15 Best Pet Sitters Business ideas to Start

Are you an animal lover and good as a pet sitter? Then it might be a great idea for you to start a pet sitting business at your home and make some money out of it.

A pet sitting business is a great way to enter the animal industry. As the owner of the business, you are free to set your schedule, define your service area, and expand your business to include additional options for clients.

Pet sitting businesses offer pet owners a variety of animal care services, including exercising their pets while they are at work. They also provide an affordable alternative to boarding pets at a kennel during vacations or business trips.

Being able to remain in their own home environment can reduce separation anxiety for both pets and their owners.

As a Pet sitting business owner, you can participate in a wide variety of activities, including:

-Animal-proofing various environments to ensure the health and safety of pets.

-Reviewing and following pet owners’ instructions

-Entering information about clients and their pets into a database for future reference

-Feeding, watering, exercising, training, and socializing pets

-Administering prescribed medications

-Pet Bathing/Grooming

-Veterinary appointments

-Home security responsibilities

-House and yard care

-Pricing services, billing, advertising and accounting

There are several things your business plan should cover. A few questions you must ask yourself:

–What animals will I care for?

–What services can I provide (for example, daily walks and feedings, vet visits, overnight stays, poop scooping)?

-Will I provide “extras” such as watering plants, taking out the garbage, turning on/off lights for out of town clients?

–Will those come free or at a premium?

–What makes you better than your competitors?

–How will you market your services?

–Who is your ideal client?

–How will you structure your day?

– What are your hours of operation?

-Will you take last-minute or emergency appointments?

Here are pet related businesses ideas you could consider starting.

–Obedience Expert: You already know about dog trainers. But if you have the know-how, you can actually carve out a slightly different niche — as an obedience expert. You can work not only with dogs to develop good habits, but also work with their owners to maintain those habits.

–Pet Travel Service Provider: When people travel or move with their pets, it can be a stressful experience. If you have a method of transportation or even just some tips to share with pet owners, you can offer a service that helps pet owners transport their pets.

–Pet-Dog manicurist: For pet owners who don’t want to go though the hassle of trimming their dogs’ or cats’ nails, they might hire a pet manicurist. Some may even pay you to paint their pets’ nails.

–Pet whisperer: Pet owners who are dealing with a particularly difficult pet may be interested in the services of a pet whisperer. If you specialize in pets’ behavior, you may be able to help some of those pets and pet owners get to the root of those issues.

–Online pet training: If you don’t want to share your knowledge or expertise about pet training or behavior with clients in person, you could start a YouTube channel to inform pet owners about different methods.

–Pet restaurateur: Pet restaurants, much like bakeries and food trucks, have taken off in the past few years. You can offer various food items for dogs to enjoy right there.

–Pet workout coach: You already know that pet walking can be a lucrative pet business. But if you enjoy being active and want to take pet walking to another level, you could start a pet running or workout program. For pet owners who want their pets to get a bit more exercise, you can take them for runs regularly.

–Large animal sitter: If you have expertise dealing with animals aside from just dogs and cats, you could offer your services to people who own larger animals. Particularly in rural areas, you might find enough people who have horses, goats and various other animals that need care on occasion.

–Pet massage therapist: Massages have been shown to benefit cats, dogs and various other animals. With a bit of training, you can offer your services as a pet massage therapist.

–Pet health expert: While you obviously need to go to veterinary school to provide health care to animals, you may be able to offer some very basic tips when it comes to things like diet and exercise.

–Pet spa provider: There are plenty of different health and beauty type services you can offer for animals. Or you could offer a more all-encompassing spa experience for pets.

More people are working longer hours than ever before which has led to a growing reliance on domestic services. From the traditional house cleaning and child care to daily meal catering, the domestic services industry is booming and pet sitting is one area of the market which is seeing solid growth; boosted by the growing number of pet owners.

While pet sitting won’t make you rich overnight, it’s a business opportunity that can provide a decent living wage and, as it’s home-based and can be operated both part-time and full-time, you can start up as a pet sitter quickly and inexpensively.

References and testimonials will form the basis of your business so it goes without saying that great customer service is a must to generate the word-of-mouth marketing you will need.

As a pet sitting business relies so heavily on the local community, you should also look to place ads in local vets, pet shops, and local newspapers and it’s recommended that you create a website – even a basic web page – to help those in the locale find you.