Becoming a dog walker to exploit a universe of available dog walking jobs and opportunities begins with learning how to set up your own dog walking services correctly and systematically. There are not enough dog walking companies around to hire dog walkers, though there are millions of eager dog owners more than willing to pay you directly to take their dogs out for a walk on a regular basis. And ultimately that’s your employer, not some dog walking company.

In an earlier article about How To Start Your Dog Walking Business To Make Money Fast, Sporty Dog Walker explained from a general perspective why you may want to consider setting up a dog walking business and the basics on how to do it.

In this article, however, we explain in meticulous detail the key strategy to becoming a dog walker. We explain how you can immediately start setting up dog walking services from scratch. This is a comprehensive, nearly exhaustive free guide that will give you the knowledge and confidence to know what steps to take to achieve becoming a dog walker.

Get paper and pencil, some delicious beverage and let’s get started! Do remember to bookmark this page to return to it for future reference.

Becoming A Dog Walker Means You’re First A Dog Walking Services Marketer

Making money dog walking begins with you knowing how to perform effective marketing. Marketing is an amazing discipline. Done right, you can generate great interest in a service that you don’t even have. You can begin receiving inquiries from people wanting more details from you, based just on how you present yourself. Those who really want what they read or hear from you will call you. Your job is to attract their attention. But, of course, you will never be in business if you offer what you cannot deliver. Still, the point here is that you don’t even have to have a business fully established to test whether it has a chance of success in your local market. And this is a crucial factor in becoming a dog walker.

Only too many people fail as dog walkers before they even taking their first dog out for a stroll. They freeze in fear at the thought of becoming formal and calling themselves a business. The solution to this worry is not to play by conventional rules. Think first of becoming a dog walker as you might think of taking on a hobby. But this is meant to be a serious hobby that you want to turn into a trade day by day.

Don’t try to eat the proverbial elephant all at once. Start with the first bite. Start thinking like someone who means business without having to invest all you have at once in becoming an official business. You will see that, if you sequence your actions in the right order, the business will begin to take shape before you almost by itself.

The first step to becoming a dog walker is learning how to set up a dog walking marketing scheme. You will need a well-thought out and well-run marketing campaign. This is your first step to gain confidence about really starting a dog walking business. Let’s walk through this process.

Dog Walking Services Marketing Step-by-Step: Making The Moola

Before you establish a pricing schedule for dog walking, before you create your first liability waiver form or pay your first professional liability insurance premium, before you consider drafting a single page of a formal dog walking business plan to get a loan, simply know that you are going nowhere unless you know who your target audience is for dog walking services. Unless you hit these likely customers like a bullseye, you’re dead in the water from the very start. You exist for them, not for yourself and not even for their dogs.

Defining Who You’re Going To Proposition

What is a target audience? A target audience is a collection of groups of people called market segments, who share traits in livelihood and behavior. For example, a segment of the market that you’re after may consist of people living within a specific radius from a park where you wish to walk their dogs. It may include people in that area who own and don’t rent their homes, have children or are childless, earn a salary or are business owners, are women-only, men or couples, fit within a certain age range, have a preference for certain communications media (prefer phone to email, or social networks online to phone texting, etc.), have a predilection for certain types of information, and share a particular set of consumption habits. The more specific you are in describing the ideal market segments that you’re interested in serving, the easier it will be for you to position yourself with a valid dog walking service proposition that will pique their interest. In short, know your audience. Define it with precision. You’re going to be speaking with them based on who they are and what you know they want.

Discovering What They Want And Why

Ifbecoming a dog walker pitbull with glasses you are already feeling a bit overwhelmed just by having to define a customer audience in your vicinity to target, let us help you more precisely. Open this list of market segments from Claritas MyBestSegments by Nielsen company, where you can wrap your mind around a set of 68 pre-defined audiences characterized by demographics and behaviors across the U.S.

Once you’ve become generally familiar with the segments available, look up your own ZIP code at the website and discover which of the 68 market segments are most prevalent where you live. Choose the segment that you want to target. Jot down all the details available free to you from Claritas regarding your selected target market. These are the people who you are going after. You’re about to use the information that you’ve collected about them to answer the following 3 questions:

  1. What advantages do dog owners in this market segment gain from owning their dogs?
  2. Which one of those advantages can I enhance for them best by walking their dogs?
  3. What deepest hunger for a benefit drives the desire for this top advantage in these dog owners?

