £25.00 per hour net, then you need to start at this figure and then add on all of the other bits that you will spend to come to a gross figure to charge.