Dog Walking
When we were in L.A. recently we found a sweet little park in the Holly Wood hills and naturally enough there were lots of people walking dogs. More importantly however we saw numerous people walking groups of dogs. This is not a new phenomenon and has been reported widely in the news, but it is also starting to catch on elsewhere.
In less status oriented communities there may be some resistance to the idea of paying someone to walk your pooch, but what about the times that you are ill, or held late at the office or genuinely unable through no fault of your own to give Fido his daily constitutional?
There may not seem a lot to this business, but if you have owned or been around
dogs you will find it much easier than if you have not. Your service should
contain information such as:
Dogs will be walked for 60 minutes minimum excluding travelling time
Groups of dogs will not exceed 10 in number
All dogs will get a minimum or 10 minutes off of the lead in a safe environment
Un-castrated dogs over 9 months and bitches in season will not be walked in groups
If you search on line you can find services such as ˇ§nyc dog walkersˇ¨ and read their advertising pitch. If you read a few of these you should get sufficient to put together your own manifesto and servicing plan.
Assuming that you understand the service you will offer, you can start initially as a one man/woman operation and advertise your services locally. Note that locally does not have to mean in your immediate area, if you would be embarrassed servicing your friends/neighbours/family then take a bus across town. It is probably best to choose an affluent neighbourhood, but not so affluent that people will have live in help as they will not require a walking service.
I would start simply by dropping flyers door to door. You can drop a couple of hundred fairly quickly and providing you get your pitch right you are very likely to get some enquiries.
Donˇ¦t advertise your rates; do specify your standard pick up and drop off times. Offer services outside of these for individual walks, if you have the time to do so. The key at this stage is to generate enquiries.
When you get phone calls be prepared to discuss with the owners what they are looking for. If you make their life easier and meet their individual requests you can build a loyal customer quickly.
You donˇ¦t need to charge a lot for money for this service. If you can get 5 dogs in a group at $10 an hour that means you are earning $50 an hour, if you can do this every day twice a day you have suddenly developed a $700 a week income on top of your normal job, studies, lifestyle. Double the group size to 10 dogs and you would be earning a sizeable income.
Using flyers is just a start point, if you are prepared to put in the work, and/or hire walkers then you can look at advertising on local forum groups, and social networking sites within your region, use the Yellow Pages and local newspapers so that you can be found easily by ˇ§emergency customersˇ¨ and then start to think about promoting your business in less orthodox ways, such as writing articles for the local newspaper, or doing radio interviews. A simple approach to a local journalist or show producer may be sufficient to get you a lot of interest.
There is scope to grow this business particularly in large cities, with dense populations.
You may want to use a van or minivan to collect and drop the dogs off. If you hire walkers then you may want to continue doing the pick ups and drop offs to maintain customer contact.
For many customers the dog may be a child substitute, take as much care with them as you would running a baby sitting service and make sure your customers are aware of this.