The moment you have a precise answer for these 3 questions, you will know what buttons to press for your target audience to react with passion and purpose to your proposition for service. But let’s work out an example first.

Let’s say that you’ve visited Claritas and set your eyes on Segment 17, the “Urban Elders” market in your local area. Who are they?

According to Claritas, they are “a segment located in the downtown neighborhoods of such metros areas as New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Miami, are more likely to be renters than other households in their age cohort. They enjoy the cultural options available to them in their communities, frequently attending musical performances and other live events.” They are also a sub-segment of the Midtown Mix crowd. Who is that crowd?

The Midtown Mix crowd is a diverse bunch, “a group of mostly younger, midscale urban renters. It’s the most tech savvy of the urban social groups and consists of a mix of singles and couples. In Midtown Mix, the households are dominated by consumers who pursue active social lives – frequenting bars, health clubs, and restaurants at high rates, listening to progressive music, driving small imports, and acquiring the latest consumer electronics.” The Urban Elders are the more well-off minority of this Midtown Mix group because, while the median income of Midtown Mixers is $49,022, Urban Elders make 32% more than the median at $64, 576. What do they do with that money?

Here is what their lifestyle is like along with their demographics.

Lifestyle & Media Traits

Owns a Lexus
Eats at Starbucks
Shops at Banana Republic
Follows men’s tennis
Flies JetBlue
Watches IFC
Listens to Jazz

Demographics Traits

Urbanicity: Urban
Income: Midscale
Make 1.17% of US Households: 1,448,568
Household Technology: Above Average
Income Producing Assets: High
Age Ranges: Younger than 55

Preparing To Make Your Initial Pitch: The Essence Of Your Argument

how become dog walker hound torquoise glassesThis is quite a mouthful of information from Claritas, isn’t it? And it’s all free to you! What then can you do with it next? Well, answer the 3 questions that we gave you. You’re going after becoming a dog walker by thinking like a marketer, and you’re half way there. You now know enough about these people either to make an intelligent guess or go meet some of them locally to validate your assumptions about them. But let’s make an educated guess first.

1. What advantages do dog owners in this market segment gain from owning their dogs?

These are well-off renters who love going out a lot and often where dogs aren’t allowed. They’re top users of technology and electronics, and no doubt work a lot, having successful careers as singles and couples. Yet, being younger than 55, they are in no hurry to have kids. Their dogs can give them the advantage of having something to cuddle and care for without the level of responsibility that a child would require. They can fit lap-size pets into their small cars and apartments without trouble and can enhance their social lives with them when alone or hosting at their flats or by taking them for a stroll in the downtown metro areas, to receive compliments for owning such fine, pampered creatures.

2. Which one of those advantages can you enhance for them best by walking their dogs?

Let’s say you want to target female Urban Elders approaching their 50’s. Since they’re super technology savvy and into electronics, your specialty is going to be to create and maintain a web page that you can load with pictures and narratives of each walk you take with their dogs, profiling what you’re doing with their pets as the walk progresses, so that these women feel confident that their beloved pooches are not only in the right hands but having a blast while at it.

You can guarantee them that you will daily document your visits, track how long you walked, when you departed, where you went, what time you came back and in what condition the pooches returned, whether you’ve refilled the food and water bowls, whether the dogs did “their business”, and how their overall disposition was, that is, did they play, did they get in trouble with somebody or another dog, did they make a mess somewhere and did you clean it up. They can then share all this information via technology with their friends and neighbors. They can do it even while frequenting a Starbucks, or shopping at Banana Republic or listening to a jazz concert, or chilling at a local pub on a date. You’ve given them profound peace of mind and made them part of the adventure. But there’s more to do!

3. What deepest hunger for a benefit drives the desire for this top advantage in these dog owners?

Let’s say the deepest hunger which you can discern that drives their desire for being kept informed and participating in their dog’s happiness in nearly a real-time basis is to experience something akin to motherhood. It may be that they never could have children. It may be that they chose not to have them or delayed their choice until it was too late. Whatever the reason, you discovered in speaking with enough of them that they baby their dogs because they see them not as pets but as a part of themselves. To them it matters more that their dogs love you than it does that you love their dogs.

