Suggestions on pricing and donations of earnings.

[Forest1234]

Hi, i'm just setting up a window cleaning business, it's probably the wrong time of year for multiple reasons. i have everything except the RO system which should be here in a few days. I'm thinking of pricing as follows. 

Front of house - £6 

Full house - £10 

Full house + Conservatory £15 

I've had an idea of donating £1 from every clean to the local food bank and other local charities, i will be taking payment by cash or preferably with my PayPal card reader. Even after PayPal fees and the £1 taken out i would still be earning over £8 per £10 clean. 

Do you think this is a good idea to do, i do know that by offering this it could get me more customers and therefore being able to give even more to the food bank and other charities or do you think it will look like i'm using it in a way to gain more customers. 

Thank you for your input. 

 

[PDixon cvs]

1st up ditch the PayPal card reader sum up is much cheaper 

 

[Omega]

I would suggest you keep your money. Charities often do not best use money as well as you may personally allocate due to structural faff.

condider offering free cleaning for schools, gp surgery’s etc. That’s what we do as it indirectly saves them money. 

 

[Part Timer]

Personally I'd get established first and then look at becoming a Philanthropist later.

 

[Master Jedi Alejandro]

What you give to charity is your business, however as others have said there are a lot of cheaper alternatives to PayPal. 
 

Also, you say you would be making £8 per clean but you are wrong there. You’ve only taken off the charity donation and PayPal charge. You need to think on all the other costs, equipment, vehicle, fuel, insurance, etc etc. 
 

A better idea is maybe say you will give 10% of your profit to charity, if your heart is set on that idea. That way everything is paid for before you take cash out and means if something breaks, which it will, you can then justify giving less that month as that’s a expense that comes before profit. 
 

edit: 10% is a complete random number, not a suggestion. The suggestion is taking it from profit, not gross income. 
 

edit 2: You can probably up your prices. And if you are donating to charity and heavily advertise that fact then you can probably get away with charging more as folk like that sort of thing. Just a thought, though, never did that myself. 
 

edit 3: Just to clarify, I have/do donate to charity. I meant I’ve never used it as a marketing ploy. Man, I should really sleep. ? 

 

[PDixon cvs]

I don't give to charity like that but I do clean my kids school for free couple times a year and give raffle prizes to local fund raisers and community groups 

 

[HWCS]

Sorry mate but its not great business imho.

Pricing as you will soon learn like i did is the hardest part of starting up, to set prices like that is bonkers ive got 3 bed houses that i charge £10 for and £20 for no house is the same continually. Please have a rethink about that.

The money from every job to charity is great for the soul but not always for your business, last year id been running for 6-7 months and in December i did a £30 shop in tesco for local food bank, this year im more established and the plan is to up it to £75 shop for food bank. If your doing it just to get more customers then i believe its a bit fruitless people wont go with you just because you are donating to charity.

Im not gonna lie, i was contacted by a local paper last year when i did this and they did a small story about it, and i did pick up alot of work from it but that was never my driving force. Also this year ive done 2x 6month free cleans for a couple of key workers that have gone above and beyond during covid & have donated a 6monthly free clean to a raffle thats being orgainsed for a local charity.

Donating £1 out of every £10 is MASSIVE and out of a £6 is Ridiculously huge

As for card reader i cant comment as im only bank transfer and the odd cash payer

 

[Deleted member 7446]

Hi, i'm just setting up a window cleaning business, it's probably the wrong time of year for multiple reasons. i have everything except the RO system which should be here in a few days. I'm thinking of pricing as follows. 

Front of house - £6 

Full house - £10 

Full house + Conservatory £15 

I've had an idea of donating £1 from every clean to the local food bank and other local charities, i will be taking payment by cash or preferably with my PayPal card reader. Even after PayPal fees and the £1 taken out i would still be earning over £8 per £10 clean. 

Do you think this is a good idea to do, i do know that by offering this it could get me more customers and therefore being able to give even more to the food bank and other charities or do you think it will look like i'm using it in a way to gain more customers. 

Thank you for your input. 

Charities errh most have over paid Flash git MD's/ CEO's/ board of directors draining crucial funds to keep their helicopters boats and cars fuelled in my opinion.

