When you first create a listing to find a pet sitter, it’s easy to focus on the essentials… dates, location, and a few photos. Over time, as you learn what works and what doesn’t work, you’ll go back and tweak your listing - perhaps even using the Forum for some feedback and advice!
We’d love you to share what worked (and what didn’t!) in the replies. Your experience could help other members create more effective listings!
Some examples:
Did you update your headline or the way you introduce your home and pets?
Did certain types of photos lead to better applications?
Is there anything you wish you’d included from the beginning?
What I include now that I wish I had from the start:
Any deal-breakers: No smoking, no overnight guests, no non-drivers (public transit here doesn’t allow pets and I need a sitter to get them into a vet in an emergency, and we provide the car), no one who can’t manage a large 70 lb dog or walk her for an hour each day, no one overly sensitive to dog hair and no one who doesn’t want to wake up early (6 am), no families, no one bringing their pets, and no one who is unwilling to give quick daily updates.
It wastes a lot of time for everyone if sitters apply and then ask during the video chat if family/friend can join them or they don’t like getting up early. I don’t need 50 or even 5 applicants, fewer well matched ones are the best.
I haven’t changed the photos much, just updated the photo for the guest bath when we had it redone. I have photos of exterior and the key interior spaces. I did reduce the pet photos to just a few nicer ones.
I keep thinking of changing the headline but haven’t thought of a good one yet. Maybe I’ll play around with it in AI and see if can make some suggestions!
I have played with the photos, wording and title. But I have also found some changes and new features annoying. This is more true for my sitter profile than my hosting profile, but here are the issues with changes in the homeowners profile:
– Long before THS introduced the sit start and end dates, I would add an opening explaining the range and giving options for a warm, remote, or advanced handover.
– Because the THS mapping options gave me two choices for where the dot could go and one was 6 miles away and the other was in the middle of a lake about 2.5 miles away, I added a photo of a more accurate neighborhood range and also more explaination of landmarks near me so no one is confused.
– There was some weird ghost content in the app which didn’t exist in the web version, so I finally fixed it by deleting sections in both the app and web and starting over.
– Captioning of photos and being able to see the captions has never worked on my phone or the website. So I don’t use captions. Maybe other people can see my captions, but since I can’t see them, I don’t use them.
– AlthoughTHS recently added the medication yes/no thing, there is still no narrative in the “Meet the Pets” section. So I have added my own subsections using capitalization since I can’t use bold and now have a “PET RESPONSIBILITIES” and “NON-PET RESPONSIBILITIES” section in the listing.
