Becoming a Handyman in your home town

With the credit crunch still ever-present and while job figures are beginning to rise again, there are still hundreds of thousands of residents across the United Kingdon wanting to start their own business as a route to bring in an income into the household.

A lot of people envision beginning to offer local handyman services as a low cost and easy startup which can generate work immediately. If you have a vehicle and a toolbox of basic equipment then it is possible to get work with some simple marketing.

While you are capable to ‘bootstrap’ your way into starting as a local handyman it will be a lot easier if you have some savings which can be invested while you get going, we’ll inspect how these can be put to best use later.

What jobs does a Handyman do?

The majority of handyman companies offer general household repairs both internally and outside, they can be classed as a ‘jack of all trades but master of none’. Understanding your limits as a handyman is important so not to result with time-consuming and expensive errors to rectify.

Whilst you may be willing to replace cupboard doors and attach coving you may wish to abstain from more skilled projects such as decorating and wet plumbing. Jobs entailing electricity and gas should be steered clear from as you need to be qualified to operate in this environment.

Setting out a list of tasks you have carried out before and jobs you are willing to do will help you with advertising your handyman business.

How to promote your Handyman Business

A lot of handymen who have been trading for many years will have a list of customers they do regular work for. As a beginner to the industry this is something you can look forward to and wish for but to start with you will have to advertise your service to attract new customers.

The majority of handyman services will try and target their home town. Local promotion mostly occurs in these ways:

Local Newspaper

An advert in the back of the local newspaper can bring phonecalls from anyone searching for handyman services that particular week.

Flyers

Designing a leaflet and delivering it can be very cost effective and create lots of work. You get to target an exact area such as the more wealthy side of town where people have extra disposable income.

Car Sign writing

Having your transport sign written can be extremely inexpensive for a single colour sign and attract customers on a continual basis, not just one day a week similar to some of the methods above.

Another way which is increasingly more popular to Handyman Companies is websites designed to attract customers looking for your profession in your particular town. The excellent thing about having a website is it caters for people actively searching for your services (permission marketing) whereas the most other promotion methods are interruptive. Websites can be cheap/free to get started and have very small ongoing costs.

Once you have finalised what jobs you will take on, then advertised those areas you should hopefully start receiving some jobs or at minimum some enquiries from customers requesting you to give estimates.

As you begin getting enquiries you have to look at getting business insurance, this will protect you incase you destroy someone’s house, or even worse severely injure someone.

When you have had a few projects you need to look at reinvesting the profits into more advertising or more tools so you can increase the amount of work you are willing to complete. If you get repeat enquiries for a particular area of work, maybe painting and decorating, it could be worth your while learning that craft in an evening class so you could then offer it to your customers.

Good luck in starting your new Local Handyman Business.