How to Build a Cleaning Marketplace in 2026 (Without Hiring Cleaners)

Why a marketplace instead of a cleaning company (0:00)

If you wanted to start a cleaning company the old way, you would have to hire cleaners, buy vans, carry the insurance and run the schedule. The marketplace way is different: you build a platform, independent cleaners list on it, customers book them, and you take a cut of every job.

I'm going to build that in this video, and not just a mockup. Cleaners sign up and get vetted. Customers request a time, the cleaner accepts, then the customer pays, and if plans change they can ask to move it. Real money, your commission, no code. And nobody gets charged for a job the cleaner hasn't said yes to. Let's do it.

Big market, small start: 5-10 cleaners is enough (0:33)

A quick why before we build. Home cleaning is a huge market. In the US alone it's tens of billions of dollars a year, and pretty much every household buys it at some point.

Here's the part people miss: a cleaning marketplace doesn't need tens of thousands of sellers to work. It's local. Five or ten cleaners in one town is enough to make the marketplace work in that town, and you might already know some of them. So you don't need to solve the chicken-and-egg problem. You need a handful of cleaners you trust, and one town to start in.

And if you already run a cleaning business with a few cleaners working for you, this also fixes the money side. Each cleaner connects their own Stripe account, the customer pays through the marketplace, and Stripe Connect takes your cut and pays the cleaners automatically. You don't have to do any of that by hand. Big market, easy to start. Let's get to it.

Create the marketplace (1:25)

We're on Prometora, and we'll start building our cleaning marketplace. I can pick a template or go the custom-with-AI route. In this case I'll pick a template: this is a service marketplace, so I pick that one and click Next. I'll call it SpotlessLocal, and for the description I'll write "Book trusted independent home cleaners in Austin. Regular cleans, deep cleans and move-out cleans." Let's generate the first version.

The first version is here, and it looks pretty good. Let's see the live version. For a first version made in five seconds, that's pretty nice. This is the About page, and that already looks good too. I'm not going to change anything on the front end right now, because that's easy to change later. Instead we'll set up the whole back-office flow.

I click Store Settings, which takes us to the back office. This is where you set up payments, the signup form, the listing types you want, and so on.

Adding Stripe Connect keys (2:43)

We start with payments. I'll add my Stripe keys, and to begin with I'm using the test keys from Stripe Connect. Here I'm in a sandbox on Stripe, with my publishable key and my secret key. I copy them, paste them into the Prometora back office, and click Save.

Adjusting the different listing types (3:03)

Now the listing form. The initial AI setup made four listing types for us: Regular cleaning, Deep cleaning, Move-out cleaning and Specialized services. That's pretty cool. Each one can have custom fields. This one doesn't have any yet, and neither does Regular cleaning, so let's add a few.

I've made some changes now. Let's go through them. In the live preview you can see I changed not only Regular cleaning but the other listing types too. There are now price options, and custom fields: "What's included", and "Supplies and equipment", which is mandatory. It's a select field with options like "I bring all supplies". There's "Eco-friendly products available" as a checkbox. And of course the calendar: when the cleaner makes a listing, they have to add their availability.

The other types got similar custom fields. Move-out cleaning has "Empty homes only". The calendar is always there. Specialized services has a "Service" field, where you pick from options like carpet cleaning and window cleaning.

Setting the booking logic (5:12)

A couple of other things to set up before we create the first listings. In Payments we didn't set the commission rate. Let's set it to 20%, so you as the marketplace owner earn 20% on every transaction. But in the listing form, for Regular cleaning, we set it to only 15%, and on Specialized services it's 25%, because those are more complicated.

On the Booking tab: we enable bookings. We do not auto-approve bookings, meaning that when a request comes in, a cleaner first has to accept it, and both sides can reschedule. For the time zone I pick America/Chicago, which is Austin's. Then "Customer reschedule requests": I toggle it on, so customers can request a new time, but they have to do it at least 48 hours before. And I toggle on "Pay out after the session", meaning the money stays in the Stripe balance and the cleaner receives it three days after the cleaning.

