So I just got off the phone with a salesperson, and he told me that as of today, they have 173 residential cleaning requests within my area. I also wanted to see how much competition in my area for cleaners were, and there was 3 for a 25 miles radius.
It’s 350 for the annual member ship, and 15 for each lead. I feel like the competition is fairly low, and if I call the leads quickly, I feel like I would get a good ROI. If I could land like 5 residential a week, I’d be a happy camper.
Any of you used HA?
I’ve seen either hate or love relationships with them based off reviews.
I hate their sleezy way of saying they have X amount of demand and they need help filling the requests. Never signed up with them because of that and their constant calls for months until you have to get nasty with them before they stop. It’s easy to get excited if you’re starting out but try to curb your enthusiasm when these guys promise TONS of work you’re supposedly missing out on by not paying them.
I know some on the forum have been successful using HA but most avoid it. Just my 2 cents!
If you have a website and have built some local web presence, I hear they will mess up your SEO. I’m not exactly sure how they do it, but they are competing with you for your own market and somehow use your website/presence to their advantage.
Luckily I don’t even have a website built as of now.
I know my way around HTML, css, Js, and a bit of bootstrap, as well as experience with adsense, Bing ads, and fb ads, so I’ll wait to build a site after some capital. Just want to give HA a shot, Ill let you guys know how it goes. Hopefully tomorrow they can start sending me some leads.
You may find many of the leads you get are not the type you are looking for. It is common that the generic search funtion used will send cleaning leads, not necessarily window cleaning leads.
Unless your in a very small area its likely they are giving these leads to more than 3 companies.
I told the salesman that I only wanted leads from 500k+ homes, if they’re at least interested in cleaning, then I could possibly close on a job from the provided leads, at least they’ll be somewhat close within this niche (hopefully).
Hopefully they aren’t cold. I really want to give it a shot still, I do appreciate the input though!
My area is filled with a plethora of upper middle class and alot of multimillion dollar homes, and my county is extremely populated. I’m in South Florida to be specific, he told me that it wouldn’t be a problem targeting that specific demographic.
I won’t do business with them. They got in trouble for plugging search results with their own dummy corp (JT Window Cleaning, I think they called it) to steal leads from legitimate websites.
So if you spent time on your website and had the #1 in search ranks, they would outdo you in the SEO and take the #1 spot, then turn around and sell all the calls and web leads to you when those leads and calls should have gone to you in the first place.
I also hear some business people have had a near impossible time canceling their subscription with HA. To the point where they had to enlist legal aid or shut down their own bank accounts to stop the transaction from drafting.
Just stuff like that makes me wary. Plus the fact that as a startup, you probably have more time than money right now? So just beat the street and get face to face with as many people as possible. It’s free and works better than anything else I have done to drum up work.
Yep it seems like that number gets bigger every time they call me with the sales pitch. Either it’s a lie and they are just trying to inflate the value of the proposition, or no business person with half a brain uses Home Advisor and the garbage leads are piling up by the dozens.
Thanks for the warning. I gave them my debit into, no account info, but I told them explicitly they aren’t authorized to charge me until they call me and receive my say so.
I’m expecting a call from them tomorrow.
I had no idea about the JT Cleaning.
Thanks for your advice, I’m going to tell them to cancel, and I’ll use that 350 to make door hangers for myself.
I’m just really hungry for jobs right now, and felt that buying leads or a route might be a shortcut to start gaining traction.
you should definitely check out thumbtack. I’ve had a lot of success with it and so have many others. Thumbtack is pay for leads but it’s usually $3-$6 per lead for me.
Buying routes can be a viable option. Even so, caution is warranted. A few members here have built a good portion of their business that way.
Buying leads seems silly to me though. It’s just so easy to generate your own residential leads by knocking on a few doors or arranging meetings with a few HOA directors.
I just haven’t pulled my balls out of my coin purse enough to knock on doors, but tomorrow is another day.
Really appreciate the advice.
I’m a OEF vet that walked out of my last 9 to 5 due to the lack of common decency my previous employers gave me, and due to worsening symptoms of my PTSD from the work environment.
I make enough from disability compensation and delivering pizzas to pay bills, but I feel like another VA statistic.
I find actual relaxation cleaning windows, and representing myself as a professional, and I want to work for myself and provide an excellent service to other people with my own 2 hands.
They have contacted me a few times because they have “cleaning jobs” that they are turning away. One time it was for office cleaning jobs. I’m like, yea, you don’t even know what kind of cleaning I do - It’s window cleaning!!! Hence the name Super Sparkle WINDOW Cleaning. lol
