Deciding on moving into the contract cleaning or commercial cleaning services would take serious consideration as it is an extremely competitive business arena. Aside from competing against about 150 or more US-wide cleaning companies, there will also be small to medium size cleaning businesses that are operating in your area along with a mixture of one-man band outfits.

You will need to endeavor to break into this market, gain some footing and only then start expanding. And how will you be able do those? Office cleaning is the most competitive and also the most difficult to break into – probably it is also best avoided. You will be advised that to succeed, you need a unique selling point. So, what will be unique in your services? If you want to go into general cleaning, you will find it quite hard to come up with a unique selling point for your services. It could be “excellent quality,” or “totally reliable.” Whatever it would be, you should check out what your competitors – they may also be saying the same things.

To have an edge over your possible competitors, you have to find a niche market that has not yet been explored nor exploited and market yourself on that. There are still a lot of areas which has not yet been tapped and explored by cleaners, but it could be unlikely that your immediate area or your neighborhood can provide you enough work in your market niche. So to earn more income, you have to be prepared to travel, and market your services where there is greater need of it.

What other niche market are there? There’s computer cleaning, indoor plant cleaning, yacht cleaning(in and out), natural stone cleaning and gravestone cleaning to put in some. Do researches on the kind of market well before taking the leap in that direction. You may put in particular specialism, however, you potential clients may not see the need for it. But of course, you can try to convince them of their need.

If you are lucky enough to land in a niche market, you must strive to promote it from the point of fulfilling your client’s needs and/or solving a problem for them. If they do not see a problem for you to solve, then you have hope.

You may also try and put in a lot of work and get a franchise of a large company, but this has its own pitfalls too. In some cases, being a franchisee hardly feels that you are self-employed and your own boss, you are doing all the work and some other people are reaping the dividends of it. So if you take on that route, be sure to choose your franchise company with outmost caution, and only after doing intensive research on them. Cleaning business is not as easy as it seem, you need to have a lot of patience, strategy and a lot of planning to start it up – just any other businesses!

for more: How to start a cleaning business