Yipee, Groupon brings you more customers who didn’t get the groupon deal. Now you’ll make some bank.
DOH! Nevermind, it’s just the cheap friends of the Groupon clients who also don’t think your service is worth paying 100% for. :mad:
I wouldn’t ever do Groupon, but I’ll say this. If you’ve got no other jobs to do, little confidence that you’ll land work by beating the pavement and offering free estimates at 100% what you feel your work is worth, and no problem working for way less than other window cleaning business owners are, for possibly months… It’s your business, do what you want. 
But if [COLOR=“red”]YOU[/COLOR] don’t feel your services are worth what you charge, you might just be better off doing some other job. And if you do feel they’re worth more than what Groupon wants to pay you per job (25%), don’t sell out, Hustle and get work yourself at 100% of your current rate. Lowering your prices doesn’t just hurt your reputation as a business (think of fast food, “It’s cheap”, do you want to be the fast-food window cleaner?), but it emboldens people (who already expect to get something for nothing) to feel like you owe them, like they’re doing you a favor by calling you.
I’ve read a ton of Kevin Dubrosky’s blog on WindowCleaningBusinessCoach.com, and I’m currently reading $600/hr. I don’t have permission to speak for him, but what I think is getting misconstrued about his ideas on marketing and pricing is this: Because he says “charge more and offer more value”, some people are only hearing “charge more” and think he’s encouraging people to just raise prices for no reason and offer no other services than you did before, just basically “rip people off”. But what I’ve understood from what I’ve read thus far is this… Window cleaning is a luxury service, just like plumbing, just like massage, just like plastic surgery. They’re not NECESSARY for life, they are a LUXURY! So, you can price your service at whatever you want, add any and all valuable services to the window cleaning and charge more. For instance you can bring roses and chocolates to every job, leave a $20 starbucks gift card with every invoice, and offer to give each client that commits to quarterly window cleanings a free massage and facial per year. Those extra services may cost you $150 per year, but you can charge $100 more than you would have for that house per cleaning(quarterly means 4 cleanings), and after your $150 expense you made another $250 from that client per year, and they won’t care because of how NICE it is to have you supply them the roses, chocolate, coffee, massage and facial. It says to your client: “I don’t just see you as an ATM, but a person who has feelings and likes nice things. I like giving those things to you, getting to be YOUR WINDOW CLEANER and want to continue to enjoy this relationship together”.
It could also just be adding track cleaning, sills, frames, screen sealant, whatever you want to offer and then charge more for it. You’re building in value for the client, so they don’t have to worry about those things not getting done.
Thank you for allowing me to go on my tangent.
And YES, I know someone’s going to say “Plumbing is a luxury?”. Yes, it is. It’s not necessary for life. People lived without it for a long time.
