The outreach message is more about how you benefit them and trying to establish time to have a video call or chat , your profile is there to confirm your skills and highlight you and your reviews.
Maybe separate the 2 so that the house owner does not get overwhelmed with the message. Specially if they are scanning multiple applicants.
If you have a huge message you will tend to lose people’s interest.
Good luck 
Please give some examples of locations that you’ve applied for, but been declined.
Funny you Should mention “what’s your profile” cuz yes, I had added a pic recently that showed me w my two large pythons wrapped around my Neck w a caption “ we had to rehome the snakes cuz The nieces and nephews wouldn’t visit!” So I did delete that photo and we shall see. It’s a great shot, tho…I put it on my desk at work right before my snake of a boss fired me! She got hers shortly after, but my “early” retirement has been nothing short of fantastic! Ha! Thanks for asking, appreciate all the help
Ha ha its a fun photo, but I think if you were trying to put it across as a fun photo, many HOs might not get the fun part and be a little worried.
Maybe that was the magic trick. Good luck with it and fingers crossed to you
My husband and I have been sitting for 12 years and while I have not kept any official stats, I would say our ‘rejection’ rate has been pretty low the whole time–though perhaps we did get declined more often earlier on and I just don’t remember, though I don’t think we did and one of the big reasons was probably because earlier on THS did not have as many sits and sitters, so probably less ‘competition.’
If hosts expressed interest in talking further with us via video or phone, I can only recall two instances of not getting picked, and they were both quite a few years ago–the most recent was 2021 or maybe even earlier than that.
She actually was leaning towards us but she decided to go with the other sitter because she had a lot of work travel coming up, and this person needed to be in this area frequently so she had potential as a repeat sitter, so totally understandable. Had she not given us this explanation, would have been so easy to make all sorts of assumptions especially since she actually connected with us personally.
And the other ‘video decline’ actually ended up asking us to do the sit, so even though we were not the first choice for whatever reason, she obviously liked us if she made the offer. So not getting picked doesn’t automatically mean the host would discount someone completely, it is just someone else seems a better match for any number of reasons.
If there were more I don’t remember, they would have to have been really early on.
When I think back over the last year or so–in which we have probably done about 25 sits–most of our declines had come with a explanation that truly had nothing to do with us, and it is likely this is the case for a lot of sitters a lot of the time;but as hosts often don’t send any explanations, that is when the assumptions come in.
I happened to have gotten reasons but they all could have just as easily said nothing and it would be easy to assume all sorts of things.
A few we have had are: previous sitter expressed interest (but they really liked us and actually invited us to a sit a few months later), only wanted single sitters but forgot to update the listing, neighbor was going to watch the dog and they forgot to remove that set of dates from their multi-date listing, another applicant wanting to really visit the town as it was the favorite of her recently deceased father(would have picked us otherwise).
One woman declined us a few months ago because she was concerned that because we had a gap in our schedule right before her sit at the time of applying she would be ‘stressing out for months’ that we would have trouble finding something that aligned with our schedule and would end up cancelling on her. In all my years of sitting, this is the first time anyone has ever expressed concern about that and I just let it go rather than try to convince her it would be fine-- even if I were able to, I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing a sit for someone who didn’t trust we would honor the commitment.
Then maybe a couple of declines with no explanation, and one decline where our application was not even read, so in that case, I definitely know it had nothing to do with us.
Given our experience, I can’t imagine any of these ‘no explanation’ declines were because people looked at our application and just dismissed us outright. But you just never know what people are looking for, what draws them to a particular sitter, what sort of preferences they have,etc…
I imagine that the reasons another applicant may have for wanting to visit the area could also factor in at times. For example, if they wanted to be in the area for an important event like a family wedding, the host may feel they would be less likely to cancel.
The way I see it, even if the decline is personal in some way–and by that I don’t mean they think something truly negative about the person–it just means it’s not a match and not meant to be.
Yes! It’s funny that you mention geckos. We’ve been pet-sitting in the Pacific for about four and a half months, and geckos are simply part of everyday life and nature here. But I assume you mean people who actually keep geckos as pets?
Wow, big and small! Yesterday, we probably had a young green basilisk in our sunroom here in Costa Rica. We didn’t have to feed it, nature does this for us! It had found a small hole in the insect screen and managed to find its own way back outside again. Have fun on your sits with these fascinating reptiles! 
1 rejection out of 22 applications, but we are clearly in a sitters “market”. The 1 rejection was immediately after I submitted our app – so the HO was clearly targeting something.
My greatest fear is that a pet dies while I’m taking care of it 
Has that ever happened to y’all?
and Thailand 
sits.
