Starting a cleaning business is one of the most easiest and practical businesses to start. Cleaning businesses have a low entry barrier, or in other words, they don’t require a lot of capital to start-up. Despite the simple entry barrier, you should decide up front on which area you’d like to focus your new cleaning business. I would highly advise you to start small, focus on one area and become an expert in that niche of cleaning businesses.

Three types of niche cleaning businesses:

1. Maid Service
2. Commercial Cleaning Service
3. Carpet Cleaning Service

Maid Service

A maid service focuses directly on residential home cleaning. The beauty about this great home based business is that you can run it alone or with a small crew. Most maid services have several cleaners on staff. The crew is made up on two to three cleaners, and the crews tackle different parts of the city.

Most owners of the maid service cleaning business participate in day to day cleaning throughout different routes. Furthermore, owners also handle customer relations, scheduling, supply ordering, payroll and all the invoicing.

Some maid service owners choose to participate in day to day business operations of their cleaning business ongoing, while other owners back off slowly as their cleaning business begins to expand. Rather they would focus on growing their business, gaining new customers and working with advertisers to grow their business.

There is one primary benefit to a residential cleaning service. It provides valuable time savings. What would take someone a whole day, or even an entire weekend, can be handled by a crew of maids in just a few hours.

Commercial Cleaning Service

While maid services focus on cleaning residences, commercial cleaning services focus on cleaning businesses such as offices, hospitals, restaurants and schools.

Another noticeable difference between maid service and commercial cleaning service is that it typically takes more than a maid service. The start-up costs for a commercial cleaning business are still relatively low and very similar to the maid service.

You don’t need any fancy equipment. In fact I assure you, that if you dig through your garage or storage, you’ll find everything you need. A couple of rags, spray bottles, ladder, window cleaner, paper towel and lastly your own personal vehicle to get you around.

While maid services are pretty much during the day operations, janitorial services are almost in the evening. And it only makes sense, as you’re not going to clean while the office is working. Every so often you’ll find customers who want you to clean during the day, but most prefer that you don’t start until their staff has gone home.

All commercial facilities need to be cleaned, yet not everyone will hire outside cleaners. And that’s fine, you can’t win them all. Offices are the primary customers of most commercial cleaning services, but you can also do very well cleaning restaurants, schools, hospitals, medical offices, museums, retail stores, warehouses and manufacturing facilities.

Carpet Cleaning Service

Every homeowner and business owner with installed carpeting is a prospective customer. Targeting a residential market will mean less in the way of startup costs and equipment, since businesses typically require more than just having their carpets cleaned. However, because of the wide range of commercial businesses that use carpet cleaning services, this is a very lucrative market that’s well worth pursuing.

In the beginning you probably won’t purchase any fancy carpet cleaning equipment, such as a carpet cleaning machine. Instead you can rent a carpet cleaning machine from places such as Home Depot.

I just finished quoting a carpet cleaning. The machine is $35/day to rent and the carpet cleaning solution is less than $10 for a bottle which can clean roughly up to 600 sq feet.

Commercial operations that need carpet cleaning include offices, apartment buildings and condos, schools, banks, restaurants, hotels, churches, bowling alleys, transportation terminals and anyone in between.

Little Bit of Everything

I would highly advise you to choose one between the tree niche options and become really good at it. Another option would be to choose between commercial cleaning and maid service, while you do carpet cleaning on the side, as part of your arsenal of tools with your cleaning business.

When I started my cleaning business, I opted to get into commercial cleaning simply because the hours worked for me. I have a full-time job and I can only work in the evening. A commercial cleaning business has been a blessing for me.

What do you think about these three niche options above?

Eddie