How Much Money Can a Window Cleaner Business Make?

Asking how much money can a window cleaner business make? is the same as asking other performance-based professionals what they earn. But everybody knows there’s a big difference in football players’ salaries – and not everybody is average. The same goes for window cleaner businesses.

But I will dive deep into how much money a window cleaner business can make, with different examples and things that affect how much a window cleaner earns. By the end of this article, you’ll know how much a one-man army can make, and how much a business with employees can make over time.

How Profitable Is a Window Cleaning Business?

The only way to know how much money can a window cleaner business make? is by calculating it. But keep in mind: there’s a huge difference between revenue and profit.

• Revenue (also called topline) is all the money that comes into the business.
• Profit (also called bottomline) is what’s left after expenses.

Just to bring a simple example:

If you have a customer paying you €1000 per month, but the customer requires you to have a bigger car and extra gear that costs you €900/month, the profit is actually just €100.

That’s why you might have heard about the term break-even point – the point where you start to be cash-positive.

So let’s say you just bought the extra car and gear for one task, and now you can bring in another similar €1000/month customer with no extra expenses. Now your revenue is €2000, and your profit is €1100.

When we look at how much money a window cleaner business can make, we also need to understand capacity – meaning how many tasks each employee can handle.

I’m trying to keep this simple, but in reality, you also need to calculate how long it takes to become cash-positive – how much time you need to spend in the business before reaching profit.

This is very important for you as the business owner, because your salary is not the revenue – it’s the profit. That’s why we at Windowcleanerschool.com first teach people how to build a profitable business with almost no expenses, before investing in other things – so our people generate profit from day one.

Residential vs. Commercial Window Cleaning — Which Is More Profitable?

Let’s stick to what we just learned:

There’s a huge difference between revenue and profit, and we need to understand how much it costs to run the business.

This is a very important mindset to start with.

Now, I want you to ask yourself this question:

Would you rather have a customer generating €500 in profit every month for one year,

or a customer generating €50 in profit every month for the next 20 years?

When thinking about how much money a window cleaner business can make, you have to think long term.

The answer is of course: the €50/month customer – because over a lifetime, they bring more than double the profit. And it’s way better to have a stable cash flow in the long run.

That way, you can keep the same great employees – instead of having this bumpy road where you have big jobs now, and no jobs next month.

What Type of Cleaning Makes the Most Money?

When people ask how much money can a window cleaner business make?, they often also ask:

“What type of cleaning makes the most money?”

The most common answer is: commercial cleaning – because commercial clients pay the big checks right now, and that’s what people often focus on.

But if you ask a company that’s been in business for 20 years whether they’d rather give up the profits they make from small private tasks or from big commercial contracts, the answer might not always be “commercial”.

But if you ask them what kind of jobs they want more of right now, the answer is often commercial – because people are naturally short-term thinkers until they truly learn to think long-term.

At Windowcleanerschool.com, we help people build companies with long-term strategies from day one.

Most people don’t understand why that’s so important at first – but later on, they really understand why we did what we did.

Want to learn more about how it actually works? Jump into our Learning Hub.

How to Scale Small Profits to Big Numbers

Let’s sum up:

You’ve learned to focus on profit – not revenue – and to look at profit in the long run.

This long-term view is called Lifetime Value (LTV) – or Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) when it’s applied to individual customers.

By the end of this article, you’ll be able to calculate the answer to:

How much money can a window cleaner business make?

And you’ll know the answer in actual numbers.

Before we can do that, we need to understand the key factors that impact how much money a window cleaner business can make.

1. Handcraft

One of the biggest factors affecting profit is your handcraft – because it’s the core product.

It affects:

• how long customers stay with you, and
• how fast you can deliver your service.

Click here to learn about different skill levels in window cleaning.

2. Prices

Prices matter – a lot.

One of the worst things for a window cleaner is attracting price shoppers – people who only look for the cheapest price.

Let’s say you offer window cleaning to 3 houses at €20, and they all say yes. That’s €60.

Now raise your price to €30, and only 2 say yes. You still make €60 – but you do 33% less work and avoid price shoppers who will always leave for a cheaper deal later.

Want to learn more about pricing strategies? Check out the Learning Hub.

3. Employees

A great business also has great employees – people the business can attract and keep.

Great employees are key to scaling your business.

At Windowcleanerschool.com, we educate our partners’ employees so they have the same great skills, deliver the same results, and generate strong revenue for the company.

Learn more about how that works in the Learning Hub.

4. Sales, Organic Growth & Marketing

It means nothing to have great prices, great employees, and great handcraft – if you don’t have any customers.

And it means nothing to do marketing – if you can’t close the sale.

When everything else is set right, it’s key to have:

• a great salesperson to close the deals, and
• a great marketer to generate leads.

You can learn a lot more about that topic in this article:

👉 How to Get Customers as a Window Cleaner

5. Lifetime Value (LTV)

It matters how long customers stay with you – over years.

Everything in the business affects LTV:

• If you sell right,
• deliver great handcraft,
• train your team well, and
• create a brand people love…

Then customers will stay even if someone else offers it cheaper.

And over time, 1 customer becomes 2 – through referrals.

So more or less everything in your business affects Lifetime Value.

Let’s Calculate: How Much Money Can a Window Cleaner Business Make?

Now that you know what to be aware of before jumping into the numbers, we’re finally ready to do the math.

To keep it simple, let’s take 3 customer examples, where the only difference is the pricing strategy.

Because if we change more than one factor – like also handcraft, or lead source – the numbers can become so different that it feels like they’re selling completely different services.

Take a look at the picture above.

Let’s start with the bad company:

The guy has 100% of customers accepting a €30 offer. He makes €55/hour, monthly revenue of €8,140, has €700 in expenses, and a payroll of €5,812.

If he adds an employee with a total cost of €5,400, this leaves a profit of only €412 per employee.

He would need 14.1 employees to match his previous one man army salary of €5,812.

If he wanted to make €50,000 per month, he would need 36.4 employees.

Now the great pricing company:

(Side note: we’re not calculating better craftsmanship here—this is just the 33% to say no pricing example.)

With the same customers, he makes €80/hour, monthly revenue is €11,840. Expenses are still €700 (driving might actually be less).

Payroll is €8,772. Adding an employee at €5,400 full-time cost leaves €3,372 profit per employee.

He needs just 2.6 employees to match his previous salary of €8,772.

To make €15,000 per month, he needs only 4.4 employees.

Finally, the excellent company:

Prices are the same as the great company (€80/hour), but craftsmanship is better, allowing more work to be done at the same rate.

At €120/hour, monthly revenue is €17,760, expenses are €700, and payroll is €13,508.

The excellent company needs only 1.6 trained employees to match his one man army salary and 1.85 employees to make €15,000/month—which is almost the same as he already makes alone.

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Bottom line:

This is not a webshop or a digital product – so you always need to include manpower expenses before anything makes sense.

And you need someone who’s really good with numbers and forecasting. That’s why we help students in our program exactly with this – to figure things out which will happen in the future.

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