How to Make Money with Pet Waste Removal Services in 2024

What is the value of your time?

Time is the most indispensable resource that we have available to us.

We all deserve infinitely more than what we’ll get but a capitalist society has deemed us at fair market value or how much we’re worth per hour.

No one will ever pay you your fair share but in this blog i’m going to share my thoughts on how much you should charge for your poop scooping business and ways that you can maximize your potential.

If you want to better understand how many customers you need to have $500 even an extra $1000 dollars a month with your pet waste removal business, make sure you read the whole blog!

In order to better understand how much we should charge for our poop scooping services we need to first understand how much we will be spending to maintain our business.

At the end of the day we’re growing a business and we need to make sure that we’re spending less than we’re making.

The biggest expense i see is the time invested traveling to your clients and the amount of gas that you put in your vehicle.

You’ll want to identify which towns and counties your services will be available.

Whether it’s an extra 10, 15 or 20 minutes you’ll want to understand how far you’ll be willing to drive to service your clients.

You’ll need to keep this in mind whenever you give them a quote.

Personally i have a radius of around 30 miles.

There are days where it’ll take me 25 to 30 minutes to drive to a client’s house but once you start growing more customers in that area, it allows you to travel to that territory and service different homes all in the same route.

This will help you save on gas and even more important TIME!

You’ll have more time to service more customers or to grow your business in other ways.

The second expense is your reoccurring expenses like your plastic bags and your bleach to clean your supplies and any poop scooping equipment that you previously bought.

I will recommend buying your plastic bags and your bleach in bulk so it’ll drive down the cost of your supplies.

The last expense you’ll need to keep in mind is your advertising expense!

Whether it’s flyers or business cards that you want to give out at a dog park or spending money on facebook and google ad campaigns, it’s important to understand how much of your monthly budget you will spend on advertising so you can continue to grow your business.

Now i’m not saying it’s a requirement to spend a lot of money on your advertisement strategy but the more people that know about your services the more likely someone will hire you for your services.

For example i spent around $200 on facebook ad campaigns last year during the winter season and i made over a thousand dollars that month with how many people were reaching out to me to find out more information.

Only you can determine how much you want to spend on your advertising but a healthy rule is between 10 – 20% of how much you’ve made the last month.

So if you make $100 dollars one month you should spend around $10 – 20 dollars the next month trying to grow your business.

Now that we identified our expenses it’s time to do our market research!

You need to determine how much your competitors are charging for Pet Waste Removal Services, and then you can charge for your services accordingly.

I can charge at five hundred dollars per scoop but the likelihood of someone asking for my services will be really low.

Do not get me wrong.

This is not a race to the bottom.

I am not asking you to undercut your competitors unless that’s the strategy you want to implement.

As long as your rates are in the same ballpark as your competitors you’ll have an easier time convincing a new client to hire you for your services.

I actually found that my rates are a little bit higher than some of the businesses around here but personally i try to provide a quality service that warrants the price.

Don’t chase the money!

Chase the quality and experience you want your clients to have and the money will follow.

This is also another reason why i choose not to have a pricing chart on my page.

i do not want to give my competitors any information on how much i charge for my services and there are a variety of factors that you want to consider so it’s very difficult to have a cookie cutter answer for a poop scooping service.

To be honest i’ve had maybe a handful of customers who complained about not having a pricing chart but if they’re complaining about something that small they’re probably going to hassle me on the price and i don’t want to do services with them.

Don’t waste your time trying to convince someone on why they need your poop scooping services.

Invest your time in the people that are actively looking for that type of service!

You finally landed a customer!

What are some things you want to keep in mind?

I like to ask three basic questions so i can give them the best accurate quote:

• Wow many dogs do you have?
• What town are you located in?
• And has it been more than one month since your last cleaning?

A majority of the time your clients will be really embarrassed at the current state of their yard.

Sometimes you’ll have a client that tells you the truth but a lot of the times they’ll just lie and say that they’ve cleaned it a couple weeks ago when it’s been a couple of months ago.

You may also consider asking for a picture of their yard or asking how big their yard is.

