Hey All…

Ah…another glorious week in the window cleaning biz.

I’ve been a bit lax on posting to the blog lately because we’re in the middle of creating some mighty cool new features for The Customer Factor and some revisions to 3 Bears Window Cleaning Directory. One thing I learned from being online is that revisions, edits, and additions are constant. Also the beginnings of a window cleaning forum are taking shape.  So please stay tuned. 

Ok….today, I just reached into the ‘ole mail bag to see what came up. Um…a couple of interesting emails…

Email #1:

Steve,  we ran into tree sap and a lot of paint overspray, so really we have to charge more if there is a lot of scraping correct? I ‘ll reread ch 8 tomorrow on our day off.  I made more money than i did working for my other job this week.  We had a lot of people asking if we could do their windows today.  So, we are almost booked for next week.
jason

My Response:

Hi jason:

Good morning. Unless it was really excessive, I didn’t charge more.  Because I figured i was scraping the window anyway.  I did that for each window I cleaned.  So it was part of my window price.  Another note is that you really don’t want to estimate a job and have to look at each window really close.  I mean you don’t want to say, "ok, this window has sap, so it’s $7.00.  But this window is fine, so it’s $5.00".  Know what I mean?  It’s easier to simply look at the overall job and hit it with a price without looking at each individual window.  I would lower the per window price if I saw a small bathroom window and I would raise the per window price if I saw any oversize windows, but I didn’t raise or lower pricing based on the amount of "stuff" that might need to be scraped off of a window.  The exception of course is if it was a construction cleanup job with stickers, stucco, etc. on each window. 

Congratulations on being booked up for a week.  That’s great.  Soon you’ll be booked up 3 to 4 weeks or more.  That’s quite a feeling to know that you can control your income like that.  Just make sure to take continuous action on your marketing or you will see a dropoff a bit in your first year.  So keep pushing during your first year in biz.  Take care for now.  Have a good weekend.

Regards,

Steve

Email #2:

michael here from md. we have really started to crank this window biz up. we have been tossing flyers 3 to 4 times a wk. sometimes we toss 1000+ other times 500-800. been getting alot of calls. my question was about postcards. roughly, what is the cost to mail out 1500 postcards? im talking rough price with cost of cards and all? i want to start getting the postcards in the mix. what is the best way to mail these cost and ease wise?

thanks, michael

My Response

Hi Michael:

It’s good to hear from you.  A good rule of thumb is about $270 per thousand for both postage and the cost of the cards.  You can get cards from psprint really reasonable.  I would buy 5000 at a time because you can get a great price break with a 5000 postcard purchase. 

And for postage, if you use the carrier route mailing method as described in my manual, I think that’s currently 21 cents per postcard mailed.  Dick Tudor at Smart Mail did all my mailing for me though, so he would know the exact specifics and costs.  His contact info. is in the manual. He’s the resident expert on the type of mailings we need to do in the window cleaning business for maximum results.  I actually had my postcards shipped directly to Dick from psprint.   So all it took was a 10 second phone call that went something like this: "Dick let’s get a mailing out to carrier routes 67 and 73".

And that was it.  Dick would bundle up the postcards and ship ‘em out.  Each home located in the route would receive a postcard.  So it’s very easy.  A nice autopilot system.  There is some initial research required though to determine what areas are your target areas.  You obviously don’t want homes that are not in your target market to receive postcards.  Anyway…you should contact Dick and pick his brain on this.  He has software that can determine route numbers in any city in the U.S.  You can certainly use a local direct mail house if you want to.  Just make sure that you don’t buy the "extras" they usually want to sell you like mailing lists for example.  Carrier route mailings work w/o mailing lists.  Each postcard is addressed to "Postal Patron". And as mentioned, each home in the route will get a card. 

Hope this helps.  Take care for now.

Regards,

Steve
 

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