When Don Marsh thinks windows, the last thing on his mind is Microsoft software. Don the Window Cleaner is a nice, down-to-earth guy. His story begins when he was down on his luck after a series of jobs that never panned out. He rode into town on his motorcycle armed with rudimentary window cleaning tools and only enough gas in the tank to make the one-way trip. Luckily, he learned about salesmanship quickly enough to fill up his tank for the return trip and put an extra $20 in his pocket.
Fast-forward 20 years, and his skills as a residential window-cleaning specialist provide him with a solid income and a crusade to help others be their own bosses in the window cleaning business. In his quest, he started SqueegeesByMail.Com, a site that offered professional window cleaning tool kits to those looking to enter the business. As of late, however, Marsh decided to stop selling the tool kits and instead turn the site's focus to window cleaning information.
The early years
Marsh's original Web site, www.donaldmarsh.com, was created in the 1990s. It was robust, for a small operation. He was among the first to implement electronic calendar technology to allow customers to view his schedule to see if they could be squeezed in before Saturday night's cocktail party. The customers even remain partially anonymous; Marsh only posts the street names on the Web site -- not the customer name or exact address. He still painfully describes the time involved in keeping up with the calendar (manually transferring data to retain customers' privacy), but his customers appreciate it. His e-calendar and clean design got Marsh's site top rankings in the search engines. Inevitably, not just customers but people thinking of starting window cleaning businesses wound up there.
"Five or six years ago, I was getting the occasional letter from people who had found my Web site who wanted advice on how to start a window cleaning business," he says. "Some of these people had a lot of questions, and it got too time-consuming to answer them individually. So I copied and pasted all my responses onto a separate Web page as a kind of ‘How-to FAQ' on my window cleaning site [www.donaldmarsh.com]." The dormant Web page was implemented just because Marsh wanted to be a Good Samaritan and show others about a business that had treated him well.
"It stopped the repetitive e-mails, and I forgot about it for years," he says.
Last year, Marsh was going over statistics from his Web site and noticed the number of unique visitors to the How-to FAQ page. Since it was more than 200 a month, it was obvious that a lot of people were interested in starting small window cleaning businesses. The time was right to convert these information seekers into potential sales.
Last March, he began a venture into the supply end of the business -- furnishing other novice window cleaners with the proper tools for the job. Hence, SqueegeesByMail.Com was created. Unlike other bulk tool distribution sites, it gave practical tips for beginners.
Earlier this year, however, Marsh decided it would be best to leave the supply side of the business to specialty window cleaning tool distributors, and instead morphed SqueegeesByMail.Com into a marketing and information site. He also will use the site to promote a book he is writing that is targeted to novice window cleaners.
