This pandemic has been a great time for everyone who’s creative to come up with awesome business ideas. Some people have started an ecommerce website and are selling consumer products. Others are earning passive income through different online means, such as becoming a YouTuber and making money with ad revenue, joining the affiliate programs of various local and international firms, doing content writing work for blogs, or simply offering their skills on freelancing websites like Upwork or Fiverr.
For those who are a little more serious about starting your own business, you might want to look into the high-income sectors, such as real estate, automobiles, or website development.
If you are interested in gardening, lawn care, or topography, why not start a landscaping business?
What is a Landscaping Business?
Landscaping is just like taking care of a lawn. Starting a landscaping business means starting a business to offer mow-and-go services. It could also mean making beautiful landscapes by maintaining them, adding water features to them, and decorating wildlife areas or even golf holes.
The exact services you offer as part of your landscaping business would depend on the regulations of your country and state. There are actually many types of landscape companies. You may want to look into those and see the kind of services they offer. Then come up with your own concept of services that you want to provide.
It is challenging to start a landscaping business. Anyone who has a lawn, or a garden knows that it takes a lot of work to maintain. That’s why you can only start a landscaping business if you are passionate about lawns. Moreover, you might need to consider the capital expenditure budget required.
If you want to start small, have a look at landscape companies that begin with minimum equipment, including a pickup truck, a leaf blower, a riding lawn mower, and just a few other tools. These landscape companies offer minor services, such as lawn mowing, leaf blowing, walkway edging, driveway edging, and a few other similar services. Some landscaping companies that can get their business off the ground also manage flower beds, prune shrubs, spray weeds, install walking paths, cut branches off trees, and prep lawns in fall season.
If you start a landscaping business during this pandemic, the best way is to operate it from the comfort and safety of your home. You can easily promote any business these days by building a website that serves as a platform to showcase your services.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
You can create a website for your landscaping business, and promote it through different digital marketing techniques we will discuss below.
The Pros and Cons of Starting a Landscaping Business
Running a lawn care or landscaping business from home has a lot of pros attached to it. You become the master of your work schedule, and can decide how many hours a day you want to devote to the business. If you base it within your community, you will have a very short commute to work. Your work can be done at your own convenience and pace. You can actually work during any daylight hours. You will get to enjoy the fresh air, sunlight, and probably a cardiovascular workout as well.
The cons of running a landscaping business from home are quite low. There are many people who start a landscaping business and use their personal credit cards to make payments for it. Their business is often funded using their personal loans. You will only need to invest in some basic tools in the beginning, and you’ll be set for years. Once you have installed landscaping professionally, you wouldn’t need any more equipment. There is no need to buy any office equipment either, as your office can be set up in a corner of your house, or in a spare bedroom. Commercial spaces are not available in most places because of the lockdown policies these days, anyway.
However, you might face some disadvantages in your landscaping business if you are not so adept at the services you’ll be offering. Along with knowing how to start a landscaping business, you also need to know how to do mowing, pruning, and trimming in a way that’s better than an average person. This means you might have to spend some time learning and mastering the basic skills of gardening. You will need to discipline yourself and become an expert in the services you want to provide. You might already have all these hidden skills, but it’s always better to practice first and suffer alone in the beginning than to be complained about by unsatisfied customers later on.
Before starting a landscaping business, you will also need to make sure that you are physically fit. You wouldn’t want to start feeling weak as soon as you spend many hours under the blistering sun every day. You need to be able to handle the job’s rigors, which might include lifting and carrying heavy equipment to and from the trailers. Or even need to wield bulky implements for long hours. The machinery used in a landscaping business is usually dangerous and uses hazardous chemicals. If your health is not too good, it will be difficult for you to work with such machinery. Get a personal trainer if needed and build up some muscles before your landscaping business gets off the ground.
5 Steps to Start a Landscaping Business
The process to start a landscaping business is not so complicated. As long as you are in good physical health, have the basic equipment available, and have a passion for lawns and landscapes, you are pretty much good to go.
Here are the 5 brief steps you need to take for starting a landscaping business.
- Decide the services that you’ll be offering. You need to be specific about this. Begin with the services that you are good at, and slowly you can choose to expand as you grow in your revenue and skills.
- Purchase the equipment and tools required based on the services you decide to offer. It is best not to invest in the larger equipment straight away. Scale up your landscaping business gradually over time.
- Get the licenses and insurance required in your region for running a landscaping business. When you start to grow your business, you can also choose to get employment law liability insurance.
- Come up with a suitable marketing plan and put a price on your services accordingly.
- Develop a website to showcase your new landscaping business initiative.
If you want to get your website ready and running in just a few hours, you can build it on Strikingly.
Image taken from Strikingly
Strikingly is a website-building platform that allows its users to create full-fledged websites without having to write a single line of code. We offer full-time support via our live chat feature, whereby you can contact us with any kind of inquiry, before or after signing up for your Strikingly account.
Many landscape companies promote their business through their websites these days. Some also allow their prospects to place an order or make payment online via the site. You can do the same using the features we offer on Strikingly, such as accepting credit/debit card payments from your clients. You can also schedule the delivery of your services on your website.
Making online sales for your landscaping business can be fun. It’s like generating leads or income from the comfort of your home, and then going and delivering your services to do something that you enjoy. The best part about a landscaping business is that you are surrounded by beautiful scenery when you are at work. You get to spend more time in nature, while the technical side of your business is taken care of by us. Building and maintaining a website on Strikingly gives you the support and confidence that the online aspect of your business is intact. Even if you face any technical issues, you don’t need to hire a full-time developer to sort things out. Our support team will surely help you resolve your issues. Since we understand that entrepreneurs have a lot of things on their minds, they want you to be tension-free about your web development. Whether you build a one-page or a multi-page website, it is going to help you attract prospects if you provide the right information on it.
Below are screenshots of websites or landing pages of some landscape companies. You can see how they design their website and use it to market their services.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Image taken from Landscape Services Co
If you also want to start a landscaping business by building a website for it, start right away by signing up for your free Strikingly account. Your website will not only help you showcase your landscaping business, but also generate leads, as prospects will be able to contact you through it. Make sure you choose an appealing web design from among the tons of website templates we provide at Strikingly. We wish you a wonderful journey of running a landscaping business!
