Training guide: How to make money with LawnMowingOnline
Last updated June 21, 2017
LawnMowingOnline is essentially giving people the opportunity to create their own business for free or add more business to an existing business for free.
Think of it like being an eBay powerseller but instead of selling products you are selling services. You are only limited by how much you want to work. At the time of this writing we only offer lawn mowing but in the next few months we plan on allowing contractors to offer whatever services they can do. Roofing, heating and cooling, brain surgery, whatever you believe you can do, you’re welcome to offer buyers. And those buyers can give you good reviews and refer you to other buyers. Each contractor is given their own profile page that includes services they offer, their reviews, a HIRE ME button and other information that help customers choose them. That profile page will even rank high on Google so it is important to maintain good reviews. And once you start getting too many orders to handle you can hire your own crews to do the work while you sit back and take orders and reply to customers.
Things to Remember (Updated June 21, 2017)
1. CONTRACTORS WORK FOR CUSTOMER, NOT LAWNMOWINGONLINE. LawnMowingOnline does not decide if you get paid or not, the customer does, so if there is a dispute resolve it with them.
2. HAVE QUESTIONS? ASK CUSTOMER. Have a question about anything? Send the customer a message through the website.
3. TAKE PHOTOS. Every order or bid requires four before photos, four after photos and one photo of the address.
4. DO NOT DISTURB HOMEOWNER. You have the owner's permission and they are aware someone will be mowing. EXCEPTION: if something or someone prevents you from mowing (dogs, excessive debris in yard, etc) knock on door and take photos OR if the customer asks you to knock.
5. IF YOU BREAK OR RUN OVER something take photographs and continue working if possible. Send a message to the customer and explain the situation and see what the customer would like for compensation.
6. WALK THE PROPERTY BEFORE MOWING. You should always spend a few minutes walking a yard before mowing to check for any obstructions. If you damage an inground sprinkler system or if your mower is damaged by a pipe you are responsible.
7. CUSTOMERS CAN HIRE YOU AGAIN.
1. New LawnMowingOnline Features
1. Major New Features on LawnMowingOnline
Keep Your Customers: On LawnMowingOnline customers can hire you again, and not just for lawn mowing, they can request you do other projects and you can negotiate a fair price. This is very helpful to contractors that offer more than just lawn mowing, because you can show up at a house and notice other issues like bushes needing trimming, gutters need replacing, vinyl siding needs repair, power washing, fencing, etc, and message the customer letting them know you mowed their property and can offer all those services if they hire you again to do them. This is what can make a cheap $19 lawn mowing job into a project that pays thousands of dollars to the contractor.
Customers Can Refer You: On LawnMowingOnline every contractor has a public Profile page with a HIRE ME button. When a customer clicks that the contractor gets a personal email saying someone wants to hire them for a project. That profile page also can be shared via social media and includes reviews left by previous customers and information the contractor chooses to share.
Payments: Once an order has been approved, you will receive a notification. You will then WITHDRAW the funds or allow the funds to build up. Please allow 1 to 3 business days after WITHDRAWAL for payments to process through our new automated system.
Bid To Get The Amount You Deserve: Every contractor, even contractors removed from the old website, can now bid on jobs. You can bid any amount you want, so all those $19 jobs you didn't think paid enough can now be $30 jobs if you want. But be careful, it's usually better to take a job for less and ask the customer to hire you again at the higher price then to start with the high price and risk losing the job. What if 20 new jobs just appeared but you can't mow them until Saturday? Place a bid and tell the twenty customers in the message you can't be out until Saturday. If they don't mind waiting they can choose your bid.
Do more than just mow lawns: Ever mow a lawn and think "wow I could fix a lot more on this house". Now you can offer that. Message the customer offering other services and prices. Every lawn mowing job has a REHIRE button so the customer can hire you again for another project. Doesn't have to be about lawn mowing at all, could be anything, as long as you and the customer come to an agreement. And now you have a good review for that new service you offered which will look great on your profile page when you ask other customers to order that same service from you again: "Yes I can do roofing, just look at my reviews from previous customers that said I did a great job on their roof!" But beware, the customer can still get a full refund if the job isn't complete so make sure it's done to their satisfaction.
