why is it so hard to get the first job??
I have shared my link and page and word of mouth and everything and still nothing
3 Answers
Heyyyyy! Another Arkansas sitter, hooray!
Yeah I agree with others who said it's probably a population density issue. You may actually want to try taking out an ad in the local newspaper or something. Are you willing to travel to Little Rock? (This might make more sense for house sitting so you can waste less on gas back and forth). If so, I'd post on the Little Rock Craigslist and Little Rock Reddit board. There's also an Arkansas Reddit. Unfortunately then you're competing at Little Rock sitter prices, which are probably quite low. If you're willing to travel to Little Rock, you could even change your location to Little Rock and offer only house sitting.
It would probably be helpful to talk to your vet (assuming they don't have their own boarding facility, lol). Let them know that you're a dog sitter/boarder/whatever and ask if they would recommend you, let you put a flyer up, or let you leave a pile of business cards there. (Rover still gives you a couple hundred free business cards I think). Same with local hotels/motels/tourist spots.
Worst case scenario, you can try cutting your price more to test if people were passing you over for someone else.
Best of luck!
Comments
Thank you, How do I find out about the free business cards from Rover? and I have did the craigslist for Little Rock, no hits Im working on the flyers and getting the word out... Thank you very much for the information and suggestions, @Jean D. & Ray P.
There aren't many Rover sitters in your local area and I see Fairfield Bay is in a rural area of AR. You probably have a small population base which means not many folks have heard of Rover. I would recommend you post tear off flyers on local bulletin boards in your area to get noticed and attract clients. Best of luck to you
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thank you,i will do that
Your service area looks incredibly small (1 mile?) , which may be contributing to the lack of requests. January and February are known to be typically slow for business, as they're sort of at an awkward time between the holiday season and Spring Break. You show up in the top 3 sitters for all of your services, although there are very few sitters in your area, so it looks like Rover may not yet be popular in your area. I would continue to spread the word about your services as you mentioned you've been doing. You could also consider posting on sites like NextDoor and local Facebook buy/sell/trade pages. You could hang cards/flyers at local pet stores, dog parks, coffee shops, etc. Good luck!
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is there something i can do to make the area bigger? @Hillary H.
Yes, try this link: https://www.rover.com/account/profile/service-preferences/ Look for "What is the maximum distance you'll travel to get to a client's home?" and you can increase it to your preference. If the link doesn't work, I can also just tell you the steps to get to the right place,!
ok i put it at 50 hopefully that works...thank you for your help!!!
Don't do that :) I limited my area to 2 miles, because I am not able to accept requests for dog walking that is 50 miles away from me. I had few people asking if I would walk their dog, and they were 25 miles away from me. Of course, we all are different, but in my case 50 miles is too much.