Our normal house sitter is moving out of state, which is what drove us to THS in the first place. The listing has been up for about two months and I have favorites, but no applications. We’re in rural Central NY, and reached out for advice and made some adjustments, but here was the big ticket items:
Nowhere near public transportation. Offer a car. (We aren’t comfortable with assuming financial or insurance risk since our cars have loans. A friend was nice enough to lend us a car for the sitters)
Tailor towards families and let the families decide if it suits their needs (We didn’t originally include families because we are child-free and therefore the home is not childproof. We updated to include families but didn’t select the youngest age groups and annotated in the listed about the lack of childproofing)
Include driveway photos for potential sitters with campers
Listing is too wordy (We cut it down by aboue half and moved more of the details to the Welcome Guide)
You don’t have any reviews
We’re definitely stuck on the lack of reviews, and our September sit is coming up. Do people have any advice, either on the listing or otherwise?
We appreciate any help or advice you can provide!
(Member’s listing has been added to their Forum profile by the Forum team)
Have you contacted those who favourited the sit ?
Sometimes there are sitters who are available for the majority of the sit dates but if they already have another sit confirmed that overlaps your sit dates ( even by just one day ) they can’t contact you .
So by reaching out to them - they may be available - with an adjustment to the start or end date …
What I noticed about your listing is you have pets can be left for 6 hours and then in your profile you say the dogs need to be let out several times a day. So can they be left alone for 6 hours or not. Please make it clear in your profile. It also states that a car may be available. You have two sets of dates. If a car can be used with one of the dates, I would highlight that.
It’s nice that you are offering a vehicle, but in reality, there’s no way someone could get to your place without a car anyway. Maybe you could offer to pick someone up at a nearby train or bus station?
Also, I love rural NY, so I recommend that you list some outdoor activities near your place. Too bad the sit is after peak fall colors.
Also anything exciting to do in Utica and Rome?
Lastly, your Nov sit is short, so you’re gonna have to sell it.
Sorry you are not having luck yet with a sitter’. Just a couple of things I would say..
Lots of sitters enjoy rural sits-my husband and I are one of them. So that in and of itself is not a huge issue. That you are offering a car is great but like someone else said, a clear offer to pick up and transport the sitter back to the closest area with public transport could be good, unless of course that is not possible for some reason. You could also offer to pay for an Uber to your home if arranging their transport yourself is not possible for one or both ways. Of course you are under no obligation to do either of these things but could make it more appealing to some.
Also, don’t let lack of review discourage you. While they can be helpful of course, many sitters have no issue with this. I have been sitting for 12 years now and routinely sit for first-time hosts and this would not affect my decision to apply at all.
While asking for feedback on the forum can certainly yield some really helpful suggestions, a lot of the feedback you may get is based on the preference of individual sitters and may or may not be representative of how the vast majority of sitters would think or feel. What one sitter may see as ‘undesirable’ or some sort of problem could be nothing of the sort for another. So just something to keep in mind
Hi,
I see one area that is definitely lacking in your listing, local area. When I read your listing, I see nothing to entice me to apply. When I researched the area, I found many interesting things and places to visit. It is a little over an hour to the national baseball hall of fame. A little over half an hour to Oneida, with casino, resort, concert venue with national performers. A cultural center. It is a little over an hour to Syracuse. The boxing hall of fame. Multiple waterfalls within an hour or less. Ski resorts that may have summer and or fall activities. If you don’t know what is around your area, sitters certainly won’t either. If I were looking at sits, I would have passed right over. The list can certainly go on. You MUST let sitters know what is good about your area. Personally, I believe your target sitter will likely come by car. I would add some of this stuff, then change headline to maybe, Baseball Hall of Fame, waterfalls and Casino.
Good luck
You can also list restaurants like awesome Italian food at the Franklin Hotel in Rome. I’d also list the Florentine Bakery in Utica for authentic Italian pastries. Also, a fun thing to do is ride a bike along the Erie Canal. There’s Fort Stanwix in central Rome.
Yes it is. Why do you mention that?
So what your car has a loan? Presumably your car also has insurance. You live in a rural area where a car is essential and you can’t find a sitter. Many sitters cannot afford to rent a car or simply won’t want to pay for one. Step outside your comfort zone and provide use of your car. Seems unfair that you’ll allow a friend to incur the risk by offering a sitter their car while you won’t even offer your own.
