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Creating your own 'sitter wanted' listing is a great way of gathering offers from interested house sitters without having to do the hard work of searching MindMyHouse.com for a house sitter yourself. Consider these simple guidelines to writing a 'sitter wanted' listing that will provide potential house sitters with enough of the right type of information to know if they really should apply for your house sitting assignment.

1. Don't shortchange yourself. Less is not more when it comes to advertising your house sitting assignment. House sitters 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 adequately describes your house sitting assignment.
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. Two bases to cover. 'All the world is a stage' or so the saying goes. In your listing you need to cover two bases simultaneously. Your first challenge is to adequately describe what you are looking for and expect from a house sitter. Your second challenge is to adequately describe what your house sitting assignment can offer to a house sitter.
4. Give them enough to go on. Many 'sitter wanted' listings suffer from the same fault: lack of information. It is never enough to say 'contact me for more information'. Curious house sitters may be motivated to do this but you could end up repeating the same information endlessly to house sitters who quickly realize the assignment is unsuitable for them.
5. Answer these questions. Try and answer the following questions in your listing: Where is my property located? What type and size is my property? What and how many animals will require care? What kind of maintenance will my property need? What are the good features of my property? What are the good features of my location? Is there anything a house sitter should know before they apply for the assignment?
6. Punctuation, spelling, grammar. Yes, boring I know, but crucial in getting your message across. 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.
7. 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 wanted' listing.
8. Staying anonymous. MindMyHouse.com preserves your anonymity right up until the moment you respond to house sitters' emails. As your usual email address can give away all sorts of things about you such as your name and your place of work, you may want to retain your anonymity by creating a new email address to use on MindMyHouse.com.
9. Check out these samples. Lastly, check out our selection of sample 'house sitter wanted' listings. You may be inspired.