Newbie owners need all the help we can get

Hi to everyone. Just joined and posted first listing and would like some input as to how it can be improved to attract sitters. First thing is “How do I link listing to forum chat?”

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You’re very welcome to the forum @Failte :smiling_face: I’ve attached the link below for adding your listing:

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Thank you, that was most helpful

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Here is also a link to a wonderful blog created by @Nagy26 , one of the listing expert extraordinaires of the forum to get you started if you haven’t already come across it.

I like the look of your listing and I’m sure other forum members will chime in to help you with further tweaking too. Best of luck to you☺️

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We’re in France too, in an even more remote location. We signed on to THS last autumn though we’d had a membership for a year about 10 years ago. We confirmed a sitter right away, but when I discovered the forum I spent months tweaking our listing based on comments by sitters. The first thing I learned was that you should not follow the THS suggestions about the introduction. Less about yourselves, more about what makes your home and location attractive. So I cut out everything about us but then someone said they liked to know SOMETHING about the owners. So I put a smidgen of bio back in. My listing is linked in my profile so you can see how I handled it. Others will have lots to say about your listing but I will just say that you should redo the exterior photos on a sunny day!

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Thanks @avocadotoast you beat me to it, and thanks very much for your kind words! :sweat_smile:

@Failte I took a look for you. Overall, your sit appears welcoming & friendly, and you have a lovely cover photo & pictures. I think though your sit would be quite a lot of work; horse care, plus a dog and 2 kittens on a large 4 acre property, over the holiday (New year’s) period sounds like quite a handful. There are some sitters here with horse & farm experience, and some who may be keen (you never know), but to be honest I do think these types of farm sits are much better suited to the platform Workaway, where there are hundreds of volunteers with a great deal of farm & garden experience. Here on THS, most sitters will choose only simple, undemanding exchanges with a cat and a dog. However, you won’t know if you don’t try :smiling_face:

Here is what I can suggest for your listing:

1: Change your title to something that tells sitters what’s on offer straight away and why they should choose you, rather than simply listing all the animals you have.

2: Your intro is very long, detailed and autobiographical. Sitters would far rather know in a few brief sentences what’s on offer and why they should choose your sit, rather than reading a long-winded explanation of your background & life story. This is where you will already start to loose a sitter’s attention & interest. The blog should help with your intro.

3: Your home and location section is okay, but details about the pumps & heat source isn’t essential information for a sitter and doesn’t need to be in your listing. You also mention that sitters need a car - would yours be available for sitters or do they need their own? I would also talk more about the local area and what’s to see and do, as at the moment you give little reason for why somebody should come and stay in your area. Remember that this sit is over the holiday period at New Year’s, so discuss what is in the area at this time of year to draw more applicants. Also mention if this sit would suit a couple or family, and if sitters can bring their own pets. Discuss whether you can arrange to collect sitters from an airport or train station, and if a sitter can get groceries delivered etc.

4: Your responsibilities section is a little vague and misses some key details such as:

  • How long can the pets be left for?

Dog:

  • What is the dog’s personality & sociability like?
  • what are they like on walks?
  • How long should a walk be?
  • Are they good with other dogs?
  • where do they sleep?
  • if the dog has full access to the grounds, but you want a sitter to poo pick, does this mean a sitter has to check the entire grounds? This would take a long time!

Cats:

  • If the kittens stay in just 1 bedroom during the day, that is not available to sitters, how does this work? Can a sitter go in that room? Does this have their litter boxes & food in it? And how can a sitter interact much with the cats if they only stay in just 1 room? It’s a little vague and confusing.
  • Are the stables secure for the cats to sleep in?
  • What if it’s really cold? (it will be winter!) should the cats still sleep in there? Do they have warm bedding in there?? Do they also have litter boxes & food & water in there?
  • Is the information about the cats being spayed etc relevant to the time period of the listed dates?

Horses:

  • The only listed dates you have are during winter, so remove the information about bringing in the horses during hot weather. Make all your information relevant to the listed dates only.
  • What do you mean by the horses ‘live out with rugs.’? This gives very little information.
  • Do they sleep in the stables overnight?
  • Should a sitter have experience with horses for this sit?
  • Will the horses need brushing & maintenance?
  • Will a sitter need to clean out the horse stables? If so, what are the chores and how long does this usually take?
  • What should a sitter be aware of when interacting with your horses?

Hope that helps.

Edit: If you end up struggling with applicants, you can also try Nomador - this is a French pet-sitting site which often has local French sitters who may be more keen for your sit.

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@Nagy26 have already given great advice. So just a little add on that might be helpful.

Sitters often use quite a lot of money to go to a sit, and of course they (at least I) would compare the money I have to spend and the work I’m supposed to do, and for some of us there are limits as to what we are willing to pay for doing. I think most of us (I) only apply for sits that we find enjoyable. Different people of course will regard that differently, but there are things one could do to make a profile appealing to more people and by that attracting more to apply for your sit.

I would say that you would have better possibilites for more applications if you can somehow ease the workload, with the animals and/ or with the expectations of household chores. For instance if you could get someone locally to look after the horses, so that a sitter would “only” take care of cat/ dogs (if one has a cleaner for the house could also be such things, depending on the totality.)

As airfare is quite expensive not many would want to add the rent of a car. Therefore, a requirement to have a car will greatly limit your search pool. So if a car is available for rural sits, that is a great advantage. Some solve it for instance by leaving the keys at a pick up-point at the airport. It is not always possible, due to the hosts need for car, due to isurance or other, but certainly worth thinking through.

Best of luck and safe travels!

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Quiero hiniciar en el grupo para poder cuidar mascotas
—-
I want to start in the group to be able to take care of pets

Edited to add translation

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Hola @Delicia :smiling_face:

Please sign up on trustedhousesitters.com

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Thank you very much for your input, we really welcome constructive comments. We have made some amendments and will be revising the listing further once we have more information regarding activities and places of interest in this area during the time of the listing. Can you please point out where we described the house as a “farm” as we cannot seem to locate it. We thought we had made it plain that it was a four bedroom house with pastures for the horses.

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No problem @Failte happy to help :smiling_face:

Sorry for any confusion; your listing doesn’t state ‘farm’ anywhere, I was using it as a general term to describe the types of sits that usually do better on sites such as Workaway. Didn’t mean to imply that your property is a working farm or anything, what I meant was large, more remote properties with horses & a lot of land :blush:

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