Adjusting the signup form (6:02)

Now the signup form. Right now you can sign up as a homeowner or as a cleaner. For cleaners, let's ask a few things at signup. I've added fields we now ask cleaners about when they sign up: are you an individual cleaner or a cleaning business, how many years of experience do you have, and so on. That's normal to ask on this type of marketplace, and then we have all that information.

Under Sellers and Buyers, which is where you see all your sellers and buyers (right now only demo ones), we can require seller account approval. I'm toggling that on. And we're also going to require listing approval. So every time a cleaner signs up, we approve them, and the same for listings, because there won't be that many different listings on this type of marketplace. We also won't allow links in listings: if you add a link, you can't publish that listing. We want to keep all transactions inside our marketplace, so a cleaner can't point customers to some other booking site. All transactions happen here, so that we as the marketplace owner earn our commission.

By the way, on the signup form we could also have made this a private-catalog marketplace, where you can't see the listings without signing in first. For this marketplace I won't do that: the homeowners, the buyer side, should be able to browse listings without signing up first. Homeowners only have to add their first name, last name and email. When they make a booking, though, they enter their location: you can see that on the listing form if I scroll down.

The All Listings page looks like this, with the different listing types up top. Right now there are only demo listings. Down here you can toggle on whatever you'd like to filter on later, but let's leave it for now. Same with the product detail page: we'll leave it and adjust it once we've made a couple of listings.

Signing up as a seller (9:10)

Now I'll go to the marketplace and sign up as a cleaner. Afterwards I'll show you the import-data feature, to import three or four of that cleaner's listings, because maybe you're moving a cleaner from another system to this one. It's a very easy way for you as the marketplace owner to help a cleaner move their existing listings over.

I go to the marketplace, click Sign up, and sign up as a cleaner with all my information. I then get an email: "Application received". Remember, we toggled on that the marketplace owner has to accept and verify every cleaner. You as the owner also get an email: "New seller application". Let's review it.

Showing the seller approval logic (9:32)

Before that, from the new cleaner's perspective: if I click the magic link and sign in, I land on a page that says "Application pending". I can't do anything in the seller dashboard until I'm approved. So let's approve him. Back in the back office, under Sellers and Buyers, there's one awaiting approval. I can see all his details by clicking the eye icon and go through his application. If something was missing, I could email him, or reject him. Here I'll just approve him. And if I go back and refresh, I'm now logged in as a cleaner in the seller dashboard.

If you're still watching, then I know you're interested in building a cleaning marketplace, and why wouldn't you? You can copy everything I do in this video very easily and get going with your own cleaning marketplace. There's a 14-day free trial when you sign up on Prometora, so please test it out: click "Ready-made marketplaces", pick the Home Cleaning template, and you have everything I build in this video. Now, back to the video.

Importing 4 listings (11:26)

Before we create a listing manually, let's use the import feature to make the first four. I go to Import Data and drag and drop a CSV I already made. If you want to know what the CSV should look like, download the sample here: it's based on your own listing types, so you know exactly what to put in. If I open that file you can see what it looks like. I already made a CSV, so I drop it in, and it shows me the four listings. I assign them to a cleaner, the new "Cleaner 1", publish them all immediately, and click Import.

A couple of seconds later the four listings are created. In the listings overview I can see all four, assigned to the same seller, "Austin Cleaner". Let's look at one of them: there's the listing, and I can book it right here. That worked. Now let's make a listing manually.

Creating one listing manually (13:29)

I'm back in the seller dashboard. One thing I changed: in Settings I updated the profile so it looks like a real cleaner's. I changed the first and last name to Camila, and added a profile picture and a banner, because later, on the seller profile, you can see all her listings. So sellers can build a profile that shows everything they offer.