As my good friend Part Timer quotes, Get a business established, 

Then see if you like it and can make it past year one.

The Sumup card reader is very affordable and minimal fees, that paired with Bacs and cash is all you'll need.

It's nice to have a charity in your business plan as it makes it look better on paper but just get yourself running and earning a decent wage for yourself before you give it away.

We are all here to help and feel free to engage in the threads and be apart of our community 

 

[nick666]

There are only two days in a year I wouldn't canvass on-Christmas day and any day when there is a hearse outside the house;-).

Apart from that now is as good a time as any in fact I would say better-more people in-- forget the charity-do it  personally-all it can do if you mention it to client is cause you grief.I am not the only person that won't buy stuff because money is going to a cause I dislike.My Uncle Jeremiah  was killed by a tiger in Borneo     ​

so as you can imagine I don't support any tiger charities...and best of luck​

 ​

 

[P4dstar]

There are only two days in a year I wouldn't canvass on-Christmas day and any day when there is a hearse outside the house;-).

Apart from that now is as good a time as any in fact I would say better-more people in forget the charity-do it  personally-all it can do if you mention it to client is cause you grief.I am not the only person that won't buy stuff because money is going to a cause I dislike.My Uncle Jeramiah was killed by a tiger in Borneo so you can imagine I don't support any tiger charities.

Looks like you dug through the archives for this post mate. The last response was in November and the OP never even responded to anyone ???

Just in case anyone finds this post in the future... it’s worth noting that donations to charities aren’t always tax deductible. I don’t know the exact rules but there are things in place to stop people dumping excess earnings to a charity.   

 

[Forest1234]

These are the only two replies i have got notifications for, i am very sorry to all the people that took their time to reply to me, i should have been logging in and checking regularly so it's my fault. 

Thank you to everyone. i have everything needed but RO system is going very slowly, it's supposed to be 100 gallons per day but i'm struggling to even get 10 so i am waiting for a booster pump to arrive from vyair. 

Thank you. 

 

[HWCS]

These are the only two replies i have got notifications for, i am very sorry to all the people that took their time to reply to me, i should have been logging in and checking regularly so it's my fault. 

Thank you to everyone. i have everything needed but RO system is going very slowly, it's supposed to be 100 gallons per day but i'm struggling to even get 10 so i am waiting for a booster pump to arrive from vyair. 

Thank you. 

Have you got a picture, sounds like youve fell into the trap i did of buying a fishtank set up!

 

[Iron Giant]

These are the only two replies i have got notifications for, i am very sorry to all the people that took their time to reply to me, i should have been logging in and checking regularly so it's my fault. 

Thank you to everyone. i have everything needed but RO system is going very slowly, it's supposed to be 100 gallons per day but i'm struggling to even get 10 so i am waiting for a booster pump to arrive from vyair. 

Thank you. 

100 American gallons is less than UK gallons, I am guessing you bought a cheap 100gpd R/O it will never do a 100 gallons in 24hrs,  my 450gpd R/O takes 8hrs plus to produce 350ltrs this time of year as water is much colder and processing takes far longer because of this,

I would cancel the booster pump and buy a decent R/O from http://daqua.co.uk one more thing to note is that if your water pressure is poor then your production will be poor also as you are based in Nottingham with a tap water tds of around 200ppm again this is a negative as your R/O pre-filters and membranes could be knackered within a few weeks.

 

[Skxawng]

You can buy a kit to increase the capacity of your current RO which might save you a few quid. If its a really cheap one though, I'd get another from daqua as @Iron Giant says.

I think a minimum of 300gpd is necessary unless you're only working a day a week. 

 

[P4dstar]

These are the only two replies i have got notifications for, i am very sorry to all the people that took their time to reply to me, i should have been logging in and checking regularly so it's my fault. 

Thank you to everyone. i have everything needed but RO system is going very slowly, it's supposed to be 100 gallons per day but i'm struggling to even get 10 so i am waiting for a booster pump to arrive from vyair. 

Thank you. 

It's alright I'm sure they'll let you off. You should make more use of the forum mate, as with the advice above these boys are very useful.