Transcripts
1. Introduction - Welcome!: Hello and welcome everyone. My name is Melinda. And today I'm gonna be talking a little bit to you guys about house sitting for those of you who don't know what house sitting is exactly. Basically, you look after a home on one or several pets in exchange for free accommodation. Sometimes there are also other your chores that you during your stay, such as watering plants or bringing the garbage outside on a particular day, the duration of a house. It can range from one day to a few months. Once I've even seen a house, it did losses for a year. I myself worked as a translator, which allows me to work location independently. And since I've discovered how sitting it has made such a drastic difference in my driver life, I have been house and bed sitting for a couple of years now, which has allowed me to go to so many new places, meet a ton of new people and, of course, meet some lovely pets. House sitting is a great way to save on accommodation costs. And looking after pets is just a joy in itself. If you're an animal lover like me, but it wasn't easy in the beginning, but I had just created my house with a profile. Homeowners, obviously, when someone who has a fair amount of experience with animals and someone in West references basically someone who knows what they're doing, they are often looking for a house and pet sitter who already has done house hits in the past someone who has been reviewed by other homeowners. But don't worry. Once you get your first riff, you it's gonna make such a difference, and it will be much easier to score your next house. It's and discourse. You're gonna learn some things that you have to pay attention to. When you first start browsing for houses, I'm going to give you some tips on creating your first house sitter profile, writing an email to home owners and how to schedule your house. It's when you're a digital moment and your own road full time. I'm going to speak about this topic based on my own experience in order to help you secure your very first house sitting job. So sit back and relax
2. Tips For Your House Sitter Profile: When you type house sitting into Google, you will find it. There are a ton off different on line platforms where you can create a profile and find home owners to house sit for There's no Madore house carers. Mind my house dress, the house sitters, etcetera, etcetera. Which platform you juice mostly depends on where you want to go. Some websites so chest house carers have lots of house. It's in US and Australia, and a website like No Madore offers a lot more houses in France. I personally prefer trusted house sitters just because there are a lot of houses being added every single day from all over the world, with most of them being in the US and UK. I browsed through other houses are profiles because I was really curious, and I noticed that the more successful house sitter profiles had a lot of information on them. Waterproof house that had no refuse, yet usually only had one or two lines in the introduction. So the more information, the better. You also have to have a nice profile picture. This is essential. It is one of the first things the homeowners will see. I think this is quite obvious, but take some pictures with animals, especially the animals you want to look after. So, for example, if you want to look after cats, take a picture with a cat. If you want to look after a sheep, take a picture with a sheep. As you can see here, this is sometimes quite hard, especially if you want to take a picture with a grumpy cat. This is my parents cat, and for this picture, I had to bribe her with food. Yes, she's that's going to get anyway. Don't be too serious in your photos eater and take a photo of something you enjoy doing. So have someone take your picture. Rather, you do sports. Go to the park while you cook something like that. Another important thing to include in your profile are references, especially when you just get started and you don't have reviews from homeowners Yet. The's references can be written by your previous landlords and a feature or even your best friend. These references show a glimpse off who you are as a person, and it's a great way for homeowners to get to know you better.
3. How to Write an Email to Home Owners: So one day you're browsing through the website, and all of a sudden there it is. The perfect houses have to craft an email. You want to spend some time working on this, and this is easier said than done. You have to sound spontaneous and really excited about the house it. But at the same time, a lot of homeowners want a calm, patient person to look after their pets. So I would recommend using exclamation marks and expressions such as I'm so thrilled to do this every now and then. But please don't don't agree with. Also applying for house sitting jobs is kind of like applying for a normal job. So if you just copy and paste the same email and send it to everyone, people are gonna notice. In this regard. Your email. I usually try to mix some off the more standard sentences with more personal sentences that are directly referring to the advertisement in question. So, like paragraph, where'd you introduce yourself and where you talk a little bit about your job or your travel plans? And on a more personal level, you could ask me questions about animals, for example, what habits they might have or what their personalities are like. You could also let the homeowners know what through you specifically to their profile in this regard. It's also really good to call the pets vital er name instead of just calling them the pets or your cats and dog calling Pat Spider name. It just gives it that extra personal touch. You also have to be quick responding to the listing because there's a lot of competition for the really nice houses in popular countries such as Portugal, Switzerland and Italy. On the trust of house sitters website, for example, you can see how many sitters have already applied to one particular houses, And so when you see that there are already 15 to 20 candidates for house it in a popular city such as London or Paris, you might want to keep looking for another house it and they'll just waste your time on this one, a feast in beginning where you just start out. I usually check the website two times a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, just so I could be one of the first sitters to respond to listing in the beginning when I had just created my profile. I used to check the website even more often, but now I limited to twice a day.
4. How to Schedule Your House Sits When You're On The Road Full-time: If you're a digital, No met and you're on the road full time planning your house, it's can sometimes be a little bit tricky when I'm in a certain country. I usually try to get houses that are not a former apart from each other, but sometimes there's a three day gap or four day gap, or even longer. Sometimes there's no avoiding this. For those so called get days, I usually book a hotel room at least one month in advance through websites such as booking dot com, because they have rooms with a very flexible cancellation procedure, just in case my travel plans change. Another option is to get an Airbnb on Airbnb. You can also get discounts if you stay longer at someone's place. These discounts she often get when you stay for a week or a month or longer. Another website that you can use for a so called gap days is couchsurfing if you're not familiar with this concept, Couchsurfing is a website where you can message people from all over the world to ask to stay in your home and hang out with them, usually for one or two nights. The's host love meeting new people and therefore don't charge you for the accommodation. It's also fun way to make new friends with similar interests. It's important to remember that you have to be quite social when doing couchsurfing. If you're just looking for a place to sleep out, surfing is probably not for you. Something else that you will have to take into account when planning your truffles is that some homeowners want you to come one day earlier to show you around before the actual house it starts. You can have a muse together and get to know each other better. Whether the home owners would likely to come the day before the trip is one of the first questions I asked once the house, it is confirmed. That way you will have enough time to plan your itinerary. I look for other houses that fit your schedule.
5. Final Tips: So if you were really excited right now and are thinking, Yes, I want to be a house sitter, but you don't have much experience with bet yet. What do you do? Why not look after your friends and families? Pets in homes for a while, especially if you want to look after farm animals or hearses, you've got to have experience. So to make up for this, you could, for example, volunteer at a farm first. If you'd rather look after cats and dogs, you could also volunteer in animal shelter. I really like this last option, because this way you're not only bringing joy to the lives of many rescue cats and dogs, but you will also learn to be more comfortable around animals. And it will give you the confidence you need to convey that feeling of trust to the homeowners. And that is one thing that's important to remember. It's all about trust. You have to somehow create a feeling off trustworthiness so that the home owners know that you, a stranger from the Internet, will be responsible when looking after their for babies. So get in touch with them Skype text or call if you have to. In my experience, just letting people know that you're willing to do the stinks is usually enough. Although some people, of course, will actually want to Skype or call, I think it is also safe for you as the house sitter. I would definitely recommend getting in touch with the home owners. Long report actual house it starts and to maintain that communication so that you are not going to be complete strangers. When you meet during the house it itself, you could offer to send updates to the homeowners as well. I usually send an update about the pets every other day, but you can, of course, ask the homeowners how often they want to receive updates. These were my tips and tricks for becoming a house sitter. I hope you've learned something new today, and I wish you all the best with getting your very first house it. Good luck
Marlinde Elize