Now let's create a listing: Create listing, Regular cleaning, and I add all the information. I picked the Regular cleaning listing type, added a title, a description, and a price of $120. But there are price options: studio or one-bed, two-bed, three-plus beds. And there are add-ons on top of that, each with its own price. I toggled on what's included so the buyer can easily see it. I added one image; ten would have been better. I added the location, which is Austin. And I added the availability: Camila can only work Saturdays and Sundays, from 1 to 5, with half an hour in between. Then publish immediately, and create the listing.

Now it says pending approval, because we toggled on that we as the marketplace owner want to approve all listings. So let's approve it: in Listings I can see one pending, I can view it and go through all the information, and I approve it. That's how you create a listing manually.

Camila now has five listings: the one we just made and the four we imported. I can also reorder them, depending on how I want them shown on her seller profile page. And up here you can see the different listing types they belong to. Right now she has two regular cleaning listings, but that's fine for now.

Connecting the seller to Stripe Connect (15:32)

One thing you probably noticed on the dashboard: "Connect Stripe now". For the cleaner to eventually receive their money, they have to create a Stripe account, a Stripe Connect account. When I click it, it asks for my country and then some information about me, like my address and name, and it verifies my identity. The seller can actually make sales and take bookings before doing this, but eventually, to get her money, she has to go through it. So let's do it now.

I click Connect, pick USA, and click Connect. It asks for date of birth, home address, phone number, the last four digits of the social security number. I'll add something now; we're in a test environment. Once you've done your testing you switch to the production keys from Stripe, and then it's a real environment. Everything is added, I'm verified, and I agree and submit.

Now I have a Stripe Connect account connected to my profile. As the marketplace owner, under Sellers and Buyers, Camila Souza's status says "Stripe connected (test)", because we used the test keys. With production keys it would just say "Stripe connected". So she can now receive money to her account.

By the way, we could also have made a sandbox environment at the very beginning, set everything up there, and used this instance as the production environment. I'll link to a video above on how to set up a sandbox environment on Prometora.

Back on her seller dashboard there's now a Finance tab, where she can follow her finances: transactions, payouts and so on.

Signing up as a buyer and making a booking (18:36)

What we're missing now is to sign up as a buyer, make a booking, and see the whole flow. I'm on the signup page, signing up as a homeowner. Now I'm in my buyer dashboard. Let's browse the listings and make a booking.

I go to the All Listings page and book the one we made manually. By the way, if I click Camila's profile, I can see all her listings, her information and her images. This is the one I want. Let's pick three-bed, and add inside oven, inside fridge, and the windows. She's available on the 10th of October, so let's book her then, from 2:30. And we'd also like to book her on the 25th of October from 4:00. Altogether that's $590. I request both. I have to add my address so she knows where the cleaning takes place, add a few details, and request the two services.

Now I see both in my buyer dashboard: the 10th of October and the 25th of October, with all the details, pending approval. I receive two emails as the buyer, and the cleaner receives two "New booking request" emails.

Rescheduling a booking (21:04)

Let's log in as the seller. In the seller dashboard I have two new booking requests. I can see what I'll earn, and I can approve, decline or reschedule. I approve the first one; I could write a note, but I'll just confirm it. The other one I'd like to reschedule, to one of the other time slots, let's say the 14th of November. I pick that slot and move it. The buyer will have to accept that first.

Both are now confirmed. They're both test bookings, and one was rescheduled: the original was the 25th of October, now moved to the 14th of November.

From the buyer side, I can now pay both. The first is October 10th. The other was moved from October 25th to November 14th. Let's say the buyer can't do November 14th, so I request a new time: November 28th instead, with a message asking if that works, and send the request.

Payment walkthrough (22:22)

At the same time, let's pay for the first one. We're sent to Stripe, and because this is a test environment I use the test card, 4242 all the way, and a future date. I pay. That went through: I can download my receipt and add it to my calendar. That one is confirmed.

Email-wise: the seller received a new time request for November 28th, and a "Payment received" email showing how much she'll earn and the service address, which is important so she knows where to clean. The buyer received the receipt and the payment confirmation, and they can message each other if something comes up.

