Cleaning businesses can be found everywhere and anywhere. Because of this market saturation, it’s essential to set yourself apart. One way you can do that is to focus on a specific niche, such as those included below!
Some of the best niches you can focus on as a cleaning business are the following: power washing, pool cleaning, boat cleaning, and gutter cleaning.
Power Washing
Power washing is an incredibly lucrative cleaning business niche that has a wide opening for new businesses. Most cleaning businesses that are centered around power washing will generally powerwash nearly anything that you need. Most customers will contract a power washing company to clean their driveway, fences, siding of their homes, porches, and sometimes even something like their boat. This wide variety of potential uses significantly increases your clientele base, making this an even more profitable business opportunity.
Start-up costs for a Power Washing Company
Pressure Washer
Of course, when you are starting a power washing business, the most important thing for you is the pressure washer itself. You have two options when it comes to securing a pressure washer for your business. The first option is that you can lease a pressure washer from a business that offers them. Leasing will generally come with a lower downpayment, but your monthly cost will be higher.
The other method is to purchase the pressure washer. You can either purchase the pressure washer in cash and not owe anything, or you can put it on a payment plan. Pressure washers can run you anywhere from a few hundred dollars to fifteen thousand dollars. So before you choose how you want to pay, you first have to decide how much you’re willing to pay. Of the two options, I would recommend the latter, as with the former, even after paying all the money you will be paying, you still will not own the pressure washer.
Water Tanks
In a pressure washing business, the water tanks are just as important as the pressure washers themselves. You will need to purchase a water tank with each pressure washer, so if you have three pressure washers with two other employees to run them, you are also going to need to purchase three water tanks. When you purchase a pressure washer, at least in most cases, it will come with a small tank.
But when you start performing larger jobs that require both a more significant amount of water and warmer water, you will want to purchase a tank. These tanks will generally run around $1000, but you can spend a lot more for a higher quality tank.
Vehicle
Pressure washing equipment is not light in any sense of the word. Because of this, it’s highly recommended that you purchase a vehicle to carry all of your pressure washing equipment. You are going to want to look for either a pickup truck or a van of some sort. Anything that can fit all for equipment while not compromising anyone’s safety or the integrity of a vehicle should work fine.
Check out this article to the difference between deep cleaning and regular house cleaning.
Pool Cleaning
Anyone who has ever had to clean a pool knows that it can be an absolute hassle. Pools require a significant amount of maintenance, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, this maintenance can be very challenging. Because of this, many people end up relying on pool cleaning services for both routine maintenances and deep cleaning. This opens the door for you as a cleaning business to expand into the pool cleaning niche!
How much can you make from pool cleaning?
Most pool cleaning services charge between $60 and $90 per hour, while they usually spend around 2 to 3 hours on each client. If you, like a pool cleaning service, work a total of 40 hours a week, you’re going to end up making around $2400 to $3600 a week! Considering taxes, as well as the fact that you likely won’t work every week of the year, your business could have a gross gain of about $150,000 on average. This is before taxes, but because taxes are different in every state, we will assume that you are taxed at about 20%.
This leaves you with about $121,000. You then need also to subtract your costs from the total. The average pool cleaning business spends about 20% of its income on employees and cleaning equipment expenses. Thus, subtracting another 20% of our starting total from our current total will leave us with $93,000! Of course, these numbers will vary from business to business, but this gives you a good idea of the profits that a pool cleaning business could make!
Boat Cleaning
How many boat cleaning businesses have you ever heard of? For me as well as most people, it’s probably a pretty low number. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist or that you shouldn’t start one! Anyone who owns a boat can tell you that those things can get pretty gross, especially along the bottom, where they are the lowest in the water.
But cleaning these boats isn’t as simple as cleaning a car where you can spray it down with some soap and water, and everything will just come off. Boats require a pretty severe cleaning to eliminate all of the mud, algae, and other things that get stuck on the bottom. That’s where you, a boat cleaning business (a cleaning business that offers boat cleaning), can step in!
Where is boat cleaning most likely to make money?
This may come as a bit of a surprise but believe it or not; if you want to make money cleaning boats, you should probably be somewhere near a large body of water. More specifically, however, one great place to start a boat cleaning business is in a town that has a yacht club. Yacht owners are wealthy, and with an investment as expensive as a yacht, they are always looking for a way to keep their investment in good shape. This includes keeping their yachts clean and looking brand new, which is where you can help! Cleaning a yacht will be different than cleaning a traditional boat because of its size, but it’s not something that you can’t figure out fairly quickly. You can also charge a higher rate for cleaning a yacht because of the added difficulty.
Check out this article to know what type of cleaning business you can start in Florida.
Gutter Cleaning
For most people, cleaning their gutters is a nightmare that they want to avoid at all costs. But for you, it may be an opening for your cleaning business! Most residential homes in the United States have gutters to help deal with debris and rain. Because of this, gutters tend to get clogged and weighed down at times, requiring them to be cleaned out before it gets too bad.
However, the process requires standing on a ladder, which is not possible or safe for many people, especially the elderly, meaning they have to hire someone to do it for them. Now it is unlikely that you could sustain an entire cleaning business around gutter cleaning, but that doesn’t mean you can’t add it to an existing cleaning business.
How much profit can you make cleaning gutters?
Most homeowners will spend somewhere in the ballpark of about $150 to have their gutters cleaned. Generally, most gutter cleaning services will make around $300 a day, but because gutter cleaning is seasonal, you won’t be able to make this much every day for a year. However, you can still offer this service for the entire season of fall, which lasts around 12 weeks. Once fall is over, you can continue with your regular cleaning business services and return to it next year!
Frequently Asked Questions
Is specializing in one cleaning business niche more profitable than working in multiple?
As with many things in the business world, the answer truly depends. The main thing you want to consider is the niches that you are considering. For example, specializing in boat cleaning could be a better idea than focusing on gutter cleaning, bin cleaning, and pool cleaning because, in the latter, you are spreading your resources on several different things.
But suppose you decide whether to focus on gutter cleaning itself instead of the pool and hot tub cleaning together. In that case, that may be a bad idea because gutter cleaning is likely not a very lucrative business by itself. Therefore, deciding if specializing in one niche over multiple will depend on making a more profitable business out of.
Can pressure washing be a sustainable solo niche business?
Pressure washing has a broad enough market that, yes, it can be a sustainable business by itself. Because pressure washing can be done on a massive variety of different surfaces, including siding on houses, cement, and others, pressure washing has a wide variety of potential customers. This large customer base means that pressure washing businesses have the potential to make significant profits. Thus, if you want to start a pressure washing business, you can do so without worrying about any other services.
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.
About the author. Entrepreneur and Cleaning Business Fan.
Hi! I am Shawn and I am a happy individual who happens to be an entrepreneur. I have owned several types of businesses in my life from a coffee shop to an import and export business to an online review business plus a few more and now I create online cleaning business resources for those interested in starting new ventures. It’s demanding work but I love it. I do it for those passionate about their business and their goals. That’s why when I meet a cleaning business owner, I see myself. I know how hard the struggle is to retain clients, find good employees and keep the business growing all while trying to stay competitive.
That’s why I created Cleaning Business Boss: I want to help cleaning business owners like you build a thriving business that brings you endless joy and supports your ideal lifestyle.
