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Price By The Hour or Job for House Cleaning?

Feb 27, 2020
Hi, I'm Angela Brown and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is the show where you can ask a question about

house

cleaning

and I'll help you find an answer. Today's question comes from a new

house

cleaner who is going to start her own business. And she wants to know, “How much am I supposed to charge clients for house

cleaning

? I have no idea what the current

price

is. I have no idea what I'm supposed to charge. Wow. That's an interesting question because every house cleaner at some point has asked themselves that question. So what you need to know, and this is based on Home Advisor and Angie's List, which are two national websites that do house cleaning referrals across the country.
price by the hour or job for house cleaning
And this is the country of the United States. In the United States, the going rate for house cleaning ranges from $25 to $45 per

hour

. There is a range in between: you could say the average is $35 per

hour

and that would be a fair

price

almost anywhere. There are small, remote places in the country where they charge a little less. There are places in New York City and probably Boston and some other highly populated areas where there could be a little more. But the going rate nationwide is between $25 and $45 per hour. There are now two ways to bid for a job.
price by the hour or job for house cleaning

More Interesting Facts About,

price by the hour or job for house cleaning...

The first way is to bid by the hour and simply charge a flat rate. “I charge $30 an hour or $25 an hour.” The second way is that you can charge per job. And it depends on the way your business is set up, which will determine which way you choose. If you are just starting out in the home cleaning business and are completely new and do not have a business plan set up and are just starting out, my recommendation is this; Make it simpler. Don't get hung up on "what is the square footage of the house?" and "what's going to be involved?" And how… you don't know how to bid on a house, you don't know how long it will take you to clean it.
price by the hour or job for house cleaning
You don't know what it entails in terms of chemicals and cleaning supplies and all the things you'll have to bring and provide to offset those expenses. So, that being said. Don't charge for work when you're starting out. It's super complicated for someone who has no idea what they're doing. If you're new to the business (I love this), just charge by the hour. Now, you don't have the credentials because you haven't done this as a company. You don't have a large list of satisfied customers. Well? So you don't have the referral system credentials behind you. You probably don't have a certification of where you have completed your house cleaning training.
price by the hour or job for house cleaning
So if you're just winging it and you're going to figure it out as you go, my recommendation is don't charge a lot of money. If you screw up something, people will be quick to fire you. And say, "I'm paying a lot of money and you're just playing around to figure things out." So don't do that. I don't want to encourage you to lower your prices because I'm a big advocate that with house cleaners, we get what we're worth. That said, if you're just starting out, here's an easy way to get started; charges $25 per hour. And I know that's right at the bottom of the rung, but this is what it is;
This is an easy math problem. So the easy math is that I only have 4 hours to clean your house. So, no matter how big or small your house is, I only have four hours." So, if I can clean your house in 2 hours, it will be $50 dollars. If I can clean your house in 4 hours, it will be $100 dollars. And you "Can do the calculations and the client too, so that's super easy. When you come to a client's house and the client says, "Well, I have a hoarding problem and I have all this stuff that I've collected over the years.
Does it take you to do that? Please don't try to bid on work You have no idea what you're doing and you have no idea how long it's going to take. So, bid by the hour and say, "Listen, I only have 4 hours, let's see." How far can we go in 4 hours? That It'll cost you $100." Now, when you're starting out, what this will do for you is it'll fill a time slot. They call it lowering the price. And the reason I recommend this is because you don't have a system in place. You don't have cleaning systems that tell you how fast and how fast.
The more you do this, the more competent you become. You'll walk into a house, look around and say "This will take me 2.5 hours and cost me x amount of dollars." And you will do very well. But right now, at the beginning, 25 dollars an hour. And then you can figure it out. As you progress, you have the opportunity to create some systems. And to find out how fast and efficient you are. What cleaning products you will need and will give you a little wiggle room. Good? Because the client is not making the biggest bet for you at $50 an hour.
If he takes twice as long at least it will be $50 dollars. Then they'll say, “Well, I'll give this girl a chance. If it takes twice as long, at least that's $50 dollars." Right? So, they'll give you a little more freedom. The second thing is that once you fill your schedule, there will be people who will let you. That's just the natural progression of this business. As people churn, if you decide you're worth more and want to charge more, you can certainly raise your prices. But keep your initial customers at $25 so that people who hire you in the future From At the beginning, when you're just starting out, you've got them stuck in that rhythm.
This is the only profession I know that you can jump into. This is not something you should laugh at. This is the only profession. I know where you can jump in, where You don't need a college degree. You don't need four years of training, and you can show up on the first day of work and say, "I'm getting $25 an hour." Right? That's a pretty good income for someone just starting out at any job. In any job, that's pretty good money. If you work 8 hours a day at $25 an hour, you just put $200 in your pocket. If you do that five days a week, you just put $1,000 in a week in your pocket.
TRUE? So what I'm saying is that you can make quite a bit of money starting out even if you start at the bottom of the ladder. And as you start from the bottom of the If you go up the ladder and move up, you will become faster at what you do. And your processes will change. And you can completely switch from bidding by hour to bidding by job. But at $25 an hour there's another There's an element here that's really important. Because math is simple, math is also simple for the people you work for. So they can turn to their friends and say, "Listen, I just bought this great house cleaner and he only charges 25 dollars an hour." And the person they're talking to thinks in their head, "Well, wait a minute." second.
I pay my current house cleaner $35 an hour and he's not very good. I should give your guy a chance." And you're immediately going to get some referral business from friends and neighbors of the people you work for. So very quickly your schedule will fill up. One of the biggest problems I see and this again It goes back to social media. There are house cleaners who go online and say, "Well, I'm worth $50 an hour, I'm going to charge $50 an hour." Okay. That's fine, but how do you justify that price? If you're new and You don't have the systems in place, you're not efficient, you don't have the credentials and all that stuff, you're going to get fired very quickly.
And then instead of getting some money, you're not going to get any money. And now you have to go out and spend money on advertising to get new clients. Because you have this attitude. That's a little arrogant; "Oh, I'm worth a lot more money." If you don't have anything to back it up, guess what? You're not worth a lot more money! You have to do it. be able to support it. And thus be humble at the beginning. Charge a lower price, completely fill your calendar. And in case you have clients who abandon. And you'll get new customers, and "I'm talking about six months from now and you want to raise your prices, you can do it then.
Right? Because now you can justify that price. All right, until I see you again, figuring things out." . If I can clean your house in 4 hours, it will cost you $100. Where you don't need a college degree. Leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.

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