What Kind of Cleaning Service Are You?

When it comes to cleaning businesses, most can be summed up in one of two categories. Usually, you’re either consumer, or you’re commercial. But what do these names mean?

Consumer is exactly what it sounds like. You’re cleaning directly for the everyday consumer. The individual household or apartment. This can include many different things, however. If you’re starting off basic, you may be doing basic maid service. You may also expand into window washing, carpet cleaning, even handy man services. You can do all of these services and make a good chunk of dough just by working for homeowners.

The other is commercial. Again, it’s exactly what it sounds like. You’ll be doing work for commercial businesses. But this work tends to be a little different. It’s inherently more large scale and the cleaning services tend to involve janitorial work, which is almost like maid service, but with a much broader skill set. There’ll be cleaning, yes, but there will also be basic handyman work and maintenance as well.

Both of these types of business models are similar but they are also very different and will affect the way you run your business. For instance, the time in which you’ll be actually working will differ between consumer and commercial. Consumer working hours tend to be in the middle of the day while someone is home. This is a stark difference to the commercial side of things where they want you working late at night while no one is there and the building is closed.

The time differential is a real maker or breaker for some people. However, commercial is probably more lucrative as they’ll most likely hire you for a long time period.  Many consumer customers will only need a cleaning once. This is not to say you won’t have consumer customers who will want weekly, or bi weekly cleanings, but commercial customers tend to want to keep their professional businesses tidy as possible, which means more frequent cleaning.

Because of the differences, this can affect the kind of cleaning service you run. Some people prefer to work regular day hours. Some might be night owls and don’t mind going in late.

No matter how you run your business, I hope you found this article helpful and I wish you success with your cleaning business!

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Brandon is an intern working for Cleaning Business Today and Blue Skies Services.