25Dollarsaroom.com has taken off into another stratusphere

[XTREME1]

It is unbelievable how busy I am with very , very little ad dollars now.
I do need to market to my database because two of the top 5 searches for my website are Xtreme Carpet Cleaning and Xtreme Clean. So that tells me without being listed in the phone book, directory assistance or yellow pages that my customers have to go find me which isn't good.

For new customers 25dollarsaroom.com is going gang busters. The top things I am doing to reach out is a good sponsor spot in my area on yahoo and google and bulletin boards locally and volunteering on local boards for youth organizations. With the new exposure to new people in the community I am slammed with commercial work.

It is a win win win for everyone. I post less and work more and make more money and have happy customers.

Have a great day

 

[Guest]

It is unbelievable how busy I am with very , very little ad dollars now.
I do need to market to my database because two of the top 5 searches for my website are Xtreme Carpet Cleaning and Xtreme Clean. So that tells me without being listed in the phone book, directory assistance or yellow pages that my customers have to go find me which isn't good.

For new customers 25dollarsaroom.com is going gang busters. The top things I am doing to reach out is a good sponsor spot in my area on yahoo and google and bulletin boards locally and volunteering on local boards for youth organizations. With the new exposure to new people in the community I am slammed with commercial work.

It is a win win win for everyone. I post less and work more and make more money and have happy customers.

Have a great day

When you say sponsor spot on Google or Yahoo, do you mean Pay Per Click? What does your ad say that seems to be working ($25/rm)?

 

[XTREME1]

I think it is the fact that it is easy to remember when I tell folks about it.

this is the heading
Carpet Cleaning Marshfield Ma
www.25DollarsARoom.com Call For Quality Carpet Cleaning, Upholstery Cleaning, And More!

 

[Hoody]

mkay

 

[White Collar]

Is that you're actual pricing? I was thinking about going to a room pricing for marketing purposes.

 

[bob vawter]

Ancient Chinese Secret.........

do LITTLE houses!

 

[XTREME1]

the website gives the pricing

 

[Ken Snow]

Good deal Greg, are you adding crews?

Ken

 

[XTREME1]

just have the two trucks right now. I didn't know how much the weekly put out for a second truck was going to be and had a rough time this winter and scraped by. Note to self never add a truck in fall. Wait til spring

 

[-JB-]

Nice looking packages Greg, betcha that looks real appealing to potential clients, good on ya. Seriously.

 

[Cameron1]

It is unbelievable how busy I am with very , very little ad dollars now.
I do need to market to my database because two of the top 5 searches for my website are Xtreme Carpet Cleaning and Xtreme Clean. So that tells me without being listed in the phone book, directory assistance or yellow pages that my customers have to go find me which isn't good.

For new customers 25dollarsaroom.com is going gang busters. The top things I am doing to reach out is a good sponsor spot in my area on yahoo and google and bulletin boards locally and volunteering on local boards for youth organizations. With the new exposure to new people in the community I am slammed with commercial work.

It is a win win win for everyone. I post less and work more and make more money and have happy customers.

Have a great day

Greg, this is great, but tell us what it means in terms of growth or profit for your business. For example, in the early 1980's we were busy as hell.
We had 4 tm's going and 3 portables working every day for a year. I was on top of the world untill the first recession of my business life. That is when I realized I was fricken broke. My pricing was only good as long as we stayed busy. What are you doing to avoid this pit fall. Are you banking money.............yes or no??????????

 

[Jimmy L]

Steve that reminds me of a local who went around and took away alot of apartment work from guys. He was busy all the time but didn't realize that he was slowing sinking by doing lowball work.Sure the money was coming in but more was going out. He is no longer in the business.

 

[XTREME1]

I am banking money. Paid all the winter bills and have had consistant $6,000 weeks for the last 5 or 6 and booked out a couple more with Thursdays off for me. My cost ratio is really low I took a couple losses(not debt) a few years ago when buying lots of equipment. My ad budgets have gone from $2000 plus a month to less than $400 and I have gotten busier. Looking at my last years numbers and jobs I did last year for the next few months I see very few bumps until January

A couple things I need to figure out is scheduling, invoicing and again collections. I currently give the customer a time that I will be there and I have almost always been on time. That has been changing with add-on services who schedules in time frames? And how do you do it?