Seller can message and manage bookings (23:42)

When I log in as the seller, I have a new message and a new booking request to manage, which is the buyer's reschedule. The message is the buyer saying they completed their payment; I can reply, "That's great, looking forward to it", and communicate with the buyer that way. In Manage bookings I can see the confirmed, upcoming one, and in the calendar view I can see when I have to do it: October 10th, at this service address, and how much I'll earn.

There's also one action item: the reschedule from the buyer. Let's say November 28th is fine with me, so I approve it. Now the customer can pay for that one too.

Seller only paid after the session (24:56)

For the paid booking, up here you can see everything about it, and that the payout is held until after the session: the cleaner gets her money three days after the cleaning, as we set it up. There are also quick updates I can send, like "On my way" or "Done in 15 minutes", which sends a message to the customer. On mobile it looks like this: she just taps "Done in 15 minutes" and it goes to the customer. Back on desktop, in Messages, you can see those messages, and all the emails go out too: "On my way", "Done in 15 minutes", and so on.

Showing the payment in the Stripe sandbox (25:57)

Inside Stripe Connect, in the sandbox we set up at the beginning, the transaction we just made is there: a charge, $295, the correct amount.

Setting up the Stripe webhook (26:14)

One thing we forgot when we set up payments is the webhook, a listener so we know when sellers connect to Stripe Connect and so on. That's easy: click "Fix the webhook", then the button, and it creates the webhook on our Stripe account. Now we're fully set up on the Stripe side.

On the Bookings tab I can follow every booking on the marketplace. This one is confirmed, paid, and the payout is held; it's a test payment. As the marketplace owner I can release the payout, cancel the booking or issue a refund from here.

Calculating how much you can earn, and copying the cleaning template (27:08)

I also want to show the marketplace revenue calculator, which you find in the documentation by searching for "calculator". It's a good way to project what you can earn. I've added our 20% commission, an average order value of $300, 80 bookings a month, and the Business plan on Prometora. To break even we need five bookings, and we'd make around $4,000 a month as the marketplace owner. At 25% commission it's $5,500. I'll link to it in the description.

If you'd like to copy what I made, maybe you already have a cleaning business or want to start a cleaning marketplace: when you create your marketplace, I've added the one I built under "Ready-made marketplaces". Pick it, and you have all the settings I set up here. You'll still have to change some of the text to make it yours, but it doesn't take long to set up your cleaning marketplace and get going. There's a 14-day free trial, so there's nothing to lose.

Outro (28:41)

That's it. I hope you liked it. If you're considering building a cleaning marketplace, test out Prometora, there's a 14-day free trial. If you liked this video, give it a like, maybe subscribe, and I hope to see you in the next one. Thanks for watching.

Zero cleaners, now what? (0:00)

So you built your cleaning marketplace. Now, how do you find your first five to ten cleaners? How do you onboard them, or help them onboard? And how do you find your first ten customers? I'll take you through all of that in this video. Let's do it.

One town, 5-10 cleaners (0:14)

The mistake is thinking you need a thousand sellers. That's true for an eBay kind of marketplace, but it's not true for a cleaning marketplace. A customer only cares about cleaners who can get to their house, so your marketplace is really a local one. One town and a few zip codes.

Five to ten cleaners in that area is enough. When a customer lands on the marketplace and finds a cleaner close to them who's available, maybe with a rating, that's a working cleaning marketplace.

So pick one area, the one you know best, and don't open a second town until the first one gets bookings every week. The listings already sort by distance, so a customer three miles away sees the closest cleaners first.

Where cleaners come from, and the pitch (0:57)

So how do you get your first ten cleaners onto your marketplace? It depends a bit on your situation, but let's go through it.

It could be people you already know. Maybe you have a cleaner, and you can just ask that person. Or your parents' cleaner, or your friend's cleaner. Trust is the product.

Then it could be independent cleaners who already have clients. You can ask in Facebook groups and on Nextdoor, or hand out flyers at the supermarket. Usually they want more jobs, not a job.

