Why Should I Start a Pressure Washing Side-Hustle?
Pressure washing is on the rise in the US. The pressure washing market was valued at 2.94 billion USD in 2021. By 2027 the US pressure washing market is set to reach 3.7 billion USD. While there are tons of pressure washing companies in existence, there is an even higher demand for the service. This creates an excellent opportunity for you to make a few extra bucks on the side or create a full-scale pressure washing business!
How to Start a Pressure Washing Business (Low Cost)
This strategy is for a side hustle or beginner level pressure washing business. The focus is on limiting costs and maximizing profits. While you can recruit your friends and family to help at this stage, it is more cost effective to do all of the work yourself.
The model for this strategy is to find the customers, schedule the customers, RENT your equipment and then provide the service. I have broken this down into an easy to follow 5 step process.
Step 1: Find Customers
Step 2: Schedule
Step 3: Rent equipment
Step 4: Provide excellent service
Step 5: MAKE MONEY!
Step 1: Find Customers
Friends and Family
Finding customers can be as hard and expensive as you want it to be or as easy as calling people and knocking on doors. Many people start out by providing pressure washing services to friends and family when they first start out. This allows two things to happen.
- Experience pressure washing in a low threat environment
- Constructive criticism from family and friends who are more likely to be forgiving
I would recommend starting off by contacting friends and family members to gain some experience and time behind the wand. This also builds your confidence in what you are doing and will allow you to provide better service once you branch out to the public.
Low-Cost Marketing
The second way of finding customers is to use low-cost marketing methods. These can include using social media to promote your services or using print media.
I encourage anyone to use print marketing at any level because it gives the potential customer something tangible to hold onto. By “print marketing” I am talking about flyers, business cards and yard signs.
If you use an online print media company such as UZ Marketing you can get some awesome deals on printed material. You can check out my article on UZ Marketing HERE or go straight to their website HERE to see their current offers.
When you first start out with print marketing, I recommend starting with a few hundred business cards and at least 10-50 yard signs (enough to cover your target area).
More Marketing Options
The more expensive route for marketing is going to yelp, google or a lead service to pay for ads or leads. While this is a great option, it can be expensive. If you try this option, be aware of what you are signing up for, how much it will cost you and how many potential customers you expect to get from your investment.
To give you an example of lead services, I spent $500 in one month on Yelp promotion and received thousands of dollars of business from those leads. It can be profitable if it is used correctly. If you do nothing with the leads you get, then this method can become a huge waste of money. Please, think before you invest.
Step 2: Schedule
Once you have found your customers, you want to start scheduling them far enough out to get yourself prepared to provide excellent service. After all, you want customers coming back in the future.
This step can be a challenge if you don’t know how long it takes you to complete a job. To help conceptualize the time it will take you to finish a job, I suggest going through the process on your own projects or a family member’s project. Pay attention to setup and cleanup time and take notes on what things take longer than others.
For example, Pressure washing a two car driveway with a surface cleaner attachment (from Home Depot) may take you 15 minutes of setup, 20 minutes to do the actual cleaning and 15 minutes of teardown. In total the job took you 50 minutes of work. On the other hand, if you are cleaning brick with a wand attachment, it may take much longer due to the wand only covering a few inches per pass.
After a few practice runs, you should have a good idea of how long it will take you to complete jobs. Use your estimates to schedule customers with enough time to get from job to job, set up, execute and tear-down.
The trick to scheduling is to get customers in the same general area scheduled in groups that you can execute in one day.
One extremely helpful app for scheduling is Jobber. I use Jobber because it allows me to create client lists, send emails, create and send invoices, create quotes, send bills, receive payment and much more. If you are interested in using scheduling software like Jobber, check them out HERE. If you sign up before January 2023 you can get two free months!
Step 3: Rent Equipment
Renting equipment is an excellent way to get started. Pressure washers that are powerful enough to do professional work cost anywhere from $1,500 to over $5,000 for only the pressure washer. Attachments and other equipment can add up quickly.
To avoid major upfront costs when you get started, renting equipment is the way to go.
Here is an example of the costs and equipment I would rent from Home Depot for pressure washing.
Surface Cleaner
Rental price: $26 for 4 hours, $37/day, $148/week, $444/month
Pressure Washer
Rental Price: $71/4hr, $101/day, $404/week, $1,212/month
A tip to help you figure out how much you need to make is to take estimate your cost at 35%, taxes at 15%. If you had three jobs scheduled for one day and each job was $300 then that would be $900. Your costs should be no more than $315 for that day to still make good money.
As you can see from this example, the rental price for a surface cleaner and pressure washer combined for only one day would be $138 + fuel. You are well below your expense allowance for the day of $315.
If you are interested in purchasing your own equipment, check out our article on low cost equipment to get started HERE.
Step 4: Provide Excellent Service
I have found that customers absolutely love it when they can see the instant results of what they hired you to do. I recommend taking before and after pictures every time. It takes a little bit of extra time but it will pay off in the end. Taking before and after pictures gives your customer something to compare, it gives you protection if the customer tries to blame you for damage and it gives you promotional material to use on social media or print media.
When you arrive on a job site it is good practice to have the customer walk you through exactly what they want done. Get their approval for everything and don’t get in the habit of doing extra for free. I have made the mistake of doing extra services for free and it has never paid off.
Make sure to be extra careful working close to plants or soft materials. One wrong move can destroy a plant that just happens to be a family heirloom. Always error on the side of caution or check with the customer before doing something that may risk their property.
A good rule of thumb is to judge your work based on what you would want at your own home, or your mother-in-law’s home. If it is good enough for you or your mother-in-law then chances are the customer will be happy.
When you are complete with your work, check with the customer and walk around with them to ensure that you provided exactly what they hired you for. When you close out the job, send them the before and after pictures that you took so they have something to reference when they are talking to their friends and family about the excellent work you did.
Step 5: Make Money!
Making money is the ultimate goal of a side hustle or a business. Because this is the goal, it is important to do all your calculations up front. One method of ensuring that you are profitable is to start with what you need to take home and work backwards from there.
Example: I need to make $200 per day of money in my bank account.
Costs:
| Item | Cost |
| Pressure washer (daily) | $101 |
| Surface Cleaner (Daily) | $38 |
| Fuel | $30 |
| Total Cost | $169 |
My total costs are $169 for equipment and fuel. Add that to my take home amount and we get $369. So in order for me to take home $200 in one day of work, I need to get enough jobs to charge $369.
If an average two car driveway is $150, then three driveways in one day would make enough money to hit my goal!
A few things to consider here are taxes, business license, bonding and insurance. While you may not need these things to get started, you will need them if you continue to make money.
Take some time and do research on the cost of getting a business license, getting a bond and insurance for your side-hustle. It is also a good idea to talk to a tax professional to avoid running into tax problems at the end of the year.
If you are interested in starting a business, please click HERE for more information.