You may find that a small yard with one dog takes you around 25 minutes compared to a large yard with three dogs that takes you an hour and a half.

Because of this discrepancy, i highly suggest that you implement an initial cleanup fee!

When it’s the first time you’re visiting yard expect that there’s going to be a lot more poop than you anticipate and it’s going to take you longer to clean up.

Expect that the initial cleaning will take around 45 minutes to an hour and a half, so you’ll want to calculate how long it’ll take you to get to your clients house and back and how long it’ll take you to do their scooping appointment.

For your initial cleaning fee you’ll want to charge between $35 – 65 dollars for one dog $45 – 75 for two dogs and $55 – 85 dollars for three dogs!

Remember that this is your business and you can charge for the type of service that you want to provide.

After identifying how much your initial cleaning will be it’s time to map out your weekly services.

Your weekly cleanings is where the real money is at!

Since you only have a week’s worth of poo to pick up it should take you between 15 to 30 minutes to complete depending on the size of the yard!

Remember to value your time and energy even though it’s a week’s worth of poo.

Because of that you can find weekly rates for one dog between $12 -16, 2 dogs for $15 – 25 dollars and three dogs to $20 – 30 dollars!

The winter season is probably the best time for this business.

Many clients don’t want to deal with the cold in the snow so they let their dogs poo outside and it just builds up for a couple of weeks or a couple of months.

Once springtime rolls around everything starts to thaw and melt and they have a bunch of poo in their yard.

Because of this you can definitely charge a winter cleanup fee between $80 – 150 depending on the size of their yard!

I’ve had a few winter cleanups last year that took me at least three to four hours and it was important that i got paid for that amount of time.

Personally i enjoy scooping in the cold because all of the poop pebbles are hard and stiff and they don’t tend to smell as badly.

You also have the option to provide additional services along with your scooping cleanup!

There are some pet waste removal businesses that charge their clients extra to take the poo away with them.

You may consider charging an extra five dollars for every two plastic bags of poo that you pick up and haul away.

Personally with my clients i take the poo with me so i can dispose of it.

It’s pretty gross letting a bag of poo marinate in your client’s garbage can.

This allows me to charge a little bit extra for my scooping cleanup because this is just an additional service i provide.

Another strategy you can implement is offering a pet friendly deodorizer and disinfectant that you can spray in their yard so your clients don’t have to smell or worry about dog related parasites.

I like using the Wysiwash system to sanitize and disinfect yards. You can save $10 off on your Wysiwash using the following link.

Disclaimer: Some of these links are affiliate links where I’ll earn a small commission if you make a purchase at no additional cost to you.

With that type of service you can add an additional $15-35 dollars to your scooping cleanups.

This is your business and you can offer whatever kind of service you want for dog owners!

Pet sitting or dog walking is another area that you can grow into!

I’ve only focused on poop scooping so far but there are a lot of opportunities to grow your business.

Just be wary of paralysis by analysis.

If you give too many options to a client sometimes they will feel overwhelmed and won’t make any decisions.

It’s just better to give them as few options as possible so it’s easier for them to say yes.

Using this information i created a calculator to illustrate how easy it is to make five hundred to a thousand dollars using your poop scooping business.

Using the baseline weekly prices of $15, 20 and 25 dollars it’ll take you between five to eight clients on a weekly basis to start making around $500 extra dollars and 10 to 16 clients to make an extra $1000 a month!

Once you start including some initial cleanup fees or winter service fees you’ll see the amount of money you can make with your poop scooping business grow significantly!

The cool thing about this calculator is you can change any of the yellow fields and it’ll calculate the grand total of the week so you can calculate your pricing structure for your poop scooping business!

If you want a copy of this calculator make sure you leave a comment below!

As we are maximizing the value of your time you can expect a poop scooping business will net you between $35 to 65 an hour!

And what is the best way to maximize how much you’re making per hour?

By strategically advertising and marketing your pet waste removal business.

If you want to learn how to market your poop scooping business click through to the next blog.

And i’ll see you on the next scoop!

And As Always, Acknowledge The Now. Bye!