They’re highly protective, even maternal in their treatment of their pets. And once you convince them that you will care for them as if they were your own children, you got clients for life, if you show them you are reliable and trustworthy. This is what will make you unique and valuable with this market segment. And they will refer you to others just like them, which is how your business can rapidly grow within a narrow and very selective niche in a short period of time.

Now that you have a precise reason to communicate with a specific group of people with a unique value proposition, it is time to deliver this message in the form of an offer. But before that, you will need a few tactical tools to include with your pitch to make it stick. It’s all part of becoming a dog walker and setting up your dog walking services step by step.

Setting Up Your Dog Walking Services Marketing Toolbox

Create a Dog Walking Business Name

  • Based on the 3 key questions that you asked of your audience, come up with the top 3 benefits that you will promise to deliver to the clients that you want to work for.
  • Use the most important benefit of the 3 to create a catchy name for your business, assuming you won’t call the business by your own personal name. For example, if your top 3 benefits are 1) to deliver respectful, warm and empathetic interactions with your sensitive pet, 2) to enable play, exploration and fitness in a safe outdoors environment, and 3) to provide real-time tracking and reporting of all activities including location, timing, live video or pictures and a personalized online profile of activities undertaken and results achieved with every outing, then, if you’re aiming to make benefit #2 your most important one, you could call your business something like “Fit Adventurer Doggy Walking Services”, and give it a tagline such as “Safe sniffing outdoors explorations”. Can you see how you can come up with the name and tagline based on the description of the top benefits that you’re promising?

Create a Memorable Dog Walking Business Card

  • List at the top of the card the most important benefit that your business offers, followed by your personal contact information.

Example:

Enjoy a healthier, more relaxed companion whenever you return from work

Fit Adventurer Doggy Walking Services
Safe sniffing outdoors explorations

John Doe, Professional Dog Walker
Cell: 555-555-5555
Email: John.Doe.Fit Adventurer@gmail.com
1234 Anywhere Street, Any City, State 00000

Create a Dog Walking Advertising T-Shirt

Marketing collateral are sales support tools to be used across various media channels, such as brochures or flyers for print media, or web pages and social network sites for online media. For starters, the following are the most appropriate collateral to brand yourself clearly with as becoming a dog walker.

  • Create a simple t-shirt or sweater design that attracts attention. (Contact us to get help designing your own dog walker t-shirt.) You do not need an official business logo if you don’t have one. The shirt could simply display text saying something like:dog walking t-shirt

Dogs Also Need Exercise, Ask Me How Much Now.

Or, It’s Dog Walk Day And I’m Ready For Duty. Ask Me.

Or, Dogs Can’t Chew Shoes Cuz I Walk ‘Em. Want The Same?

  • Place your business name, phone number or blog address onto the shirt. Then wear your dog walking branded shirt whenever you’re out walking dogs or anywhere that your target audience frequents. If they stop you to talk, you got all they need right there on your chest and back.

INSIGHT

If you don’t have any paying clients yet, then walk your friend, family, neighbor, or even your local animal shelter’s dogs and wear your branded shirt. You are your own marketing campaign at this point. You are your own billboard. Make the shirt bright and attractive. Display it like a uniform. You’re becoming a dog walker!

Take dogs out for walks at times when you’ll be seen by lots of your target audience at the locations where they walk their dogs. Let people see you as accessible. It’s a requirement to becoming a dog walker. You must become visible. No better advertising exists for a professional dog walker than to be walking two or three dogs all at once while showing off his brand. Carry business cards with you and be ready to engage your target audience in conversation. Ask them questions about their dogs. Are they restless? Sickly? Destructive?

Are the owners tired, concerned, frustrated? Have they had any experience with dog walking services? What was it like? What might their interests or fears be? Probe with open-ended questions. Be friendly and test your assumptions and expectations about them. You know enough to be dangerous. Eliminate the possibility of sounding presumptuous by understanding their lifestyle and consumer choices from their own lips. Keep a helpful attitude before them. You’re there to solve a problem for them, maybe even two, and no more. Just listen carefully, be attentive and useful.

