Showing posts with label housesit applications. Show all posts
Showing posts with label housesit applications. Show all posts

Book Review - The House Sitting Book, Travel the World and Your Lodging is Free

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Our long time housesitter members Josie and Conrad Schneider Housecarers profile for:Josie and Contrad - (Cultureconnectors) have released an e-book jammed packed with great tips on how to land housesits and line-up house sit after housesit. It is always great to hear stories like theirs - and learn proven tips for successful housesit applications.

The House Sitting Book Travel the World and Your Lodging is Free I wrote THE HOUSE SITTING BOOK to help you succeed at winning the best assignments. Tips like how to word your profile – and its heading – so that homeowners will trust you with the care of their home. I give you real examples of good and bad profiles along with the explanation of exactly why the wording works or doesn’t. (One mistake is posting a profile with your wants and needs instead of illustrating your experience and readiness to care for someone else’s beloved home.) I also show you how to reveal truisms about yourself that make your profile pop.

And it’s essential to sign up for the daily email alerts. One tip tells you how to respond to desired house sitting posts so that yours is among the first to arrive in the homeowner’s inbox. And I show you exactly how to word your letter so that it stands out. The prime assignments can prompt a hundred or more replies, so yours needs to be stellar – and very personal. Included in THE HOUSE SITTING BOOK are two actual letters of mine that won us prime assignments in Copenhagen and near Washington D.C. in the United States. I give examples of why my letters grabbed the homeowner’s attention, (out of the nearly two hundred letters they each received), like how I commented on items in one homeowner’s photos that were near and dear to her heart.

My husband Conrad and I live the house sitting lifestyle, going from one assignment to the next, with time in between to travel and discover new countries and cultures. We are not wealthy people. Conrad is retired and I am a freelance writer and blogger. And because we have learned how to travel on a tight budget, I also present tips, including my 3-Step-Method to finding low-cost off-the-beaten-path lodging that is family-owned. These are the sweet places that we remember long after leaving because the generous owners share local lore, food and historical information as well as friendship – like the 350-year-old Gasthof Locher in the Italian Dolomites where we helped bring the cows down the hillside from the upper pasture, or the Catalan Cal Jepa apartment owned by a restaurateur who gave us a personal tour of his vineyard and fruit orchards.

THE HOUSE SITTING BOOK is a 100-page downloadable ebook packed with my inspiration, Conrad’s analytical tables and graphs, as well as fun-facts sprinkled about, (like: Norwegians drink more coffee than any other people on the planet), and 2 questionnaires which delve into your needs and motives for house sitting and traveling. There are charts for cost-of-living and transportation costs. There are tips for using public transportation and rental cars. I talk about the differences in house sitting assignments in terms of urban vs. remote, and more importantly, what that means for you. For instance, Conrad and I accepted an extremely remote house sit in Spain for an off-the-grid mountainside home. I show you photos and explain the good and the bad, so you can judge if remote house sitting is right for you.

I devote one section of the book to contracts, a very important aspect of your house sitting happiness! Among the many other subjects covered in THE HOUSE SITTING BOOK are language, visas, travel hacking and technology.

Here’s what others are saying:
“If you've considered house sitting as a vacation option or even a lifestyle, The House Sitting Book is a very comprehensive resource to get you started. Regardless of your web expertise, Josie makes the house sitting and travel lifestyle accessible with tips and tricks for finding and landing (and getting the most out of) house sitting gigs, as well as providing lots of tips for stress-free travel and experiencing new cultures. You can tell Josie is an expert, as most of the material is written from personal experience, with contextual anecdotes peppered throughout.” -Nora Dunn, The Professional Hobo


"This book is a gem! Whether you are in "the lifestyle" or merely considering it, you will find tips and facts that make this a must-read book. Not only is The House Sitting Book full of all kinds of information, it is well written and researched. It will cut your time in locating a house to sit and help you get assignments faster." -- Joan Sheridan, U.S.A.


I invite you into my world so that you too can reap the rewards – and fun – of house sitting. I wish you epic and safe travels! Click HERE to read more about THE HOUSE SITTING BOOK.

Identify with the needs of the homeonwer First - when applying for a housesit

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Good advise from a homeonwer for housesitter applications:
"Please note that we will not be responding to every person as we ask specifically for candidates who have experience giving insulin shots to animals to note this in their message to us, and if they do not, we will not be contacting them.

Please understand that we are getting messages only about how this will be good for the sitter/what they want, and that is not how we envision this service working: it needs to be a mutually beneficial relationship.

It is actually quite alarming to us how every candidate who has contacted us so far only talks about their needs"

We have already recommended to first identify with the needs of the homeowner - see below:

I recommend you try some different approaches to increase your response.
It is important to identify with the needs of the homeowner and show them how to help.
Initially don't talk too much about your own requirements and overload
them with questions - that can come latter. And don't just say see my profile I'm interested.

We ask homeowners to respond to all applications and send weekly reminders asking them
to do this. However sometimes they are pressed for time and only reply to the outstanding
applications - so it is important to make your applications stand out.

To view your applications please click the sent link from messages after login. If the username
in the sent message is red the message has been read by the homeowner.

It is also important to include all your favoured cities towns and city areas on your profile as many
homeowners search directly.

Loading up pictures, police clearances, certificates references etc and updating your calendar and Preferences also helps- the
more information accessible by the homeowner the better.

All the references, police clearances etc are placed in your private reference library that can only be accessed by
homeowners or homeowners you apply to.