And if you already have a cleaning business, there's more about that in the next video.

So what's the pitch? How do you get these cleaners over to your marketplace?

You tell them they keep their own prices. It's up to the cleaners to set their prices, so if one cleaner wants to charge $200 an hour, that's totally fine.

You also tell them that you, as the marketplace owner, are the one bringing them customers. So of course you'll have to do that. You'll have to find the buyers for the cleaners who list on your marketplace.

And you tell them they get paid automatically through Stripe Connect, which is really cool. There's no delay in the payment. For instance, two to three days after a cleaning job, depending on your settings in the back office, they get paid. It's all set up for them.

And you tell them you're starting with ten cleaners, so it's an exclusive group. It's a spot, not a sign-up form.

Set up a cleaner for them (Managed Sellers) (2:27)

Once they've agreed to join your marketplace, there are two ways to onboard them, and it depends a bit on how tech-savvy they are. Either you send them to your sign-up form, which could look something like this, and they go through whatever you added to it themselves.

But you can also do it in the back office. Under Managed Sellers, you can onboard them on their behalf. You click Add Seller and go through all the information. Maybe you have them on the phone and do it together that way.

You add first name, last name, email and country. The email and country are the most important, because they're needed later to set up their Stripe Connect account. Everything else you just do together with them. For instance, for the seller fields we added down here, you just ask them. How many years of experience do you have? Do you bring your own supplies and equipment? And so on. I'm going to go ahead and do it, so you can see what it looks like.

Good. I've now added her details while I had her on the phone. First name, last name, then email. Right now I just added a Prometora one, but of course you'd add the correct one. Then the profile URL and phone number. Maybe she also sent her profile photo, and maybe a banner image. Then you add a tagline, depending on what she said. You can also add a bio, and you add her location.

Then maybe you also have some internal notes. I wrote something like "Referred by my own cleaner, phone call 25th of September."

And then you go through all these seller fields with her. She's an individual cleaner. She has lots of experience, so 6 to 10 years. How far will she travel for a job? Let's say 5 miles. Does she bring her own supplies? Yes. Does she have her own transportation? Yes. She speaks English and Spanish. She did her last background check within the last 12 months, and she's also willing to do a new one. And she has liability insurance. Anything else? She's comfortable with dogs and cats.

These seller fields are ones I made myself, so for your marketplace you can ask whatever you want. Now that we have all her information, we create her as a seller.

Great. Now you can see that she's pending, but we're the marketplace owner, so let's go and approve her. I go to Sellers & Buyers, and I can see all the information we just added, and we can edit it here. But I'm going to approve her straight away, because we know she's good to go.

Now you can see payouts aren't set up, because she hasn't onboarded on Stripe yet. So if I go back to Managed Sellers, I can click Connect Stripe over here. Then I can click here to send her this email, or I can just copy this link. If I copy the link and send it to her, then when she clicks on it, it takes her straight to the onboarding on Stripe.

I can show you right now what it looks like. If I open a new tab and paste it in, you can see she's taken to the onboarding. Right now we're in a test account, but that's just because we're using our Stripe test keys. This means she doesn't need to go and create a profile on your marketplace herself. You can do it on her behalf.

Now let's also create a listing on her behalf. I click Create Listing, and you can see I'm creating a listing on behalf of Ana Morales. I'm going to fill in a regular cleaning.

Okay, I've added her information for the listing. A title, a description, and a URL, which is made automatically from the title. Her price is $120. We asked her about that on the call, of course. What's included? Everything here. She's also comfortable with pets. We add an image if there's one, her location, and then her availability. She's available all of October from 9:00 AM to around 6:00 PM. And then we publish it immediately.

Great. Now if I go to Listings, then Published, you can see she has one listing on the marketplace. That's how easy it is to onboard your cleaners, and also to make listings on their behalf.

