We are off in May indefinitely, your not from the Sunshine Coast by any chance? Anyway enjoy Europe!
You can get it down to maybe 5 milliseconds if you have a general “pitch” already written up and you can just stick in a couple of sentences about that specific sit. I include “please have a look at my profile for my other reviews” or something like that.
Also. Can we get rid of the 5 application rule?? Come on, TH. Pretty please.
I can understand people in very desirable locations getting inundated (I remember when Hawaii sits went from 0 to 50 in 24 hours) but seriously, if I was looking for a sitter I’d want more than 5 to choose from 
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@Sladey I am from Brisbane. Sunny Coast would have been perfect had I not already booked OS. Safe travels.
I like to keep mine fairly short but always offer a video call. Everything they need to know is in my profile and history. I just find it personally tedious ploughing through unnecessarily over-long grovelly applications. I’d rather be straight and to the point.
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Yes, same…I would pick your sit to visit California, but the pets are always the priority. I am on this site specifically to travel but to also get my pet fix in as I dont have any pets anymore for many reasons, including wanting to travel.
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I absolutely read ALL of the sitter’s profile information and reviews. You’re not doing yourself a favor if your profile lacks detail explaining why you want to do TH sits or what your experience is regarding pet/housesits. This is far more useful to me than the initial emails that get sent to me in response to our listing. If you do send an email and it’s obvious from what you said in it is a generic cut-and-paste and that you haven’t actually read through the information in our listing, that’s an immediate red flag for me. @bakindoki and I seem to be on the same page regarding our thought process as to what we’re looking for in a sitter, except that I don’t need all that info in the initial email.
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I like a friendly, fairly concise application message that shows the sitter has read at least the basics of my listing. For those that sound like a good fit I dig into their profiles, read all reviews (from both sides when possible), follow all offered links, etc. For my recent listing I had two applicants with no THS experience so I read their LinkedIn and Airbnb details and reviews. I figure it’s respectful due diligence on both sides to read everything offered, then ask relevant questions.
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Personally, I LOVE a good read! Even though writing well is not a prerequisite for sitting for us, a well written, thorough, personalized application definitely endears me to the sitter. You never know what’s going to be THE thing!
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The applicat may be traveling. It is not always convenient to tailor an application to a pet owner’s needs on a travel day.
That would be great. However, we are in a popular European city. No matter what time of day I list a sit we will have 5 applications within an hour but usually already within minutes. Anyone who reads our listing carefully and judges themselves a good fit and wants to reply with quality will miss out completely on the opportunity.
THS almost always guarantees us crappy applicants: fast responders who might have never applied for the sit had they read the listing and and are 90% of the time a bad fit or unsuitable fit the sit. We then have to waste our time and that of 30 or 40 potential sitters repeatedly opening the listing and sending (shorter and shorter) rejection messages. There has to be a better way … For example, If we request concrete dog sitting experience then it should be impossible for those without the required experience to even apply …
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Then don’t do it 
I’m not sure there’s much debate in that a tailored application is more likely to get a favourable response. If you don’t have time, do what you can.
When I feel I’ll be rushed (I.e. there’s one spot left), I send a short pre-emptive message like “hello” to get into the first 5, then I sit down and type out a better response to send directly after.
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I am also in a popular EU city and agree that the apps fill up fast…personally, I find this more favourable than being in a situation where I would have to wait days to get a trickle of apps in.
I post my listing when I know I’ll have time to actually look at the applicants and then I decline the ones that clearly aren’t a fit so that my 5 allowed aren’t just poor matches and I do it quite ruthlessly because a decision needs to be made and I need to prioritise the spots.
I’m not saying I agree with the 5-sit rule, but living in a popular city means the moment you decline and unpause, you will get more applicants and you don’t have to faff about waiting for them.
So again, when I’m on the HS side, I basically just send a hello to get into the HS’ inbox, then take a bit more time to type out a proper response.
If it’s not a fit after reading through properly, one could easily just decline them themselves and say they missed a part upon closer inspection, which would create a bit of noise as an HO but given the way the system is set up, I personally would understand/empathise with HS on that bc at least they read properly and saved me steps while working in the constraints of the current system.
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Something I have contemplated doing because of the 5-app limit (but haven’t) is declining all the sitters to open up a slot, message and archive/label the actual declines, and then message and clarify “I’ve declined your app simply because of the TH 5 app rule , but would LOVE to move forward with a conversation!….etc etc) and then keep those conversations in my inbox.
It’s the only way I’ve thought of this far to allow for more apps in…cheeky, but if everyone started doing it, we’d all eventually learn that the decline would basically turn into a read receipt and you could clarify whether it was a “read receipt” decline or a “decline decline” 
Basically creating an elephant/desire path: TikTok - Make Your Day
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Not cheeky at all @bakindoki. Member’s didn’t ask for this restriction and the majority aren’t in favour of it.
It is what it is and we have to do whatever it takes to make it work for us.
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I just did a similar process but as @bakindoki as a potential sitter.
So I sent intro emails when favorite listing alerts came along.
I have learned that one cannot contact home hosts unless they have live dates even with an email in the inbox.
I believe I will be able to email when dates go live again for these listings but this makes my plan go totally South and was for not but for this insight.
You can send THS messages to previous contacts that are in your inbox. You will just get this warning banner:
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Well @pietkuip the first time I tried to email, I was blocked since there were no live dates.
I just sent emails and did not get your dialog box but my emails seemed to go through this time.
Tx for the follow up!
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I also keep my application short and offer a video call, especially when I think another applicant will swoop in and snag the last spot. My profile and reviews should speak for themselves.
However I do see the appeal of a sitter that takes the time to give a well-thought out message. I shall try the second message approach!
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We are in a small town that no one has ever heard of and few people visit. We are over an hour away from Seattle. So we are lucky if we get one or two responses to our dates. One of the things I look for in the application message is an awareness of where we are- and some reason why the sitter would come here. I don’t want to find out during the video call that the sitter thought it was commuting distance from Seattle and they have friends there… um, not really……
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When I tried doing this, and explained what I was doing, I literally had the same people reapply as soon as things opened!
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