We don’t know the details. @Rachael-Aaron and presumably their friend do.
Since you decided to judge what’s unfair about this host borrowing a car for this purpose, perhaps you can share with the forum what’s unfair about prospective sitters getting the use of the friend’s car instead of the host’s.
I would like to do that, because it’s for sure available for the September sit, but unconfirmed yet for the November sit. Is there a way to annotate extra notes about a specific sit without rewriting the entire listing?
I reached out to most of them, and they would say that they already have engagements or it’s not the time of year they would normally sit, but they wanted to keep an eye out for future dates.
It’s actually not after peak fall colors in our area; peak fall colors actually are in full swing the first week or two of October.
There’s also going to be an arts festival the first weekend of that sit a few miles down the road (Remsen Festival of the Arts)… I originally had it in there, but was advised to remove it because it was part of the “too wordy” bit, and I don’t know if you can add extra data to specific sits.
The arranging pick up leads to a different question. That would be on there without question, but the flight in is so early in the morning that’s simply not possible same day; we would have to adjust the dates to 23 Sep and they would be agreeing with staying in the guestroom overnight with us still there the first night. I would imagine not everyone is comfortable with that, but do you have additional thoughts?
To be fair with the November one, that has a bit more flexibility. The outcome of whether we get sitters for that one determines if both of us go on a trip or just one of us. 
Regarding the hours, that also leads to another question I would love your input on how to handle. They have the check box method to select how many hours they can be unattended, and honestly we are both fulltime workers so they’re often left at home for up to 9 hours before we rush home. The check box option only offers “up to 6 hours” then “6+ hours”, and I don’t want to introduce people misunderstanding that means “oh, I can be gone 12 hours”.
When we are home, they have a routine where they expect to go outside after naps/eating/before we leave/before bed, and while we are home they let us know if they want to go outside beyond that… over-explained to basically say: provide them every opportunity that way they’re fine when we’re gone.
As a sitter, what would you expect being the correct way to address that before the Welcome Guide? I don’t want people to waste their time with the check box assuming “6+” is “ALL day” and us later finding out it doesn’t match up.
Just add one sentence to your listing. Car is available for the blank dates but not for the blank dates. So many people here answered as if they thought you were offering a car and they missed the part that said
it may be available. You don’t want someone showing up thinking there is a car available and then finding out there isn’t and leaving.
There is a hotel Franklin in Rome, Italy. That’s what I saw., I transposed.
I think your listing looks great. I would change the title to something more appealing, like “Peaceful Retreat in the Adirondack Foothills”. Hi speed internet is great to mention in the listing but not in the title.
I don’t think it’s the fact that you have no reviews, it’s just a lack of sitters in the US. September may be hard for families as most children will be in school, and it can also be quite warm. Perhaps mention the abundance of outdoor recreation nearby - hikes to waterfalls, local swimming holes, or kayaking.
I would just check the 6 hour box and in the listing say that the dogs can be left for up to 8 hours occasionally, but when home like to go in and out of the house. No need to over explain in the listing. Do you have a dog door or does someone have to open a door for them?
We are in a more or less similar situation, living in a rural area, but in northern Thailand. Though many sitters appear to love our place and made it favorite, we always get only a few applications, if any. Main reason for us is that most sitters are from abroad and need to travel a long time. For us that’s even more extreme than for you, but still your place looks like a place many people dream of, but less people will travel to.
What I notice in your listing is, that the sits are just a few days. For us it’s almost impossible to find sitters for less than 2 weeks, because travelling is too much in relation to the length of the sit. We often offer sitters to stay a bit longer in our seperate guesthouse, but of course you can only offer that if you have one.
Also we offer to pick sitters up from the airport, and to use our car (if we don’t take it ourselves). Yes, it’s a risk, but in our view a car is just a piece of metal to bring you from a to b, and we don’t mind a scratch or a dent. If it’s properly insured, the risk is bearable.
You wrote that someone advised to shorten your listing. My advice would be to write more about how great it is to experience living in the middle of nowhere. People may have no clue what to expect. We live without any luxury and are clear about that. Many people may think remote living is automatically basic living. Describe the experience of remote living. “See the sunrise from your bed”, “Experience the great feeling of living in nature.”
Well, just some thoughts. I hope it’s helpful.