How To Start A Pet Sitting Business

Do you love animals and enjoy spending time with them? Start a pet sitting business and you can work with animals, be your own boss, and make money! There’s very little overhead and it’s easy to get started.

But before you start, you have to make decisions on the following:

1. What services are you going to provide?Some services are simple feedings and walkings while others may involve giving medications and light brushing.

2. How much are you going to charge?
Check out a few pet sitting services in your area so you can get an idea of what rates will be competitive. The price that you charge will have to cover your transportation costs to and from visits.

3. What areas are you going to cover?
These are the places you will target for business. You may choose those within a certain distance from your home or wherever you’ll be working from.

4. Which animals would you like to work with?
You can limit yourself to just cats or just dogs, but you’ll make more money if you service both. Consider whether or not you’re comfortable working with all breeds and whether you’ll work with birds, rabbits, reptiles and other animals.

Now that you have made your decision, how do you get started?

1. Get a business license. It will give you a professional edge and makes you more trustworthy to your clients. You’ll also be able to take advantage of many tax write-offs.

2. Become bonded and insured. This is very important for you and your clients’ protection. Insurance will cover you against any damage caused to a client’s home, injury to their pets, and loss of client keys. Bonding will cover you against theft of articles from a client’s home by anyone working with your business.

3. Print business cards. Choose a cheery layout with an animal picture on it, and include your company name, email address, phone number and state that you are bonded and insured. Put your rates at the back.

4. Create flyers with your prices listed on them.

5. Get an appointment book to keep track of your assignments.

Ready to get clients? Begin to advertise and market your business.

1. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising. Build a good reputation by pet sitting for neighbors and friends.

2. Visit local veterinary offices and pet stores and ask if you can leave a batch of business cards and flyers with them.
3. Post flyers at bulletin boards in supermarkets or other high-traffic places you feel pet owners would visit.
4. Place a small ad in your local paper for a fairly reasonable price. You can also post ads in free community papers/ magazines.

5. Create a website to help promote your business online. Give detailed information about you, your policies, procedures and pricing.

6. Distribute business cards at the local dog park. Network with people while socializing with their pets.

Once you have clients, provide excellent quality service to keep them. Make sure you are punctual and are always giving them and their pets the very best service. Provide their pets with lots of tender loving care. Remember, customer service is everything.

How To Avoid Work At Home Scams

In recent years there has been a huge increase in work at home jobs and more people are making money online. However, this trend has also created an opportunity for people to conduct fraudulent acts on people seeking legitimate work at home jobs. Here are 5 tips to help you avoid work at home scams:

1. Avoid jobs that guarantee you wealth, financial success, or that will help you get rich quick. Stay clear of jobs that offer you high income for part-time hours. If an opportunity seems “too good to be true,” it probably is.

2. You should never have to pay to get a job. Legitimate employers don’t charge to hire you or to get you started. Don’t send money for start up kits.

3. If an ad or website tells you to “act now,” don’t! Genuine business opportunities don’t use high-pressure sales tactics to try to force you to make a fast decision.

4. Always research the business or company that is presenting you with employment. Use resources like the Better Business Bureau. They have an online registry of all legal businesses in the United States.

5. Search for jobs in the right places.
• Ask people who have successful work at home jobs to guide you in your search.
• Search on message boards or e-mail groups for ideas on where to start your work at home job search.
• You can look at free listings that provide work at home opportunities.
• You can find work at home jobs through trusted sites instead of search engines.

What are the top 3 work at home jobs that you should avoid at all costs?

1. Envelope stuffing
In this classic scam, instead of getting materials to send out on behalf of a company, you get instructions to place an ad like the one you saw, asking people to send you money for information about working at home. This is an illegal pyramid scheme and you could be prosecuted for fraud.

2. Craft assembly
The way this scam works is that you pay for materials and equipment upfront. Then you make the items but the company never does buy them back from you. None of your work is ever “up to standard” according to them.

3. Data entry
In this scam, you’ll get a useless guide to work at home jobs or a disk with generic information on how to run a business and a list of business names. If you bother to contact the businesses listed, you’ll find that they’re either not interested or pay an abysmally low rate.

Hundreds of people fall for work at home scams everyday. But with a little foresight and some research, you can easily avoid falling prey to one of the many work at home scams out there.

How To Get Paid For Writing Reviews Online

If you enjoy writing reviews, you can turn this little passion into a money making hobby. No, you won’t be able to retire rich after writing reviews, but I’ve been able to make as much as $245 in a single month for writing only 34 reviews. The trick is simple – write only about what you know and know where to submit your reviews to.

SoftwareJudge.com

SoftwareJudge.Com accepts only software related reviews for products listed at the site. I’ve accidentally stumbled upon the site after reading a forum discussion on the topic. The site claims to pay as much as 50 dollars per review, however I got only $14 dollars for my first review. If you want to try you luck with SoftwareJudge, make sure you read the rules first.

Rules - http://www.softwarejudge.com/rules

Epinions.Com

Epinions.Com is probably the oldest and the best known review site that has been paying me and hundreds of other reviewers for years. The most important thing to know about Epinion is the fact that the pay is determined by the number of pageviews your review generates, which most of the time means you get nothing. Still, Epinions.Com has thousands of products to review, so you may as well give it a try. Just be aware of the fact that ever review gets read by a moderator, so if you try to submit a review that’s not yours, you’ll be banned for life. Oh, and you need to register first, before you get to read all the details.

Registration - http://www.epinions.com/register/

DigitalPoint.Com

DigitalPoint makes turning your writing into dollars even easier. You don’t need to review anything. DititalPoint forums are based on a profit sharing principle. Here is what it means. DigitalPoint makes its money by displaying AdSense ads. If you create a topic and participate in discussion, half the ad revenue is yours. In fact it’s a little bit more complicated than that. You have to have your own AdSense account. 50% of the ad revenue will go to DigitalPoint, the other half is yours. I’ve been participating in this forum actively in the past. My monthly record is 40 dollars. If you are a forum addict, this might me just your cut of tea. However, you’ll need to setup your account first.

Setup - http://forums.digitalpoint.com/faq.php?faq=revenue_sharing

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John Deprice is an author and online software consultant