100% phone compatible: New website was designed entirely to work on small touchscreens. Buttons are oversized for finger-pressing instead of mouse-clicking, small links are gone, photos can be uploaded right through the smartphone browser. Just remember to take the photos first then upload them, and to make uploading faster try and resize the photos first or take them at a low resolution because even on a 4G LTE connection it can take over a minute to upload nine 12 megapixel images
So how does all this benefit you? Eventually you have so many customers rehiring and referring you that you have too much work for one person to handle. You hire helpers. Before long you don't even mow the lawns, they do all the work while you sit home and bid on new jobs and handle customer support. How does that sound?
2. How it works and Suggested Tools
REQUIRED TOOLS:
- One small push mulching mower capable of fitting within the size of any gate. Additional mowers are optional, but at least one must be able to fit within any sized gate. We only use mulching mowers or professional mowers that leave no grass behind on the yard.
- Vehicle capable of transporting mowing equipment
- Gasoline for mowing equipment
- digital camera or camera phone capable of taking high quality photos
- A broom or blower to clean up grass after mowing
- gasoline weed trimmer if you want to accept jobs that require weed trimmer
- Orders do not include bagging grass, but customers can submit bidding jobs that require grass bagging and you can give them a price reasonable for bagging grass. If you accept a bidding job that says they want the grass bagged you will need a grass catcher or bagger to complete the job for that customer.
As a new contractor you will be on a probationary period where you can only take 1 or 2 orders but can bid on any orders you want. Once you complete those 1 or 2 orders and receive good reviews for those orders you will be allowed to take more orders. On the bidding orders, you may bid any reasonable amount you want, but of course if it’s too high you’re unlikely to be chosen. You will not be able to see who else has bid or the exact amount they have bid.
Login and click FIND WORK. You will see jobs appear like below.
Click “Mowing Bid Request” or whatever the status is (in the screenshot it says OPEN)
…………..more to come………………..
Go to paypal and create an account and put the email address you used on Paypal on your profile page
The website was recently updated to allow all brand new contractors to take only a few jobs to see how they do first. If you do well and earn 5 star reviews, you will be able to take as many jobs as you want. If you do poorly on those first few jobs then you will only be able to bid on jobs until your ranking from customers improves. You must maintain a 4 out of 5 average to take jobs. If you fall below 4 out of 5 average you will only be allowed to bid on jobs. If your average continues to fall further it is possible your account may be blocked from bidding or taking jobs.
When you take a job, it's yours. The customer then decides what your review is. If you don't show up or do anything to cause the customer to cancel you are automatically given a 1-star rating. If you can not finish a job arrange with customer to mow another date or figureo out some sort of arrangement.
You must upload at least 9 photos to be paid.
1 photo of the address
4 before mowing photos
4 after mowing photos
Below is the bare minimum example of photos. The red border is the property line
As you can see a photo is taken from each corner of the property and another of the mailbox or where ever the home address is located.
Obviously since every property isn't a square you may need to take more than 9 photos.
LawnMowingOnline HIGHLY recommends taking photos of any windows or vehicles parked nearby. Recently a contractor was accused of breaking a window that he does not think he broke. The customer threatened to sue and the contractor paid $130 rather than go to court. Another customer actually did sue a contractor for a broken storm door. You DO NOT need to upload all the additional photos, just hang on to them in case the customer says you broke something or has another issue.
Uploading photos can take a long time so it's a good idea to
TAKE 9 PHOTOS BEFORE YOU UPLOAD!
After you take the 9 required
You will want to go to the Gallery on a Android phone and Photos on a iPhone. DO NOT TRY TO TAKE PHOTOS AND UPLOAD THEM. It won't work because it requires 4 before and after photos so it will take one photo and upload it and then say the other 3 are missing and you will have to start over.
