I started paid pet-sitting in my home city a year ago, as a fun retirement gig. This is in the US and I happened to start just before Spring break and got lots of bookings almost immediately. I created a website and listed my services on Facebook and Nextdoor. I don’t do any paid advertising, just social media and word-of-mouth. There are weeks when I have no appointments and busy holidays when I could have 15 visits a day! It helped that people on my neighborhood FB groups and ND knew my name from the animal rescue work that I have done for years.
I don’t want to board dogs at my house (it is too small and it’s not fair on my resident cat and the foster cats that I usually have) but there is a lot more money in boarding, especially if you can take multiple dogs at a time.
It was my experience sitting via THS that showed me how much I enjoyed pet-sitting.
The home care is usually easier on a paid sit - homeowners don’t expect me to strip beds if I stay overnight or to do any cleaning or laundry. I always do leave a spotless house, partly because of my THS habits!
To see how much money you can earn, I would check out local pet-sitting websites to see their rates. Don’t go by Rover because lots of those sitters are insanely low cost. I started at a higher price than most Rover sitters and got business immediately.
I haven’t done any paid pet-sitting outside my home city, but would consider it if someone asked.
Basically, this is a petparent is telling you that you did a great job and they’d love to host you again. You don’t really have to explain that you aren’t going to be passing that way again. Not every thought needs to be vocalized. Take the compliment! [If you did express your thought and mention getting paid, I’d be put off and probably wouldn’t invite you back because I’d assume it meant you didn’t have fun and enjoy the exchange.]
As a homeowner, I’ve invited sitters back and sometimes it’s worked, but usually it hasn’t because they are not going to be in my area. Because my sit is in a popular area, so often when I’ve invited them again, they’ve said, something like, “Not this time, but please think of me next time.” That hasn’t felt weird to me. I also sit and I’ve had the same feeling.
As a sitter, if a homeowner told me they were glad I wasn’t a flake and they’d love to have me back, I might honestly tell them, “I had a fun stay and I would definitely come back if I was going to be in the area.” Or I might say, “I don’t come out this way often, but please keep me in mind and let me know.”
I did some paid sits over Christmas and summer a few years ago while I was based in my home town. As I didn’t need accomodation at that point I felt that if I was going to sit I might as well be compensated for it (and pet visits) which ultimately paid for a sitting trip to Asia later in the year. All the sits were really good so overall I enjoyed the experience. I can only speak for the platform I used but my takeaways were:
the platform takes a pretty hefty cut of your day rate
day rates vary enormously and finding the right rate can be tricky
the competition is crazy and you are at the mercy of the algorithm where you sit in the search results. If you aren’t at the top of the list no one contacts you ever
it’s income and you probably should pay taxes on it and depending on where you are the tax department may be monitoring use of such sites (or threatening to)
the expectation was you’d be with the pet 24/7 if you were sitting rather than visiting
there are other expectations you have to accomodate including unpaid meets beforehand
Obviously the situation would be different and less structured if you sit via FB or the like although I’ve read many posts there reminding sitters to get paid upront to avoid being ripped off.
But I think some of the sitters who say things here like, “They should get a professional,” have no idea what it’s like to actually get a paid person to sit. I had a dog who was frankly inappropriate for THS or Rover. She needed a kennel or a non-professional who knew her and us very well. The only one we ever got to babysit for her in our home was my spouse’s ex (no lie).
As for the cats, I mostly had paid drops-ins. At one point I was using a great licensed service that would send over wonderful catcarers but they were expensive, the visits were short, and I didn’t have the option to set the schedule for 2 visits a day. The sitter worked a set number of hours so I couldn’t get visits more than 8 hours apart. Not great for cats that aren’t free feeding! This however is great for trusted housesitters who’d love to be out and about for more than 8 hours! I also had an independent overnight sitter who I could always call in a pinch, but her boudnaries were truly awful and I would’ve stopped using her but I was honestly afraid of retaliation and relieved when she moved out of my area.
Our rescue has special needs that make him unfit for regular sitters, Rover and such. Instead, we’ve boarded him with folks like his trainer or an employee at the shelter where he sat for a long stretch, unwanted. It costs an arm and a leg, but it’s best for him.
Maybe because a paid sitter is paid for a specific job, although that could include plant-watering, bringing packages inside, checking on elderly mothers in a granny flat, etc!