The Stripe onboarding link (7:11)

Now the only thing Ana has to do is click the link in the email we sent her. It takes her to Stripe, she adds her details there, and that's it. Then she's set up to receive money every time she's done a job through the marketplace.

So let's actually go through the onboarding. I go back to Managed Sellers, click Connect Stripe again, and send her the onboarding link. Now you can see it's been sent to her email address. I'll go to the inbox and check it.

Okay, I'm in Ana's inbox, and I can see she received this email. Let's click Complete payment setup. Good, that takes me to Stripe. Let's onboard her. Because I'm in a test environment again, I'm just going to add test information here.

Good. Now you can see everything is verified, so we did everything correctly, and now we just agree and submit. Perfect. Now it says payment setup complete. Awesome. And she also receives this email. "Welcome aboard, Ana. Everything is set up." So she can now receive payments to her Stripe Connect account.

And if I go back to our marketplace and click Sellers & Buyers, you can see she's now Stripe connected, marked as test, because we're using test keys again. That's how easy it is for you, as the marketplace owner, to see which of your sellers are connected to Stripe.

Your first customers (8:20)

Good. So how do you find the first customers for your marketplace? Let's say you've onboarded ten cleaners. Now it's all about finding business for them, finding buyers. Local and boring beats clever.

First, your own network. Everybody needs a cleaner at some point. Maybe they're moving, or maybe they just like having a cleaner once a week or once a month. So you ask your friends, your neighbours, the school group chats. That's how you find your first ten buyers and your first ten bookings.

Then Google Business Profile. You update that, so that when someone searches "cleaning near me", hopefully you come up. It's free. And then there are your reviews, which you need to ask for every time a booking finishes. Every time a booking goes through successfully, ask the customer to review the cleaner, so the cleaners' reviews slowly pile up. They'll then also show here in Google.

Then there are neighbourhood groups, Nextdoor, local Facebook groups and so on. Post in all of them, but only once. Don't use AI here, and post as a real person. Use your own profile picture, tell them why you made this marketplace, tell them a bit about yourself, and why this marketplace is so good for finding a local cleaner in town.

Then, if you have repeat business customers, you have to keep them happy all the time, because they can easily keep two cleaners busy on your marketplace the whole week. If you know some property managers or Airbnb hosts, once you get one of them, some of your cleaners might suddenly be busy quite quickly. A business customer has completely different requirements from a normal household.

And the way you do it, of course, is you send them to your storefront. You make it easy for them to pick a cleaner, pick a time, make a request, the cleaner accepts, and the customer pays. That whole flow is already set up. The first time your customers go through it, it takes a bit longer than the second, the third or the tenth time. But you make it as simple as possible for your buyers to book a cleaner quickly.

So of course you enable location, so they just add their location and can see which cleaners are close by. You also add filters, like availability, day of the week, price range, and maybe a filter on the cleaners.

Let's say a customer picks Ana here, the cleaner we just set up. They pick a time slot, maybe the 15th of October, 2:00 to 2:45, and then they request and go through the whole process. They can also book multiple times, so in one request they add two different dates.

You also make sure everything looks good on mobile. Here on mobile it still looks great. All of that is taken care of by using Prometora as the marketplace platform, by the way.

Getting reviews (11:21)

And again on reviews, they're important for building trust, especially for first-time buyers. You set them up here under Reviews. Maybe you set it to 7 days or 3 days after a purchase. Then customers are sent an email where they can easily write a review. You can also see the pending reviews here, so this one is pending. And down here you can follow which listings and which sellers have the most reviews, and their average ratings. Right now there are no reviews on this marketplace, but it's important to set this up, because once you have more reviews it's easier to get more customers.

Recap (12:02)

That's it, guys. I hope this showed how easy it is to get going. A cleaning marketplace only needs, let's say, five to ten cleaners to get going. You find them first, and then you start finding customers for those cleaners. And the video also showed that you can onboard them and make listings on their behalf. So it's a relatively easy marketplace type to get going.