- telling customers to hire you outside of the website. This should be obvious. There are secret shoppers, they will report you.
- telling customer to contact you outside of the website before they have hired you, for example if you're bidding on a job and you tell them to text you
- telling customer LawnMowingOnline charges too much
- bidding ridiculous amounts on projects
- lying to customers. For example, telling customer "lawnmowingonline does not give refunds" or "lawnmowingonline does not clean up after mowing" are lies.
And other similar situations will result in you losing access to your account. Don't do it. If you're wondering if what you're going to say is acceptable, pretend you are a customer that just hired a company to provide a service, would you want that employee to send you that message? If not, it's probably not appropriate.
1) DO NOT MOW: Take photos of a tape measure in the grass, do not mow, and message the customer telling them the grass was XX inches and the order was for XX inches and they need to pay a tip. See order page for pricing, tips max out at $15 but multiple tips can be added. After telling the customer to pay tips if they still don't believe the grass was long or refuse to pay upload the photos to help convince the customer that the grass was long. HOWEVER... they might not pay and you will be out the time and money it cost in gasoline to drive there.
2) MOW: Take photos of a tape measure in the grass, mow the lawn, message the customer telling them the grass was XX inches and the order was for XX inches and they need to pay a tip. See order page for pricing, tips max out at $15 but multiple tips can be added. Again, the customer might not pay for the additional height but you will receive the full amount you were quoted.
Here are photos of long grass taken by contractors. Notice they take one photo showing the entire yard and another closer up to show the tape measure.
It is extremely rare that the grass would already be mowed when you arrive, but if for some reason it is take photos and upload them and mark the job as complete. Why this sometimes happens is a customer orders to check up on rental property or other situation where they want to make sure the grass is mowed. So take the photos and mark the job as complete. If the customer approves, congratulations, you have been paid to mow a lawn and did not have to mow it. If the customer disputes it, negotiate with the customer to mow another day. If the customer disputes and cancels, it will count as a bad review, so work it out with the customer.
15. Cancellations and Disputes
The customer is always right
The customer is always right
The customer is always right
Have you ever ordered food that didn't come the way you wanted? What did you do? You told them it wasn't right and they probably said sorry and they fixed it for you.
Same thing here. The contractor does not work for LawnMowingOnline. The contractor works for whoever ordered the lawn mowing, so if they say the contractor did not do the job correctly and there is a problem then they are the customer and they are right.
Customers will open a Dispute if there is a problem or they wish to cancel. Contractors have 72 hours from the time the dispute is open to contact the customer, resolve the dispute or cancellation, and convince the customer to close the dispute.
If customer does not close the dispute within 72 hours then the dispute is automatically found in the customer's favor. The customer is sent a full refund, no payment is sent the contractor, and the contractor is given a 1-star review for that order since it resulted in a unresolved dispute.
There is nothing LawnMowingOnline can do about disputes, they are open by the customer, not by the website, so LawnMowingOnline can not decide the outcome. Fortunately disputes are very rare, less than 2%, just do a good job and treat customers like you would want to be treated if you were ordering lawn mowing and you'll never have to worry about disputes.
16. GETTING PAID!
After a order is completed it is sent to the customer for approval and will say AWAITING REVIEW to the contractor. Since contractors are working for the customer and not LawnMowingOnline all customers must approve of their orders. LawnMowingOnline must wait until the customer approves of the work before payment can be released. If for some reason they don't (but why wouldn't they?) then we have to wait until they can no longer file a dispute with their credit card company before sending payments. If LawnMowingOnline releases the payment early, then we risk the contractor getting paid and the customer complaining later and getting a full refund. Credit card orders can not be disputed past 180 days. We suggest you send them a message daily asking them to approve of the work so you do not have to wait 180 days. Almost every customer approves of orders within hours so again, this is the rare 1% circumstance that no one ever experinces but unfortunately we have to warn everyone about since it might eventually happen someday to a contractor and we have to have it in writing that the contractor was told.
Please allow 1 to 3 business days for payments to process through our new automated system.
