Love it or hate it, lawn and landscape services are seasonal for the majority of the US.
I often get asked for ideas on how to generate revenue over the winter months by lawn and landscape business owners. I have several ideas on how to make money passively, but most of them are referring to something they can do to keep their employees busy and utilize the equipment they have invested in for there core services.
Junk Removal For Winter Revenue
If you are a new lawn and landscape business owner you probably don't have the luxury of taking the winter off. I highly encourage you to make this a goal because operating a lawn and landscape business during the spring, summer, and fall can be absolutely grueling. It is a well deserved break if you can afford to take it.
My business offered snow removal over the winter months, but this is not an option for everyone because snow removal is not a needed service everywhere. I also dropped snow removal as a service as soon as I could afford to do so because it was terrible in my opinion. The money could be great, but it often got ate up in repairs over the following months...
Offering junk removal could be a great way to generate revenue, and even possibly profit. I'd suggest to hope to break even the first year you offer it and decide if it is something worth pursuing in the upcoming years.
Keep Your Key Employees Busy Year Round
If you are considering offering junk removal to keep your key employees busy or at least on your team, I think junk collection and hauling is an excellent option for that.
This blog post was prompted by a client of my website design and SEO company, Sam with Sam's Personal Landscaping. Sam asked me in September of 2020 to add a page to his website offering junk removal as a seasonal service. He specifically said he just wanted to keep his key employees busy.
Sam is one of my favorite clients to work with. He always has great ideas for me to work with and this one did not disappoint.
Promote Your Seasonal Junk Removal Service
Simply creating a page on Sam's website is not going to be enough to 'keep his guys busy.' Especially since SEO takes time and the page is simply too new to expect it to perform very well this winter. But, Sam is really hoping to pick up enough junk hauling jobs to keep his guys busy!
So, we have a plan to market this seasonal service.
1st, Sam is one of very few of my SEO clients that allows us to email his customers. We do this using a free MailChimp account. I hop on his Yardbook and pull his customers and leads, and add them to the list several times per year. Sam adds anyone and everyone who contacts his business to the list. We will certainly be including junk removal emails to the sequence so his current clients and people who have inquired about his service recently know he is offering this.
2nd, we will be running Google Ads to attract clients for Sam. Google Ads when set up properly will get people contacting a local service business for very cheap. I'm expecting $2-4 per click on these ads. I'll be using Google Search Ads as these are the ones that appear at the top of the Google search results.
If you'd like to learn more about our website design, re-design and updating, SEO, and ad management services specializing in lawn and landscape companies, visit Optimized SEO and Websites.
Ryan Sciamanna
Ryan is the owner and founder of Lawn Crack, LLC the parent company of iGoPro Lawn Supply. He has worked in almost every capacity within the lawn and landscape industry for small local companies, nationwide companies, and of course, owning his own lawn & landscape business which he sold in 2018 before starting selling lawn and garden products online. Learn more about Ryan by subscribing to the LawnCrack YouTube Channel.
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