My Summer Dog Walking Service
Many kids do different things to ear money during the summer. They babysit, mow lawns, work at the local swimming pool, or run a lemonade stand. What did I choose to do to make money this summer? I chose dog walking. When I first came up with the idea, I thought it would be very easy and that I would make wads of cash off of it. But dog walking is a lot harder than I expected!
Why? First you have to plan it out. You can’t just go to a random person’s front door and ask if you can walk their dog. Before I did anything, I did some research. I looked up what the regular pay was for kid dog walkers. On most websites and blogs, it said that average pay was about $10 an hour. So I settled on $4 for thirty minutes and $8 dollars for an hour. It seemed just about right since I am not a professional and I am a kid.
The next big question: How am I going to let people know I am offering to walk their dogs? I chose flyers. I got on the computer and wrote a few sentences on what this business is for and why I am doing it. I put my email address on the flyer so that they would know where to reach me if they wanted to set up a time. Then I included my rates — the price I was charging for how much time I was walking. I printed out about 40 flyers and then I started putting them in people’s mailboxes. I did it around almost the whole neighborhood.
Now, the last step: waiting. You have to wait if you want people to respond to what you have put out. If you get a lot of responses, that’s great! And if you don’t, that’s fine, too. Just get two or three people in your neighborhood that you know and ask them personally if you can offer them your services.
In the end, I didn’t get too many responses. But I still got three people in the neighborhood whom I know who were willing to let me walk their pets!
Photo courtesy Mari Chiles
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