As a petsitter, you can essentially operate your business two ways: one, you can offer a broad range of petsitting services for different kinds of animals (kind of like a jack-of-all-trades) or, two, you can specialize in a particular type of pet or service. Which is best?

The short answer is neither. Whichever is “best” is whichever works well for you in your particular local area with your particular potential clients.

But, we’ll take a quick look at the benefits and drawbacks of each to help you make an informed decision.

Benefits of Generalizing

• You’ll have more opportunities to find more petsitting jobs.
• You’ll enjoy a wide variety of jobs and animals.
• You won’t be limiting or pigeonholing yourself in the petsitting field.
• Clients with more than one pet or more than one petsitting need (pet taxi, dog walker, house sitter, etc.) will be more likely to hire you.

Drawbacks of Generalizing

• You may feel like a jack-of-all-trades, and a master of none.
• Some clients, especially those with exotic pets, may shy away from hiring you.

Benefits of Specializing

• Clients may be more likely to hire you if you’re an “expert” with a particular pet, breed or service.
• You have a unique marketability to potential clients.
• You may notice an increase in your confidence, since you feel so comfortable and knowledgeable in a particular area.
• If you’re already familiar/experienced in a particular niche, specialization makes life easier.

Drawbacks of Specializing

• You’ll limit yourself.
• Clients with more than one type of pet may prefer to hire a generalist.

Our advice? If you’re a petsitting novice, start out as a generalist (since you technically don’t have a choice). Take tons of petsitting jobs and learn all you can from your different experiences. If at that point you’d like to start focusing on a niche of petsitting, start limiting your jobs to only those that you’d like to specialize in.

Also, consider your goals. Is petsitting a hobby or your career? Which method do you think will take you farther? Do you want to build a reputation as an expert? Will being an expert still leave you with enough jobs, especially if petsitting is your primary business?

Whichever you choose, good luck!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 10:27 am and is filed under Pet Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.