Hello! I’m new to THS and looking to embark upon my pet/house sitting journey.
I live in London currently and have essentially* been pet sitting for my friends cats for the last four years whilst they lived abroad (they didn’t feel their Milan flat was suitable for their outdoor cats). I have loved this set up, but they are now moving back to London (I’m heartbroken). Whilst trying to work out my next steps I came across THS and thought this might be a perfect stop gap and also allow me to save some cash so i can buy a place of my own and get my own cat or dog!
I’ve taken the plunge paid for membership, set up a profile, and plan to start house sitting in January (or perhaps December) and i’ll be looking todo back to back sits, preferably in London due to work however there’s definitely potential for me to sit in other major cities in the UK.
My questions are:
do you think i’ll be able to achieve back to back sitting in (mostly) London.
Is there anything on my profile that you think would put people off accepting my applications to sit? (There’s a link to my THS profile in my profile on here).
Thank you so much!
*I say ‘essentially’ because whilst i’ve been paying rent i am looking after someone else’s cats.
Hello @Hannahkaty
Welcome to THS.
I’ve had a look at your profile and think you’ve uploaded some lovely pictures. You sound like just the kind of person home owners would like also.
I don’t see any references attached so I would urge you to ask your friends and family, whose pets you’ve been looking after, to give you references. You can send them a link through your dashboard/profile.
As for getting back to back sits in London, it’s doubtful especially as London is obviously a very desireable location for sitting. What stopgap would you have in between sits? As you work full time you’d be best advised to find a base & Housesit from there rather than rely on going from one sit to another in London commutable to your workplace. Also, the pets must be your priority so you’d unlikely be able to leave a dog while your go out to work, unless you’re able to work from home as quite a lot of sitters do.
Profile looks good @Hannahkaty - welcome to the world of THS! Definitely add some references as @Smiley says, we collected loads (9) when we started and that worked well for us (now have 41 reviews). Very unlikely to get back to back sits in London, they go so fast and there are only 5 slots per listing. If you can open up to all the commutable counties that will help and also cat sit only as most people won’t want a sitter that goes to work every day as they love THS for the company it offers and walks for dogs of course. Can you work from home some of the time as that would help win sits and make HOs feel happier? We wish you well. #giveitawhirl
@Hannahkaty Your availability calendar currently shows you as unavailable, which is the default and displays as white. If you search the forum for ‘calendar’ you will find that most sitters do not use the calendar as it is poorly designed (and that’s an understatement). However, many owners don’t realize this as they have no reason to set up a calendar on their profiles. Once you do get confirmed sits, they will show with a black line through the dates.
I suggest you either set up your calendar as showing being available (it will show in green), or add a statement to your profile that you do not use the built-in calendar but are available unless shown otherwise.
Welcome @Hannahkaty
Fellow London based (when there!) sitter. I started on THS just over 2 years ago applying for local sits in and around London. It took me 23 applications to get my first ‘London’ sit. It was a house between Chesham and Amersham that had no public transport. So I think your chances of getting back to back sits in one of the most popular locations to sit are very slim I’m afraid.
BTW I see you work for one of my favourite charities! Are you volunteering for the night hike?? I’ll be volunteering again.
Hello! Oh how funny, what a small world and so nice to hear we’re one of your favourite charities! No sadly I’m not volunteering at Night Hike this year as already have plans but I hope you have a wonderful time volunteering - it’s such a great event!
Interesting insight on your first sit - thank you. I’m definitely willing to sit outside of central London (and other cities, commuter towns) but I’m a non driver so definitely need transport options ideally or to be walkable.
Many members have been asking for it’s return for over a year. It falls on deaf ears. Without the key/legend the calendar is meaningless. I guess they are too busy inventing more ‘improvements’ to worry about the basics.
Can you do back to back sitting? YES, WE DO!!! We sit in remote areas, the North East of England, so with you being in a built up area you have an even greater chance, ie higher population therefore higher amount of people that need sitters, so I can’t see how you can’t achieve it, if we do it with a low population of people. The most we have is 1 or 2 days in between sits, but sometimes we leave one at 9am and start another at 5pm the same day, although we usually prefer at least a one night break.
Your profile - Take a look at your profile from a viewers perspective. The first part that shows is the EXPERIENCE part (don’t ask me why), whereas your ABOUT part starts stronger by mentioning ‘4 years… WHILE THEY LIVED ABROAD’.
Also, there is no point in your of picture house or the one with the cute baby. Unless they are linked to property or pets, don’t put them in. Owners may presume at first glance that you sit with a baby… so you’ll be ruled out of a lot of them straight away by that image so don’t do it. I’m sure you love the little babe, but you’re on here to pet and house sit, not baby sit, stay focused! Sorry to be brutal about the cute baby! If you check older profiles that are pet sitting you will notice they don’t put their grandkids in their photos either. We’re in our 50’s and 60’s and have a grandson, but we don’t show his image on our profile.
London is in high demand for sitters. We get almost 100% of the sits we apply for, because we are very focused on the two areas we sit in, namely the North East of England and Spain, so being focused on London should make you stand out more so than someone that needs a flight, or a tourist, because you aren’t a tourist it’s been your home for years, so you should be more desirable to home owners as soon as you get some reviews under your belt. If it’s London you want, stick to London so you stand out from everyone else, who have random city locations.
Hi @HappyDeb thank you for your super helpful response.
Noted about the baby, i will delete that. Re the Picture House pic, I think i was following the advice it shows as you’re setting up the profile that says:
"Please add photos of you with pets and animals and try to include at least one photo of yourself doing the following for the best chances of securing a sit:
with pets or animals
doing activities you like
in places you love"
So i was just trying to add a bit of colour to my personality using that as a guide (im a nice person that’s good with pets, babies and likes film/popcorn etc ).
I will switch up my profile sections to highlight the ‘whilst they lived abroad’ bit. Really great point thank you. Great to know back to back is achievable!
Ahhh I see what you were doing, no it’s rubbish advice though. Who would you want? A sitter who radiates how much they love pets in an image, or someone who goes out every night to the theatre or the cinema, leaving poor pets all alone. You can get across your personality in text form way easier anyway.
Also, I didn’t think (because most sitters DON’T want the same locations every time), but the bit that you copied that says ‘in places you love’ has some real merit in your case. We sit in the north east and so we have some of we have snow & wooly hats in one image to indicate that, and we also sit in the region of a specific city in spain because our family lives there. so we have that specific city in the background as our main profile picture (because we have more than enough pets in the UK that we return to, so our location is down as spain now… even though we’re in the UK right now). So anyone home owners viewing our profile will KNOW where we are, it’s an iconic backdrop to that specific city, and so they can presume we aren’t normal sitters just wanting to visit the area as a one-off or as tourist, they correctly presume we spend a lot of time in their area.
One thing we quickly realised, with regard to the single location thing (or two in our case), is that we only needed around 12 sets of owners to fill up our whole calendar, not just for one year, but for the following years too because we return to do repeat sits, that’s all you need. Some will take longer breaks, and some will take shorter, but if they liked you they will want you back, which will probably work in your favour with wanting London.
to the world of THS! Definitely add some references as 