If you liked the video, please give it a like and maybe subscribe. If you're interested in building a marketplace, check out Prometora. There's a 14-day free trial. Thank you so much, and I hope to see you in the next one. Bye-bye.

What you actually make (0:00)

How much can you and your cleaners make on your cleaning marketplace? In this video, I'll take you through all the details. We'll split up a payment so you can see how much you earn, how much your cleaners earn, and how much Stripe takes. I'll also go through refunds and cancellations, and we'll talk about how you can transition to a cleaning marketplace if you already have a cleaning business. Let's do it.

One $120 booking split up (0:24)

Let's break it down, first from the cleaner's side, so from Maria's side, and afterwards from the marketplace owner's side, so your side.

A customer pays $120 for, let's say, a regular cleaning. Your commission as the marketplace owner, let's say you set it at 15%, so you earn $18 on this transaction. The cleaner's share, Maria's share, is then $102. If this is a US-based marketplace, the Stripe fee is 2.9% plus 30 cents, so that's around $3 to $4. So Maria receives $98. By the way, in Europe the Stripe fee is a little bit lower.

What you as the marketplace owner can make after some months (1:05)

Now let's go through it from your side, the marketplace owner's side. If you haven't seen the last two videos, I'll link to them up here. On a cleaning marketplace it's really easy to get going relatively fast, because you only need five to ten cleaners. So have a look at the last two videos in this series.

Let's say in the first month you manage to get three cleaners, with three bookings each per week. That's 39 cleans. Your commission, the 15%, is then around $700, and after a Prometora Pro plan you'll have around $500.

A few months in, let's say you've managed to get ten cleaners, which is not that many to be honest, and each of them gets five bookings per week. That's 217 cleans. Now your commission is around $4,000, and after a Prometora Pro plan that's around $3,300.

And let's say you're three, four, five months in. You still have just your ten cleaners, but now you've managed to get them eight bookings per week. That's 346 cleans. Now you're earning $6,200 in commission per month, and after a Prometora Business plan that's around $5,500. That's a pretty good salary already, I would say.

And notice what's not on the list. No vans, no wages, no supplies, and no insurance for a team. That's the point of the marketplace model. By the way, if you want to play around with the numbers, I'll link to the revenue calculator in the description below.

The 3 different ways of setting your commission (2:40)

So where in Prometora, in the back office, do you set your commission? Let me show you, because there are actually three different places you can set it, depending on how you want to set up your marketplace.

If you go to Payments and scroll down, this is your overall commission rate. Right now you can see I've set it to 15%, but for a service marketplace it's very normal to have it from 15% up to 20%, maybe even up to 25%. So this is at the lower end for a service marketplace. But let's keep it at 15%. That's the overall rate for the marketplace.

If I then go to the listing form, you can see we have four different listing types: regular cleaning, deep cleaning, move-out cleaning, and specialized services. I can set the commission per listing type as well. For regular cleaning, you can see I have it set to 15% as well. But for deep cleaning, let's say I want to set it at 20%. And for specialized services, because that's more complicated and it's harder to find buyers, maybe I set it at 25%. So you can set it per listing type as well.

And the last way you can set it is under Manage Sellers. There are only two sellers on this marketplace right now, because it's a test marketplace, but here you would see your cleaners. If I wanted to give Ana Morales a lower or a higher commission rate, let's do higher: the overall rate for the marketplace is 15%, but maybe because she's new or doesn't have that much experience, her commission is 18%. So we set hers to 18%. Those are the different ways you can set the commission on your marketplace.

Refunds, partial refunds and cancellations (4:32)

And what about cancellations and refunds? Unfortunately that happens sometimes, there's nothing to do about it, but all the mechanisms are there on your marketplace to take care of it easily.

I'm here on the Bookings tab. Again, this is the test marketplace, and there are two bookings: one that is awaiting payment and one that is already paid. For the one that's already paid, you can cancel the booking, issue a refund, or, as the marketplace owner, release the payout. As you can see, the payout is held until after the session, which is on October 13th. That's in the future right now, so that's why the payout isn't released yet.