I agree with ‘how much is too much’ for free - however, I feel the Trusted Housestitters platform supports owners and travelers alike with an alternative solution for accommodations. This allows owners a worry free travel trip and sitters, an inexpensive option for experiencing other cities and countries. It is purely the option of the sitter to evaluate the needs of the owner and decide if the ‘work’ is too much. It’s also a consideration of the owner to make the ‘sit’ attractive with explicate instructions and needs to allow for sitters to have the time to enjoy and explore their adventure.
If I felt a sitter was even hinting that they expected money, I’d move on. I think the one sitter who cancelled on me was doing that and I missed it or tuned it out. I won’t make the same mistake twice. People either value the exchange or they don’t.
As a sitter, I’ve been surprised by gifts and hospitality. It’s always nice. It’s an extra, like chocolates on the pillow and turn down service at a hotel.
This is an interesting post and something that I might think about as well. Some of the HO seem to take the mickey with the free sitting , leaving the cupboard bare of food and not really considering the travel costs the sitters incur and just how much they are saving in kennel or paid sitter fees. I think we would only consider petsitting in areas we want to visit and where accommodation is expensive.
A proportion of HOs needs to travel for work. Then their dates are often not flexible.
Anyway, when HOs send invitations, they may need to sugar the offer, especially when they live in non-touristic places. Otherwise their effort of looking up sitters would probably be in vain.
If a homeowner can’t come up with a non-cash offer to make the sit enticing, then they probably shouldn’t be using THS. Anyone willing to pay for a membership can join as a homeowner or as a sitter. There are no standards for either. I’m sure there are plenty of awful airbnbs that rarely get chosen. This site is as popular as it is BECAUSE no cash is exchange.
Petparents are literally told byTHS to clear the fridge so the sitters have room. They should have basics like cooking oil, spices etc, and with the new rating system if they don’t, you can rate them on it. But do you really think they’d treat you better if youo were being paid?
It’s unrealistic to talk about what homeowners are saving. As a petparent, if I didn’t have trusted housesitters I wouldn’t be traveling as much. I’d have to budget in petcare costs. And my petcare costs wouldn’t even be that high as I have cats and can use dropins. Some dogowners would be dropping off the pooch at a friend’s, relative’s house. Many would travel less. It’s apples to oranges. It’s like imagining an average per night accomodation cost for sitters and saying they saved an average of $150 a night on accomodations. Yes and no. They didn’t have to pay for accomodations, but if there was no sit, they probably would’ve stayed home.
What it comes down to is simple: Is the exchange worth it to you? If your answer is that you are unhappy spending money to travel to a location only to find that the cupboards are bare, the home is dirty, and the pet and homecare is more than you were prepared to do, and you didn’t have a good time, and felt like you should’ve been paid then either this site isn’t for you or you are choosing the wrong sits. I’ve done 8 sits so far and every single one of them I felt like I knew what I was going into. I wasn’t dissappointed, and it was “good value” for me. None of them had a food included in the deal policy. All of them had sufficient cooking oil, spices, etc which is what THS asks of homeowners.
When we first started house sitting it was mostly for people we knew. We are nonads and needed to be in a certain area to work part of the year. We did an exchange situation just like THS. It was up to the pet patent whether they paid us. Some did, some didn’t. We were fine either way. Once we gave a pet parent half her money back because the sit was short and the dog was so easy. Usually the ones who paid us had multiple big dogs.
Friends of ours who used to be on THS have several times been asked back to sits off the site and have been paid. The pet parents felt they were the best sitters for their pets and were will to pay them to cone out of their way to sit for them.
What we (sitters) do, especially those who are really good at it, has value. It is always nice to find people who really appreciate the value with payment - even if you are people like us who considered the value of the THS trade enough.
I wasn’t aware that the homeowner was told this. Most of our sits have been great but a couple have not been great where we were treated like employees with lots of rules. As sitters none of our hosts have shared the homeowners manual with us before the sit and sometimes lots of requirements have not been shared until we arrive. We have become better at asking questions about the sit in the interview but still we felt that had the requirements been disclosed we would not have accepted the sit. Don’t get me wring , a lot of sits have been great and the host has shown their appreciation but some have treated us in a condescending way and I do wonder if we were professional pet-sitters if we would be dealt with better. We are truly doing this for the cats , we travel half the year and can’t really own a cat right now.
