July 12, 2023
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Yi-Jane is a writer for SideHustles.com. In addition to her writing and reporting work, she also has 3+ years of experience as a freelance English-Chinese translator working on more than 100 projects for various clients
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NoIf you’re an avid gardener and enjoy working outside, you might be able to make a lot of money with a lawn care side hustle. However, there’s more to setting one up than just weeding and mowing; you also need a certain amount of business savvy.
In this article, we’ll go over the various tasks you may encounter and explain how you can start your own lawn care business in six steps.
Your job will consist of keeping someone else’s yard healthy and well-maintained
Your duties as a lawn care professional will vary depending on the state of your client’s lawn. While some lawns will only require light maintenance, others may need major repairs.
The most common tasks that you may have to handle include:
It’s up to you how comprehensive you want your job to be. You can limit yourself to basic tasks like mowing and weeding (in which case you’ll charge less money, but your workload will be lighter), or you can provide more intensive services.
If you like to be outside and don’t mind doing physical work, starting a lawn care business is a good option to make extra money. Its perks include:
That said, lawn care isn’t a particularly easy job. It’s physically demanding, and you may need to buy a fair amount of equipment (unless you already have the requisite tools and machinery on hand), which can get expensive.
Read on to learn how to hit the ground running with a lawn care side hustle.
You’ll need a come up with a solid plan and work hard to get your first few clients
Follow these steps to get your lawn care side business off to a strong start:
If you’re considering this side hustle, you may already possess the skills required for lawn care, such as mowing, weeding, and trimming bushes.
However, if you’ve never done any of these tasks before, familiarize yourself with them before charging people for your services.
These skills are relatively easy to acquire. You can get an idea of what to do by watching YouTube tutorials, but make sure to also get out there and practice. You’ll need hands-on experience to satisfy your clients’ expectations.
As mentioned, this side hustle requires certain tools and equipment. For instance, you may need any of the following:
What you should get depends on what types of services you’re planning on providing. If you don’t plan on pruning shrubbery, for instance, you can skip the shears.
If you decide you want to expand your services later, you can always purchase additional equipment once you’ve grown your business a bit.
As mentioned, to lower your startup costs, consider buying your equipment secondhand instead of brand new. You can often find good deals online, such as on Facebook Marketplace, eBay, or Craigslist.
With a side hustle like this, you’ll probably rely on word-of-mouth to land new clients. Naming and branding your business will make it easier for your clients to remember you and refer you to other people.
Keep your business name personal, simple, and memorable. Once you’ve created your name, do a quick search on Google to make sure no other business is currently using it.
If the name is available, claim it by using it to register an email address, then create social media accounts for your business on Facebook and any other popular platforms you want to advertise on.
In addition to a name, you can also create a logo for your business to catch people’s attention. One way of doing so is to find a freelance designer on an online services marketplace like Fiverr or Upwork to design a logo for you at a reasonable price.
As a lawn care professional, how you should set your pricing depends on the services you provide and how difficult and time-consuming they are.
The easiest way to set a fair price is to do competitor research. Conduct an online search or ask people in your neighborhood how much other lawn care professionals who provide the same services as you typically charge.
Landing your first few clients can be hard, but it isn’t impossible. Try these tactics:
You can also try finding your first few clients on apps that will match you with people who need lawn care services. We’ve listed several prominent ones in the section below.
Regardless of how you land your first few clients, be sure to do a great job so they hire you again and recommend you to their friends.
For your lawn care side hustle to be successful, you need to operate it smoothly. Be sure to:
If your business really takes off, consider hiring additional workers or even an assistant to do your admin work so that you can run it on a larger scale. This is the path you’ll have to take if you decide that you want to take your lawn care side hustle and turn it into a full-fledged career.
You can use these apps to get experience and land your first few jobs
These days, there’s an app for everything, and yard work is no exception. If you’re dipping your toes into the world of lawn care, consider finding work on one of these:
LawnGuru is a gig app, like Uber. However, instead of taxi and delivery services, it lets you sign up to provide lawn care services (and perform other closely related tasks, such as pressure washing and shoveling snow).
Every time someone in your area posts a job, you’ll get an alert and will be free to accept or decline the job.
How much you can earn: LawnGuru claims that its gig workers earn an average of $700 per week, although this obviously depends on how much you work and how selective you are about the jobs you take. You’ll be able to view the price of every job before you accept it.
LawnMowingOnline is a website that connects yard work “contractors” with clients. It’s narrower in focus than LawnGuru, since it only features mowing jobs.
In other respects, it works in much the same way as LawnGuru, although you’ll receive job offers via email, which you might find less convenient than in an app.
How much you can earn: LawnMowingOnline claims that many mowing jobs cost their clients just $19, which sets a relatively low cap on how much you can earn per gig. That said, their FAQ also claims that you’ll earn around 90% of the price of each job, with the platform taking a cut of just 10%.
Handy is an app that’s primarily for indoor handyman services (assembling furniture, plumbing and electrical work, etc), but it also features lawn care gig work.
Unlike the other apps on this list, it says that it requires you to have some paid experience in your chosen type of work, so this might not be the best option for landing your first few clients.
How much you can earn: Handy pays its workers based on their rating in the app, so your rates will climb over time (as long as your clients end up leaving you good reviews). Unfortunately, some reports claim that rates start on the low end (potentially between $10–$20 per hour).
By far the most well-known platform on this list, TaskRabbit features many different types of jobs, not just lawn care. It works essentially the same way that LawnGuru does—you’ll be presented with jobs in your area as people create them and can accept or decline them after viewing the rates you’ll be paid.
How much you can earn: TaskRabbit says that its lawn care jobs often start at around $30 per hour. Unlike the other apps on this list, it won’t take a cut of your earnings; there is a service fee, but it’s paid by the customer and tacked onto their bill, which means you can keep 100% of what you make.
The cost of starting a lawn care business varies widely depending on the operation’s scale
Again, lawn care requires equipment, which can get expensive. Your startup costs can easily add up to $5,000 to $9,000 (excluding the price of a trailer) if you purchase new equipment, set up a home office, and widely advertise your business.
However, there are many ways to cut costs if you have a tight budget. For starters, as we’ve already mentioned, you can start your business small and buy used equipment for under $1,000.
Moreover, you don’t have to set up a professional home office right away. Instead, you can call clients and sort out business-related items from your desk or the dining room table.
You don’t even have to pay for marketing in the beginning, although if you don’t, you’ll have to do a lot of it yourself. You can create a website for free using services like Wix and Squarespace and post your services on social media, such as local Facebook groups. Don’t forget to spread the word about your business among your family, friends, and neighbors.
Be aware that you’ll need a vehicle—preferably a utility trailer or truck—to haul all of your equipment. Be prepared to bump up your start-up costs if you don’t already have a suitable vehicle.
Lawn care isn’t a year-round side hustle, but you can find similar work to keep yourself busy
Lawn care work is seasonal. In most areas, you’ll only be able to find jobs from April to September—obviously, you won’t be able to weed and mow lawns during the snowy winter months.
However, that doesn’t mean you need to put a pause on earning extra money. Here’s work you can consider taking on during the lawn care off-season:
Once you build up a roster of clients who trust you, finding this additional kind of work should be a cinch. Just ask them if there are any jobs they’d like you to do during the fall and winter months.