If something happens, then of course you as the marketplace owner, the cleaner, and even the customer who booked can cancel the booking. They can also reschedule, as I showed in one of the latest videos.

But let's say something went wrong and we have to issue a refund. I can click here and issue a full refund, add a reason, and emails will then be sent to both of them. But I can also refund just 20%, because something went wrong. Maybe the cleaner broke a mirror in the apartment, so we give a 20% refund.

Up here is a booking that's awaiting payment, so the customer still hasn't paid. You can also go ahead and cancel that one here, but usually it would be the cleaner who cancels it on their seller dashboard.

The technicalities of a refund and a partial refund (6:13)

Now let's go through the technicalities of a full refund, a late-cancel refund, and a refund after a cleaner has been paid.

Let's start with a full refund of $120. The customer gets $120 back. Your $18 commission, the 15%, also goes back. Maria the cleaner's $98 goes back. But Stripe keeps its $3.78, and that's paid by you as the marketplace owner.

Then a late cancel. Let's say there's a refund of $80. The customer gets $80 back. You keep $6 in commission. Maria keeps $32.74. And Stripe keeps its $3.78, $2.52 of it from you.

And for a refund after Maria, the cleaner, has been paid, her share is pulled from her Stripe balance. And if that goes negative, it comes out of her next bookings. That's how it works.

When the cleaner gets paid - you set it (7:11)

When exactly a cleaner gets paid is also up to you as the marketplace owner. On the Bookings tab, if you scroll down, you can see Payout after completion. You can set it to release automatically after 3 days, so 3 days after the session ends, after the cleaning is done, the cleaner gets their money. But you can also set it to 1 day or 7 days. That's up to you.

Up here you can also set when customers can request a reschedule. I've set it to 48 hours, so the deadline is 48 hours before the cleaning. They can reschedule up until then, but not afterwards. These are things you decide for how you want to set up your marketplace.

Also, here under Sellers and Buyers is where you can see whether your cleaners are Stripe connected, meaning they've set up their Stripe account. You can see that both Ana and Camila are Stripe connected on a test account, but that's just because we used test keys to begin with. We'd switch them over once everything is set up on the marketplace.

If you already run a cleaning business (8:25)

If you have an existing cleaning business today, it probably looks like this. Customers pay you. At the end of the week you work out which of your cleaners cleaned which house. Then you work out what each cleaner is owed, and you send them bank transfers by hand. And every mistake is an awkward conversation.

On a marketplace setup, which is everything I've gone through in this video and the last two videos, this is how it works. Customers pay, and the booking splits itself. You get your cut, and the cleaners get their share in their Stripe accounts. Your independent cleaners also get all their tax information from Stripe, the 1099-K per IRS thresholds. All of that is handled by Stripe.

It's important to say that the marketplace setup is for independent cleaners only. They're not employees, they're independent cleaners, so there's no payroll. If you already have employees, you'll have to figure that out, maybe with an accountant, because in this setup it's independent cleaners only. You have no employees and you're not paying out wages.

Wrap-up (9:39)

And that's it for this video and for this cleaning marketplace series. If you've only watched this video, I really encourage you to watch the other two as well. If you made it this far, you're probably interested in them too.

Starting a cleaning marketplace business is one of the easiest ways into marketplaces, because you only need around five to ten cleaners to get going in one town. So if you found this interesting and you have some experience in the field, I really encourage you to go ahead and start your cleaning business now. You can probably earn quite a lot of money within three to six months. Of course it will still be a lot of work, at least in the beginning, but that's how it is with any business.

If you'd like to test out Prometora, there's a 14-day free trial. You can pick the cleaning marketplace template if you want to go with that one, or you can start from a clean sheet if you'd prefer.

If you have any questions, just reach out to me. There's a link below where you can schedule a call with me. As always, I hope you liked the video. If you found it interesting, please like and subscribe. I really appreciate you watching these videos. Thank you so much, and I hope to see you in the next one. Bye-bye.