A profession for pet lovers!

If you are charmed by all things furred, feathered and finned, this is the profession for you. As a professional pet sitter, you will care for people's pets while they're away, either for the day or for longer periods of time like during vacations or business trips. Pet sitters play with their charges, feed them, brush them, and possibly give them medication or injections. They often offer other services to make life easier for their customers, like cleaning up accidents and changing cat litter boxes, bringing in newspapers and mail, watering plants and taking out trash.
This article was excerpted from Pet Businesses, a startup guide available from SmallBizBooks.com.

How much money can I make as a pet sitter?

So how much can you earn? It really depends on where you're doing business and how many visits you can make in one day. Here's an easy way to estimate what you might make. Using a figure of $16 per visit, which Jerry Wentz, the president of the board of directors of the National Association of Professional Pet Sitters, says is the national average for pet sitters, determine how many visits per day you think you can handle. Let's say you can handle eight 25-minute visits a day.

Here's the math:
8 visits x $16/visit = $128/day
$128/day x 5 days/week = $640/week
$640 x 50 weeks (two weeks off for good behavior!) = $32,000/year

Bump that up to 10 visits per day at $18 a visit, and you'll earn $45,000 per year. Ad two more visits per day at the same rate, and you're up to $54,000. Incidentally, it's customary to charge an additional $1 to $3 for each extra animal in the same household, which of course would improve your bottom line.
This article was excerpted from Pet Businesses, a startup guide available from SmallBizBooks.com.