Window Cleaning

You'll do well here if

• You are comfortable and calm on ladders at 10–20 feet, in slightly imperfect conditions
• You will follow a safety checklist on house six of the day, not just house one
• You are detail-obsessed enough to chase a single streak across a picture window
• You can knock doors and talk to strangers for weeks before income shows up
• You prefer repeat route work — the same houses on a cadence — over chasing one-off jobs

Skills you'll use

• Squeegee technique that leaves clean edges fast — speed at a per-pane price is where the margin lives
• Ladder setup and a pre-climb routine you run every single time
• Walkaround quoting by pane count, with multipliers for second-story and cut-up glass

Startup costs

• Professional hand kit (squeegee + channels, T-bar, scrapers, towels, solution, belt bucket)$200
• Extension ladder + standoff/stabilizer$175
• First month of overhead: insurance, phone, simple booking tool$125
• Entry-level water-fed pole (clean upper exteriors from the ground) (optional)$300

Recurring monthly costs

• Fuel, solution, and consumables (~$10/job at ~22 jobs/mo)$220/mo
• Insurance$60/mo
• Phone, booking software$40/mo
• Marketing (door hangers, cards)$30/mo
• Misc / replacement fund (rubber, blades, towels)$20/mo

Pricing assumptions

• Price per pane and per job from your real costs — never by the hour, which invites wage negotiation and punishes speed.
• A typical house lands at $120–$180 and takes one to three hours including setup; the base case uses a $150 average.
• Set a job minimum (~$99 in the base case's market) so small houses do not consume a route slot at a loss, and carry multipliers for second-story and French/cut-up panes.
• The cadence ask at closeout — 'most customers have me back every three months' — is what turns one-off jobs into route income.

First-customer opportunities

• Warm circle: 20 people who already trust you, at a friendly rate — real paid jobs that produce photos and reviews
• The 20-minute loop after every job: door hangers on ~20 nearby houses and a knock on both immediate neighbors while your ladder is still in the yard
• An honest introduction post in your two most active local groups, plus keyword alerts for 'window cleaner'
• A Google Business Profile with real before/after photos, then the cadence ask at every closeout

Advantages

• One of the cheapest startups in home services — a few hundred dollars of professional gear, not thousands
• Every job is visible to the whole street, and your next customer usually lives next door to your last one
• A 2–6 month cadence means the route regenerates work without new marketing

Trade-offs

• Ladder work is a genuine physical risk that never fully goes away, and fear of heights is a hard disqualifier
• Weather-dependent scheduling makes weekly income uneven
• Winning customers early is door-knocking and neighborhood work, not passive inbound

Risks to respect

• Falls from ladders are the defining risk — this work routinely puts you 10–20 feet up on uneven lawns and hard driveways, and an injury stops all revenue.
• Property damage claims: a slipped scraper scratches glass, a ladder foot gouges a deck, wash water stains cedar siding. Insurance is not optional.
• Weather cancels and compresses route days, and cold-climate winters cut demand.
• Low startup cost means low barriers: anyone with a bucket and a squeegee can undercut you, so you win on reliability and reviews, not price.
• It is physical — climbing, carrying a ladder, and repetitive overhead arm work wear on shoulders and knees.
• Route income takes months to build; the model only gets comfortable once repeat customers are stacked on a cadence.

Seasonality

Weather runs the calendar: rain, wind, and freezing temperatures cancel or compress route days, and demand drops in cold-climate winters. The common counter is booking interior-only cleans through winter and stacking spring route slots in February.