Today I am thrilled to have Francesca from From Pennies to Pounds with a guest post for you. Francesca has used various side hustles to get out of debt and here she talks about just one of them.
Over to Francesca….
Dog boarding is a great side hustle, because it’s one of those things where you can have lots of fun at the same time as earning extra – so it doesn’t necessarily feel like ‘work’.
What Does It Entail?
Dog boarding is where you look after someone’s dog at your home, and they will pay you to do so! Many people go away on holiday, away for the weekend, get married etc and need someone to look after their dog whilst they do so.
How Can You Get Started?
To get started, you can sign up to a website that I use which is called Tailster. There are other websites such as Pawshake, or you could put up signs/start your own Facebook page for your services, but I find using Tailster the easiest way to manage it and to get clients.
You will have to sign up and fill in your information,. You will also need to include a photo of yourself as it helps prospective clients have more of a sense of trust – after all, they are going to be leaving a beloved family member with you, so they will understandably be a bit nervous!
Once you have signed up and been approved as a carer on there, you can then start to quote for work. This is again where Tailster are a really handy website to use, because you can easily find work on there and pick and choose who you want to work with.
On the homepage, if you click on ‘Nearby Listings’ this will show you all of the current live jobs that are available for you to look at and quote on. You can order it either by ‘Closest First’ or ‘Newest First’. I generally do mine by ‘Newest First’ so that I don’t miss any, but it’s up to you which you prefer.
Getting started really is as simple as that – get signed up, then when you are approved start quoting for work on there. It may start off slow as you will have no ratings/reviews to begin with, but once you get your first job, the momentum will be built up and you can go from there, so don’t be discouraged if you aren’t flooded with work straight away.
How Much Can You Make?
Like most money earners, this is very much dependent on how much experience you have, and how much you would personally like to earn from doing this.
When I first started out, I had no experience (apart from personal experience of owning a dog previously), so I charged what I deemed to be a very low fee in order to reflect my lack of experience and to also get the ball rolling with obtaining my first client. I charged £10 per day initially, but increased that pretty much straight away.
There are many people who do dog boarding/pet sitting etc as a full time job, so if this is something that you want to pursue as a career, it would be best to look at it from the perspective of how much you would like to earn each month from it, and work out your fee dependent on that.
Something else to bear in mind is that you could have more than one dog at a time if you are dog boarding (or cat sitting etc) so you are able to earn more that way. I personally only have one dog at a time as I wouldn’t like any fights! But I have had two dogs when they were dogs that were living together, so I obviously knew that they would be ok.
I do dog boarding as a little side earner, and I find it a lot of fun so I probably don’t charge enough for my services, but to be honest I don’t mind so much due to the fact that we love having dogs around, and it also saves me the cost of buying a dog for my daughter who is always bugging me for a dog (so I did the alternative of ‘borrowing’ other peoples dogs and getting paid for it!).
I currently charge £30 per day, per dog. If you work out the monthly fee this would be £900 (if x30 days). Therefore if I had 2 dogs every day for a month it would come to £1800. Now for me, that’s a decent amount of money, for something that I don’t think of as work.
I need to mention that there are fees involved as with any business – Tailster charge 15% commission, but for me it is worth it due to the fact that they find you the clients, sort all of the payments (owners have to pay upfront but it’s only released to you upon completion of the job), and they also cover insurance and emergency vet appointments.
It’s therefore important to remember that you will be paying 15% of the final fee to Tailster when you are working out how much to quote.
There is an easy way to get a general idea of how much to charge on Tailster website (it’s a little bit sneaky!). When you are on the homepage, scroll on down to ‘Carers Map’ and enter your postcode.
This is where you find carers for your pets, but if you look on this then you can see what people in your area are charging for similar services.
Is It Flexible?
The great thing about offering a service like dog boarding, cat sitting etc, is that you can decide when to work, and how much workload you can take on at any given time.
Whenever a side hustle like this is suggested, you may find some resistance such as the fact that they already have a full time job etc, but don’t forget that when people are wanting you to look after their pet, they are probably going on holiday or visiting friends/relatives.
Although a lot of people may go away for a week or so, many people end up going away just for a weekend, or maybe even one night; so this can be fit around a full time job.
I’ve had a job before when they wanted me to look after their dog for one day because they were getting married! It is flexible – and the fact that you can pick and choose which jobs to quote for, makes it the most flexible of all.
When you see the jobs on the site, it will have on there the exact dates that they will want you to have their pet.
If you are after a flexible side hustle that will be a lot of fun, this could be one for you!
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