By: Senior staff writer – Easton Ellsworth

Here’s something different: a tech startup that’s a startup using technology to do something non-techy as opposed to being a startup using technology to offer tech to techies. (Say that five times fast.)

We recently asked BidMyCleaning.com CEO Raymond Aker several questions about his company.

Enjoy his answers.

TS: What is BidMyCleaning.com?

RA: BidMyCleaning is an online marketplace for house cleaning services where consumers can get instant bids tailored to their requirements and schedule their service appointment online in minutes. For the service providers we offer free setup and send them confirmed appointments. We are essentially providing a platform where consumers in the market for maid service, carpet cleaning or window cleaning can easily find and transact with the best service providers in their area with a full range of online tools available to both buyers and sellers.

TS: Who is its target audience?

RA: We are currently focusing on the residential cleaning market so our target audience includes home owners, renters, real estate professionals and property managers.

TS: Why would people want to use it?

RA: It is easy and convenient and gives people the tools to find a cleaning service that fits their budget and then manage their relationship with the service provider all online. Automated appointment reminders and transaction confirmations are a popular feature as is the ability to pay for service online rather than having to find cash or write a check after the service appointment. Once a customer sets up an account on BidMyCleaning they can easily reschdule, cancel the service or switch providers if they become unhappy with their current one for any reason or if they move to a different location? They can essentially manage their home cleaning from one website for life.

TS: How much does BidMyCleaning cost?

RA: There is no charge to use the website, customers only pay once the cleaning service has been completed having chosen the bid price which suits them. There is also no charge for the service providers to use our marketplace. They do not pay for leads either. They receive confirmed service appointments and we forward payment to them after they confirm that they have completed the service.

TS: Can you give two or three quick examples of success stories where people used your site and had a great experience?

RA: We have been unable to keep up with the demand from the service provider community and have had to add staff to process all the applications. We target small independent to medium size cleaning businesses and typically these people just want to get on with the business of cleaning. They are frustrated with having to market themselves and all the administrative work involved in managing their customers. They are also weary of the expensive lead generations services where they typically have only a 25% (or less) chance of closing the deal. We send them customers and our platform takes care of all the adminstrative work for them – they love it.

On the customer side we have received wonderful feedback from people who say they love that they no longer have to call or e-mail several service providers for bids, wait for the quotes to come in and then follow up again to set up an appointment. Something which used to take several hours or several days to do can now be done in just a few minutes. We also have wonderful providers and make sure we work with only the best so our customer reviews are mostly stellar.

TS: What are some competitors to you?

RA: There are competitors which address various stages of the transaction loop such as CraigsList in the provider search stage, AngiesList in the provider screening and review stage and a few recent startups targeting the scheduling aspect. BidMyCleaning is the only website that offers competitive bids from several providers instantly together with the reviews and scheduling. Obviously we do ultimately compete with every direct service provider too, for example Molly Maids on house cleaning or Stanley Steamer on carpet cleaning but we have the added advantage that we offer the customer the ability to schedule all three services from one place while also competitive bids.

TS: What are your plans to grow your business for the next 12-24 months?

RA: We currently have 21 featured locations including San Diego, San Jose, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, Houston, Dallas and Chicago and plan to continue our expansion into additional featured locations throughout the country. To ensure that we are able to provide a service to anyone who visits the website, we also offer our service nationwide with our BidMyCleaning’s Choice Provider program. This allows us to offer the customer a fixed bid price for a service without indicating who the actual provider is. If the customer is happy with the price and is willing to trust our years of experience in the industry to be matched then he/she can go ahead and schedule their service with the added peace of mind of our satisfaction guarantee. We recently rolled out a special feature targeted at real estate professionals and property managers which allows them to manage multiple locations and plan to create a special part of our website to provide additional services to them. We are also actively rolling out new features for our other customers to make it easier for them to manage their services. On the provider side we are working on an additional suite of business tools which we are looking forward to revealing in the next few months. This expanded functionality will be a second revenue source for us, the first being the cut we get on each transaction processed.

TS: What makes your company different? Remarkable?

RA: These days there is so much innovation happening on the web and there are so many amazing internet startups but I believe we have a unique take on selling services on the internet. The fact that we enable individual housekeepers and smaller service providers to have access to “franchise type” tools for online payments, customer management and scheduling speaks to the unique value proposition that we provide. We enable the small mom-and-pop shop to compete for the customer on a level playing field with the larger cleaning companies. We are different in that we offer a one-stop-shop for house cleaning services and we offer the customer to immediately get competitive bids and then within minutes complete a transaction. We have created a place for consumers to save time and money and transact with confidence while giving the service providers a cost effective solution to run and grow their businesses.

TS: How are you marketing the site right now? What forms of traditional/new PR are you using?

RA: We are self-funded to this point and so our marketing has been focused where we know we can find customers actively searching for what we have to offer. We run Google Adwords, advertise in online classifieds and promote our service offline in the local communities of our featured locations through our City Evangelist program. We have been doing our own PR so far and have a press kit and media resources available on the website. We have used an online press release distribution service and have been lucky that our Philadelphia City Evangelist, Amber Tardiff has a real skill when it comes to PR, having gotten us coverage on the local ABC news affiliate and some great online media.

TS: Have you had any major challenges? How have you overcome them?

RA: Being a bootstrapped internet startup definitely means living on the edge. Fortunately we haven’t experienced any major technical hiccups, but we did have the recent experience that one of our marketing efforts paid off in a big way resulting in a major traffic spike while we were still building our provider base in that location. This experience was the genesis for our BidMyCleaning’s Choice Provider program which allows us to ensure that every person that visits our website can get at least three competitive bids from which to choose and schedule a cleaning if they choose to.

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Thanks again to Raymond Aker, CEO of BidMyCleaning.com for joining TechStartups for this interview.

Do you have any additional questions for BidMyCleaning? Would you use it? What do you think of its service?