[yardguy]

Yes there is money to be made. the hardest part will be getting it set up, purchasing good reliable equipment.
Dont compete with the local lowballers, and let your work do your advertising for you. Word of mouth will (eventually) get you where you want to be. Concentrate on past and future clients first and as their neighbors and others see your work, you'll hopefully get great customers.
Efficiency is CRUCIAL!! Routing also!!
But once its up and going, with a decent foreman it should not take a whole lot of your attention, because its routine maintenance.

[Mac]

I tend to believe there is great money to be made in maintenance, especially if you structure it with perpetual contracts and live in a densely populated area, as I do and have done.

It is also a good idea to partner with a lawn chem-care company. They have gobs of residential clients and dont do landscape management. I found a very large local company that did nothing with their leads but turn them to the local paper. Now they send them to me. In return, they get all my chem-care work from other clients they didnt already have. It equates to significant growth with advertising costs of nearly zero.