Average Yearly Income and Salaries for Cleaning Businesses

While you are still contemplating opening a cleaning business, the first thought you often wonder is how much income you could make from a cleaning business. This is a very valid question! Starting a new business is a large commitment and you want to ensure you can make a reliable income from your new career. We have put together an outline of how much your business can make, along with tips to help you increase your income.

The average yearly income and salary for a cleaning business will depend on the stage your business is in. In the beginning, your business can range from $30,000 to $50,000 a year as you start to secure clients. Once you’ve hired additional cleaners, you can make from $50,000 to $70,000. However, commercial cleaning businesses have the most revenue potential and can make over $100,000 a year.

Income Potential with One Cleaner

As you first get your cleaning business up and running, your business has the potential to make between $30,000 to $50,000 per year as you start to secure clients. Keep in mind that this estimate is before any expenses have been paid and before you have set aside money for taxes. This range is based on only operating your business with one cleaning professional.

In the US, the average hourly rate for a residential cleaning business is between $25 to $40 per hour and per cleaning professional. This hourly rate will really add up quickly once you’ve booked several clients and you begin to fill your cleaning calendar!

For example: If you were charging $30 per hour and you were cleaning for 30 hours a week combined for all your clients, you would be making approximately $900 a week, which would be around $46,000 a year if you never took time off.

You want to keep in mind that as you start your cleaning business, the number of hours you clean per week will be much lower until you start to secure clients. From our experience, most cleaning businesses start working around 20 hours a week until the number of clients increases. 20 hours a week usually equates to about 5 or 6 clients.

Once your cleaning calendar begins to fill up and you’ve secured a loyal client base, you could work up to 40 hours a week. This would equate to approximately 11 to 13 clients weekly. This is the maximum we recommend handling with one cleaning professional.

Although the expenses are lower when you are the only cleaning professional, your availability is also limited. Generally, this stage of your business may last for around a year, depending on how much effort you are putting into advertising and increasing your client base. If you focus more on advertising, your business and income can grow quickly!

Income Potential with a Team of Cleaners

Once your weekly hours are getting close to 40 hours a week, it is time for you to consider hiring additional employees to help with cleaning jobs. At this phase of your business, your clients are very consistent, and you are consistently adding new clients to your cleaning calendar.

Since cleaning is a very demanding job on the body, we don’t recommend cleaning for more than 40 hours a week consistently. If you do clean more than 40 hours a week regularly, it will cause you to feel burned out. Then you will have less energy to put into building your business into a bigger organization.

You may think that hiring additional cleaners is only an expense and can’t add to the income of your business, but that is wrong! By hiring additional cleaners, you now have more hours in the week available to book more clients and increase the income. Hiring additional cleaners will have a large impact on your availability.

Since hiring additional help increases your availability, it also increases the amount of income your cleaning business can bring in. With having a second cleaning crew that can be doing cleaning jobs at the same time as your first cleaning crew, your cleaning business can make anywhere from $50,000 to $70,000. Keep in mind that this is with a small group of employees and only running two cleaning crews.

As the number of employees increases, the amount of income your business will create will also increase. If you are willing to continue to hire new employees, the income potential becomes unlimited for your cleaning business. The size your business grows will ultimately depend on your long-term vision and goals for your business.

When it comes to hiring additional help, you want to keep in mind that you often will not be paying your employees the same hourly rate that you charge your clients. For example: If you charge your clients $30 an hour per cleaning professional, we would recommend paying your employees around $20 per hour.

It is important for you to pay your employees less than what you charge clients because you need to account for paying for supplies, taxes and any other expenses your business has. If you pay your employees the same rate you charge your client, your business will ultimately end up losing money after you’ve paid for business expenses.

Overall, if you want to focus on residential cleaning and not branch out into commercial cleaning, hiring additional employees will be the most efficient way to increase your company’s revenue over time.

Check out this article to know how you can find a cleaning business for sale.

Income Potential for a Commercial Cleaning Business

When it comes to operating a cleaning business, the highest potential for income is focusing on commercial cleaning. This is due to the higher rates you can charge for contracts and the size of commercial buildings. You will have to secure fewer clients in commercial cleaning than you would in residential cleaning in order to make a similar amount of income.

Commercial cleaning businesses generally start making around $70,000 a year once they’ve secured clients. However, this amount can easily increase to over $100,000 a year depending on the size of the buildings you’re cleaning and the number of employees you have.

Once you’ve created a successful residential cleaning business and hired additional cleaning professionals, it is common for a cleaning business owner to change their focus to commercial cleaning instead of residential. Commercial cleaning can be more stable and offers a larger range of income for your business.

