Kitty Litter Service – Make $250+ a Day

I hate those ads that quote you can make $X amount per day… etc. However, I fully believe the title of this post to be doable by the average person.

First, I’ve already written a related idea (they both have to do with cat poop) so if you want to read that one first, here it is.

More likely than not, you own a cat. Cats are the #1 pet in the USA. Over 70 million Americans own cats. The ratio goes up higher if you focus on nicer neighborhoods containing middle class to upper middle class homes. Which is where we’re going to focus this idea towards.

This is an incredible opportunity just because probably 75% of all the houses that you hit with your marketing are going to be potential customers. Talk to any marketing expert and they’ll tell you, that’s a good number.

This idea will combine another idea of mine about marketing. Read that one first, then come back here.

Essentially, this idea is selling a kitty litter maintenance service. For a house with 2 cats, you’ll charge them $30 a month to make sure they’re kitty litter box is clean and well maintained. For 1 cat, you’ll do it for $20 a month.

Using the post it notes, concentrate on particular neighborhoods. For this to be an efficient operation, you’ll need to make sure your customers are close to one another so you don’t waste time in travelling. It won’t work if you have to travel to clients all over town in one day. Put your ad on a post it note (you can use flyers too, I guess… I just like the post it note because it stands out from all the other joe blows out there advertising on people’s doors) and go through a neighborhood, sticking your ad on people’s doors.

Your ad is going to advertise your cat box maintenance service. For $X, you’ll clean and maintain their cat box 3 times a month. Their cat will receive fresh litter duing each visit… etc. The price INCLUDES the cost of the litter. No more packing 30 lb sacks of litter home to store in the garage. No more wondering whether the cat box has been cleaned in the past week. No more smell, no more mess. If there’s pregnancy in the house, they can eliminate that worry. (On second thought, with all the benefits you’ll want to tell the customer about, you might want to use a flyer instead… haha!)

Think about this… people HATE to clean the cat box. You show me a freshly cleaned cat box and I’ll show you a husband that was just told to clean the cat box because it’s starting to smell. I would gladly pay someone $30 to just take care of thing leaving me free to never have to think about the dirty thing ever again.

The key to this is to make your job as easy as possible is using a bigger cat box and flushable litter. There are several boxes on the market, but you can also MAKE them out of the big plastic bins that almost every store sells. Here’s one I made.

I just cut a hole in the top and viola, a cat box. My box is really an experiment. Hence the rough cut. You’ll want to get these cut in bulk by some outfit that can do it properly. But I bought this monstrosity at Target for $4. It’s important they be fairly good sized so you can go 10 days for 2 cats without the box filling up with poopage. When you empty it, you simply dump the whole thing into the toilet, wipe it out with an alcohol soaked handy wipe (alcohol dries really fast), fill it back up with litter and you’re on your way. The cleaning will be a piece of cake since you’ll be doing it each time. The waste won’t start to eat into the plastic because you’ll be cleaning it regularly.

There are several flushable litter materials on the market and in the bigger bags they cost about .50 cents a pound. Once you get big enough and are buying in bigger quantities, I’m sure you’ll be able to find it even cheaper from a pet supply distributor. This is an estimate, but it’ll probably take about 8 lbs of litter, per box, depending on the size of the box… etc. That is the only expense that comes out of the fee you’ll be collecting (other than gas and other business related incidentals.)

Essentially, you charge $10 each time you make a trip. If you do each customer every 10 days, that averages to about 3 times a month. Your litter expense is about $4 per trip. So, you get $6 each time you change a litter box. If you cluster your customer base in a tight geographic area, you can do 4-8 houses an hour. Do the math.

There’s one more major detail you have to address. Just like when people have a maid service to come in and clean on a regular basis, you’ll need to have access to the customer’s home without them being home. So, you’ll need to get bonded and licensed for work inside people’s homes unsupervised. That’s not a big deal, but it is something you’ll need to do. Check your local city or county government’s website or go to their building and ask about business licensing and bonding requirements. (Bonding questions can be directed to your insurance agent, as well.)

This can start out as a part time business. Just concentrate on a cluster of homes. Hit them once a week for a month with a flyer or post it note, advertising your business. Don’t think that just because they didn’t call you after the first flyer went out that they aren’t interested. If they see your flyer once a week for four weeks, they’ll know this isn’t some idiot trying out a business idea. They’ll start to take it seriously and it’ll become a conversation in the household, believe me. Especially if the husband sees it. 🙂

The only two challenges is overcoming the customer’s reluctance to having someone come into their home unsupervised. But if you dress professional, perhaps with a logo’ed shirt on, nice haircut, professional paperwork…etc, you’ll break down that barrier quick. Then there’s the space issue. What if they don’t have room for your bigger box? No problem, you can come once every 5 days to empty their current box but it’ll cost them $40 a month instead. (Watch them find room somewhere for the bigger box all of a sudden.)

Go make me proud and empty some litter for a living.