Pet Sitting Business for my wife

This year is our year and we want to start pet sitting

Last year, I wanted to help my wife start a pet sitting business but had no idea where to start. I started looking at ideas on how to get started and found some basics that needed to be fulfilled.

Insurance was the number one item on the list and a DBS check came a close second. Even though a DBS check isn’t necessary, it’s a huge bonus that keeps potential clients at ease. DBS checks are a basic check that certifies you have 0 criminal convictions.

Looking at insurance

We took a look at insurance and which providers would be best for us. Taking a look at comparison websites, but they didn’t offer anything for pet services in particular. Then we spoke to our neighbour who owns a dog training business and she pointed us to PetPlan. It was a perfect solution and the costs were £114 each year. It’s cheaper than car insurance and works out to be £14 a month. Not bad.

The DBS check was fairly simple, we basically submitted some details alongside a filled in form and a payment of £80 (including paperwork review). And now we have a certificate that says we have 0 convictions and if our customers ask, we can happily hand it to them.

Now the basics are covered…

We now need some way for people to find us and a nice attractive logo to reel people in. I started by contacting a friend of mine who is a fantastic logo designer. She designed the logo that you see in the featured image and we couldn’t be happier. Obviously, she gave us mates rates, but she is definitely worth so much more.

For the website, I wanted to make it as easily accessible as possible for both me and my wife. So I decided to go for Weebly, it’s a fantastic drag and drop website that offers a lot of features and a fantastic price of £89 a year and a free domain.

The reason I did this, was because my wife isn’t knowledgeable on websites, so if I’m not here and she wants to make changes, I want her to do it as easily as possible. Weebly is definitely a fantastic service for just this.

I picked a theme, got the logo in and added as much content as possible. We officially launched on the 1st of January and have picked up a couple of clients since. We are still looking for more clients and we’re hopeful for the future.

Of course, we also created some business cards and used Moo for this. They have a great choice of cards and their quality is simply the best.

What’s the focus now?

My main focus is to get the site to page one for keywords like “pet sitting newton abbot” and pet sitters newton abbot” as well as other local places just outside of Newton Abbot. We’re currently sitting on page two for those terms, so hopefully, we can rank higher for them.

We are also advertising online and locally in Post Offices and small shops and will be attending business conferences very soon. The clients we have picked up have loved our services so far and given us 5-star reviews on our Facebook page. Hopefully, we can continue the momentum and even push the momentum further.

If you’re curious about our website, please take a look at Brooks Pet Sitters Newton Abbot and if you would like a website, please feel free to contact me.