If you are securing clients with large office buildings, your contract can include a much higher rate than what you were charging for residential cleaning. For example: If you are cleaning a three-story office building once a week, your contact could include a rate between $1,000 to $1,500 per month for the one client! In residential cleaning, it would generally take a minimum of 3 clients to equal that amount per month.

Due to the size of commercial buildings, we recommend only focusing on commercial cleaning once you have hired additional help. If you are only operating with one cleaning professional, it would be difficult to clean a large office building in a reasonable amount of time. You should have a minimum of 3 cleaners available for commercial cleaning.

How to Calculate Your Salary as the Business Owner?

As you start your cleaning business, you may be wondering how much you should be paying yourself from the income your business is generating. This will largely depend on how quickly you want to grow your new business and what your expenses add up to.

The first step in calculating your salary is adding up what your total business expenses include. This number will typically include your business license (including the annual renewal fee), cleaning supplies, transportation to get to your cleaning jobs, your estimated taxes and any other expenses your business has. To have a solid business foundation, it is essential to always have a clear understanding of what your expenses are.

Then you will want to add up what your business is currently making per month. You will subtract your business expenses from the income you are making to see what the highest limit is for your salary. For example: If your business is bringing in $3,000 a month and your expenses average $400 a month, the highest amount your salary could be is $2,600 a month.

As you hire employees, you will add their wages to your business expenses. You don’t have to worry about how much this will increase your expenses because it will also largely increase the amount of income your business brings in monthly. Hiring employees typically will increase the potential of your own salary as well.

If you want to invest in advertising to grow your business, you would add your advertising budget to your business expenses. This will decrease your salary potential temporarily, but it will increase your income potential and your client base relatively quickly! If you plan on growing your business, even a small advertising budget is worth the investment. You can read more about this in our tips below.

Check out this article to know how to determine how muc to bid on a cleaning job.

Tips on Increasing Your Cleaning Business Income

If you are looking to increase the amount of income your cleaning business is making, we recommend investing in some sort of advertising. Whether your budget for advertising is small or large, there are plenty of ways to get your business name out there.

Investing in advertising will increase your income because it will increase the number of clients that are booking your cleaning services. Advertising is especially important in the beginning stages of your business before you have a solid client base.

If you are looking to keep your advertising budget on the low end, we recommend passing around flyers in your area or using social media ads. The best part about social media ads is you can completely control how much you are willing to spend. You can add in your target audience’s traits so your ads will have a better return for your investment.

Another tip for increasing your business income is ensuring that your business maintains a positive reputation. If your business has a great reputation and five-star reviews, you will have a better chance of increasing your hourly rate that you charge clients. Most clients are willing to pay more for a cleaning business that they know they can trust.

Our last tip for increasing your business income long term is outsourcing general business tasks that someone else can easily be done for you. With websites like Fiverr and Upwork, you can easily find an independent contractor to do tasks like managing your social media or sending invoices.

Outsourcing services can increase your income because it frees up your own schedule as the business owner, so you can focus on more important tasks. As the business owner, your time is better spent working directly with your clients and growing your client base. If you focus your own time on booking new clients, your business and the income potential will grow.

Cleaning services are in high demand in most areas. Starting a cleaning business not only has relatively low expenses to start compared to other business ideas, but it also provides a wide range of income opportunities as you actively grow your new business!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average hourly rate to charge to clean homes?

Although the specific hourly rate will depend on the cleaning demand in your area, most cleaning businesses in the US charge between $25 to $40 per hour per cleaning professional. If the demand for cleaning in your area is high, your specific rate could be on the higher end.

To find out what the competitive rate is in your specific area, we recommend calling around 3-5 cleaning businesses near you that have good reviews. You can either ask them for their hourly rate or for an estimate to clean your home. If they provide an estimate, you also want to ask how long they expect it to take them to clean. This will give you an idea of what potential clients are willing to pay for cleaning services in your area.

What are some of the expenses I should expect in my cleaning business?

A cleaning business can be created on a low budget. As you start your business, you can expect to have expenses like your business license and any required permits and cleaning supplies. Most new cleaning business owners use a car they already own to get to their cleaning jobs, but you will have to also pay for gas.

If you are on a tight budget, most of your cleaning supplies can be purchased at your local discount store. One of the main benefits of starting a cleaning business is you can start small and increase your tools as your business and budget also increase.

To learn more on how to start your own cleaning business, check out my startup documents here.

Please note that the contents of this blog are for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. Any action taken based on the information provided in this blog is solely at your own risk. Additionally, all images used in this blog are generated under the CC0 license of Creative Commons, which means they are free to use for any purpose without attribution.