Help Centre

Having gone to the effort and (maybe) the expense of registering with MindMyHouse.com as a house sitter member, consider these simple guidelines to help you create the kind of fabulous 'sitter available' listing that you deserve to have and that will attract home owners to you.

1. Don't shortchange yourself. Less is not more when it comes to advertising your house sitting services. Home owners are busy people, but they are prepared to give you all the time that it takes to read your listing. So take more than a moment to craft an listing of around 150 words that really sells your house sitting services. Note that the first 400 characters of your blurb will be shown in the search results so start with your best stuff.
2. Your title is your banner. Your title functions as the banner for your listing and thus needs to sum up what your listing is all about in a memorable kind of way. This may be your only chance to tempt someone to click onto your listing to read your lovingly crafted text so make it a good one!
3. Why do you want to house sit? 'All the world is a stage' or so the saying goes. In your listing try and summarise the kind of person you are, provide a brief history of who you are, and, most importantly, tell home owners WHY you are seeking house sitting positions. It is never enough to say 'contact me for more information'. They won't.
4. Are you experienced? Be honest. Tell home owners about how much previous experience of house sitting you have and if you do have referees, reassure them that they can be contacted to confirm your experience and trustworthiness.
5. What do you have to offer home owners? Rack your brain to think of what attributes you may have to offer a home owner. You may be a dog lover who has done a pet first aid course, you may have an 'at home' lifestyle feeding a young baby or writing a novel, you may be a keen organic gardener or you may be a locksmith who can offer the home owner free advice on home security. Anything that encourages home owners to add you to their favourite potential house sitters should be included in your listing.
6. You're trustworthy, right? You need to reassure home owners that their most valuable assets will be safe in your hands. It doesn't hurt to say just how responsible, mature and trustworthy you are.
7. Punctuation, spelling, grammar. Yes, boring I know, but crucial in giving a good first impression (this is the only impression you have to give) to make it onto home owners' favourite house sitting candidates. Style is just as important as content so please follow the conventions of good written English. Spell check your listing in Word before pasting it into the site. Only use complete sentences in your listing. Use commas and full stops where required. Don't use any slang or abbreviations. A single 100-word sentence full of ellipses ...and unusual 'text talk' abbreviations will be passed over by every home owner from Anchorage to Zagreb.
8. How's your English? If English isn't your first language or if writing is not your strongest skill, then ask someone more skilled at writing in English to help you with your listing. As long as it's factual and correct, there's no such thing as cheating when composing your sitter available listing, honest.
9. Do you have a desirable address? Make sure that your email address gives home owners the right impression. If it's rude or crude (such as these gems: 'slackarse@lycos.com.au', 'el.loco.albino@shrooms.co.sa', 'lusciouslucy@paradise.co.nz') or if it includes your name and place of work you may want to use a more neutral address. A suitable email address both conveys what a respectable person you are and can preserve your anonymity for as long as you want it to.
10. Maximise your chances of being found. Our search engine searches the database of sitter available listings in structured ways (trying to match ALL THE TERMS in the search with terms in your listing) to produce predictable search results. You can maximise the number of times your listing is found by loading your listing with relevant 'keywords'.
11. Check out these samples. Lastly, check out our selection of sample 'house sitter available' listings. You may be inspired.