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Hurdles In Starting Your Own Lawn Care Business

By: Alex Murphy

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If you find a good lawn care provider who treats your lawn as he would his own and at a good price, hold on to him as long as you can. But, from his standpoint, why would he treat your lawn with such care? There are two answers to that question. The first is that the best lawn care professionals really love their job - that's why they do it. They like being outdoors, love talking to the people in the neighborhood, and love working with landscapes and plants.

The second reason that they'll treat your lawn well is that they are running a business. And they know that if they baby your lawn and care for it that you'll not only continue to give them business for years to come but you'll also recommend them to your friends and neighbors.

People can make quite a bit of money in the professional lawn care arena. Although it is by no means an exciting and glamorous job, and no one will ask you for your autograph, it can be a good living. It may require some manual labor on your part, even if you have a crew. But, it is steady work, even in an economic downturn where, in some cases, you will have to reduce your prices a bit. The prices you can charge will, of course, vary depending on the location where you work as well as the amount of competition in the area. But, here are some simple basic figures.

Assume that your charge for simple, basic lawn cutting services, for an average sized lawn, come to fifteen dollars a week. Also, assume that each day, you have ten customers and that you are working a five day work week. That comes to fifty customers each week. So you'll make $750 a week or $3000 a month. Now, admittedly that's not a huge amount of money, but cutting 10 lawns a day is really a part time job. And $3000 a month for a part time work is nothing to sneeze at. Of course, if you have a crew, you can do more than 30 or more lawns a day and still work part time.

You can make a lot of money in the lawn care business by catering to residential customers. But the real money, in professional lawn care is in eventually providing your services to commercial customers. For one thing, commercial customer will nearly always pay more than residential customers. And, their contracts tend to be long term as well. And many times, with commercial customers, you can have guaranteed income the entire year. In the colder winter climates that have snow, it's not unusual for the professional company that's providing lawn care services in the summer and spring to provide snow removal services in the winter, and fall clean-up services in the fall.

So what exactly are the hurdles in this business? Interestingly, the main hurdle turns out not to be the garden work itself. The biggest hurdle is the marketing of the business. Fortunately, however, today you can find plenty of lawn care courses that can walk you through the process of setting up the business, buying your lawn equipment, and hiring help. Some courses will also have print-ready sales letters and brochures where you can simply plug in your company name and you are all set to begin your marketing campaigns.

The good courses will also have examples of the necessary forms - such as invoicing forms, cost estimating forms, and so on. Some wishing to have everything prepared for them in a ready to go packet will choose a lawn-care franchise package. But, truthfully, while they may give you the benefit of a good brand name, most of them are so overpriced that you'd be better off either buying a course or going to your local library and check out books on starting a lawn care service.

It used to be that working for a company was what the dream that everyone hoped to attain. But with the companies shedding jobs at a faster pace than at any time since the great depression, people are going to have to start to depend on themselves to bring in the income. And for some of them, a professional lawn care service will be just the ticket.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

Alex Murphy is webmaster and writer of lawn care related issues. Please visit his site for information on zoysia grass plugs, Scotts grass seed, and additional lawn care topics.

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