 

[Hoody]

8-10, 10-12, 12-2, 2-4 for arrival, or 9-11, 11-1, 1-3, 3-5.

 

[CleanEvo]

It is unbelievable how busy I am with very , very little ad dollars now.
I do need to market to my database because two of the top 5 searches for my website are Xtreme Carpet Cleaning and Xtreme Clean. So that tells me without being listed in the phone book, directory assistance or yellow pages that my customers have to go find me which isn't good.

For new customers 25dollarsaroom.com is going gang busters. The top things I am doing to reach out is a good sponsor spot in my area on yahoo and google and bulletin boards locally and volunteering on local boards for youth organizations. With the new exposure to new people in the community I am slammed with commercial work.

It is a win win win for everyone. I post less and work more and make more money and have happy customers.

Have a great day

Greg, this is great, but tell us what it means in terms of growth or profit for your business. For example, in the early 1980's we were busy as hell.
We had 4 tm's going and 3 portables working every day for a year. I was on top of the world untill the first recession of my business life. That is when I realized I was fricken broke. My pricing was only good as long as we stayed busy. What are you doing to avoid this pit fall. Are you banking money.............yes or no??????????

That's exactly where I'm at. Business has slowed down a little and I'm now realizing that I have not been charging enough. My pricing has been simliar to what Greg is charging and as an owner/operator you can make money when you're busy. It slows down a little and your income goes down. I've been raising my prices, but it's tough when your past customers expect to get it for close to what they paid before.

How did you raise your prices, gradually, or did you just raise them and not worry about loosing some past customers?

 

[Jimmy L]

A simple price increase would be to charge more for stairs say like going from $2 to $3ea.

 

[Cameron1]

I am banking money. Paid all the winter bills and have had consistant $6,000 weeks for the last 5 or 6 and booked out a couple more with Thursdays off for me. My cost ratio is really low I took a couple losses(not debt) a few years ago when buying lots of equipment. My ad budgets have gone from $2000 plus a month to less than $400 and I have gotten busier. Looking at my last years numbers and jobs I did last year for the next few months I see very few bumps until January

A couple things I need to figure out is scheduling, invoicing and again collections. I currently give the customer a time that I will be there and I have almost always been on time. That has been changing with add-on services who schedules in time frames? And how do you do it?

My business model is different and it is not fair to compare the two. That is also why what works for one company will not necessary work for another. I just want to make sure that you do not make the same mistakes that I did in thinking that since I was busy...........I was also making money. I did spend alot of money in the early years building a customer base, which has serve me well thru the years, but I was way to cheap......... the bottom line is whats your game plan??

 

[CleanEvo]

A simple price increase would be to charge more for stairs say like going from $2 to $3ea.

That is what I have done, also charging more for Teflon and trying to sell it more. Have also been going to more of a sqaure foot price for new customers and that works well on the bigger homes, not always on the small ones.

 

[XTREME1]

A simple price increase would be to charge more for stairs say like going from $2 to $3ea.

Currently $2.50.

The game plan is evolving. I ran businesses for years and the driving costs were always payroll and associated costs and product. Carpet cleaning is different the big bill is payroll and associated costs and very low product costs. Looking at that I would say 2 trucks is good but I think the sweet spot is 3 trucks beyond that you will have a better chance at losing money by overextending yourself.

I think I did it right by having one truck concentrate on commercial and another residential almost like 2 companies, now they both do residential as well as commercial. I never liked going out at night but am starting to like 1 big night job a week for me at about 6 pm. I have picked up additional janitorial on Mon wed and fri. That is why I say it is evolving.

A couple other changes I have made are I use less of my water supply and almost always plug into the hose at the house that way I am never watching the supply and never running out. I thought carrying my own is the way to go but it is just one less thing to worry about and I run slurry when needed instead of always going with all fiber and working harder


Hoodie how do you catch up when your falling behind?

 

[Cameron1]

How did you raise your prices, gradually, or did you just raise them and not worry about loosing some past customers?[/quote]


That's a good question.
In June of 2004, I went from room pricing to sq. ft. pricing with no warning or notice. We simply showed up one day with a tape measure and started measuring. I decided that I was going to be profitable or go out of business. Hardly anyone said a thing about the new pricing..........which more than double on some clients. (customers) The funny thing is at that point....... I really did not give a chit what they said. They either paid my price or didn't.

As it turns out, it was the smartest thing I have ever done.

You can be your own worst emeny

 

[CleanEvo]

How did you raise your prices, gradually, or did you just raise them and not worry about loosing some past customers?

That's a good question.
In June of 2004, I went from room pricing to sq. ft. pricing with no warning or notice. We simply showed up one day with a tape measure and started measuring. I decided that I was going to be profitable or go out of business. Hardly anyone said a thing about the new pricing..........which more than double on some clients. (customers) The funny thing is at that point....... I really did not give a chit what they said. They either paid my price or didn't.

As it turns out, it was the smartest thing I have ever done.

You can be your own worst emeny[/quote]

Thanks Steve... I'm at that point. Who benefits from low pricing? The customer, that's it! What is the benefit to us if we are out of business, or still cleaning at 60 barely paying the bills. I've decided to stop short changing my family.

 

[renegade_cowboy]

I wonder what the customer loyality would be over the years. What was your experience with the people who had the same business plan?

 

[Hoody]

Hoodie how do you catch up when your falling behind?

Thats why the 2 hour window is important. By now you should know how long it takes you to do a certain amount of rooms. The time their appointment is scheduled is for YOUR ARRIVAL, not how long you'll be there.

Say you get to the first job a 9, and it takes till 10:30, you second appointment is 10-12. Lets say 30 minutes to get there; should get there at 11ish. Call them when you're on your way. If you are at the job, and know you won't make it there by 12 at the latest, call them way before, and let them know you'll call them when you're on the way, and give another approximated time.

Its something you have to get use to. The important part is making sure your clients know that the time frame is for your arrival, and now while you'll be there. That is where the biggest confusion is.

 

[floorguy]

Aris...thats funny...

of course everyones income goes down when they are slow..

its not like charging more, magicly makes money appear when you are slow...



just hit me as a bit funyn tonight :wink: :wink: :wink:

 

[Cameron1]

Aris...thats funny...

of course everyones income goes down when they are slow..

its not like charging more, magicly makes money appear when you are slow...



just hit me as a bit funyn tonight :wink: :wink: :wink:

I think what he has figured out is that if there is no profit when your busy..........there's even less when your slow

 

[XTREME1]

I wonder what the customer loyality would be over the years.

that is why my ad budgets are so long. I have been doing this for years now and my client retention is such that I added a truck and cut my advertising.

 

[-JB-]

I really did not give a chit what they said. They either paid my price or didn't.

Careful about that, this "new" economy may not be as forgiving as it once was.

I wonder what the customer loyality would be over the years.

Some will eat it some won't, just better hope more do than don't.

 

[Cameron1]

careful about that, this "new" economy may not be as forgiving as it once was.


Some will eat it some won't, just better hope more do than don't.


You have to reach a frustration point where you really do not give a chit. If you cannot fund an acceptable lifestyle, then you might as well go work for someone else.

Also, if you are building relationships as you go then most will gladly pay the increase. The ones who do not, buy and large, are the aholes that are the most demanding anyway. In ny case, it turned out that by raising my prices I was able to fire most of the pia clients.(customers)

 

[Walt]

If you are planning on expanding, I think you are definitely doing the right thing.

Which package do most people buy? And do you count rooms over 200 square feet as 2 rooms?

 

[-JB-]

If you cannot fund an acceptable lifestyle, then you might as well go work for someone else.

brilliant.