Visit pet food stores or grooming shops with a good-looking dog in your hands and greet people on their way out, handing them a business card or flyer. Let them know you care. And speaking of fyers…

Create a Dog Walking Services Flyer

  • As part of your arsenal of collateral, you can draft a flyer that lists the most important dog walking advantages that your target audience will receive from your services. List several of your references and some positive comments (testimonials) that they’ve made about you.
  • Make sure to select references who emphasize the benefits that they gained from using you as a dog walker. (Click the following link to download some sample dog walking services flyers to use as a template for your own flyers. This other link will take you to a sample dog walking flyer analysis to think about.)
  • Drop these flyers and business cards at locations that your potential customers frequent. Provide an incentive to the business hosts who become willing to let you hand them out in their store. Explain your Dog Walker Partner Referral Program or offer to promote their business in exchange for receiving their support. Do it with businesses that find your services complementary to theirs.
  • The following is a concise list of potential locations where to arrange access for your dog walking flyers or business cards:
    • Local veterinary clinics
    • Local grooming shops
    • Local pet stores
    • Local animal shelters
    • Local pet sitters who don’t walk dogs
  • Post your flyers on public bulletin boards at:
      • Parks
      • Walking trails
      • Grocery stores

    • Libraries

Create a Dog Walking Services Door Hanger

Although door hangers are more expensive than flyers, they can be very effective if you target the right audience with them. Since a dog walking business deals chiefly with residential clients, then dropping off door hangers at people’s homes ensures visibility for your dog walking services as you execute on becoming a dog walker. You must be careful, however, on how and to who you deliver these dog walker door hangers. Naturally, you must narrow down your target to a specific kind of neighborhood where residents are likely to find your service valuable. Your hangers will have a greater impact there and consequently your money would have been best spent.

Keep in mind any city ordinance that prohibit you leaving door hangers or hand bills in people’s residences. The following, nonetheless, is a sound rule of thumb. Just verify it with your local business bureau.

    • Distribution of door hangers is not an illegal act, at least in the United States. This is because there is a difference between canvassing and solicitation. Solicitation is what you do when you attempt to secure a sale directly from a stranger. Since you’re approaching someone who neither knows you not solicited your approach, your behavior may be construed to be more than annoying. It may seem threatening or confrontational. It’s referred as being accosted and can be interpreted as a disturbing of the peace.
    • On the other hand, canvassing by leaving ads on someone’s door or through its door mail slot is protected speech. Nevertheless, understand that the U.S. government considers mailboxes to be federal property and makes it a crime under Title 18, Section 1725 for anyone knowingly to deposits “mail-able matter” without postage in an established letter box. Do it and you are subject to a fine. So, avoid the mailboxes. Leave your collateral at the door. Better yet, hang it from the door handle.
    • As we’ve said before, it’s essential that you know who your dog walking target audience is, where they live, and what their needs and deeply felt desires are, so that you can write an effective, personalized message to them. Write an ad for the door hanger that will catch their attention within a few seconds. The ad should speak of benefits. Otherwise, regardless of how targeted your campaign may be, your dog walking audience will not find any value in your words.
    • Press their hot buttons. This was the whole point of doing your research using the Claritas market segmentation profiles and asking the 3 key questions that help you position yourself before your target market. Address their deepest desires.

Start Writing a Dog Walker Blog

become dog walking business german shepherd A blog fits perfectly within what’s expected of a small business owner today. It’s cheap, if not free. It’s easy to setup. It’s easy to maintain. With a blog you can quickly post new material daily, that makes your business look alive and findable. There are two platforms that Sporty Dog Walker recommends you use to begin, if you do not want to pay to set up your own dog walking website. They are WordPress.com and Blogger.com

In both cases we also recommend that you purchase your own domain name. Once you have a name for your company, you are ready to buy a domain name for your blog. (You can buy one from top registrars such as Namecheap, Bluehost or Hostgator.) What should your domain name be? Well, to continue with an earlier example, if you’d chosen to call your company, for instance, Fit Adventurer Doggy Walking Services, then you can search for and buy a domain name such as FitAdventurer.com or FitAdventurerDoggyWalking.com.

It stands to reason that if you include the phrase dog walking in your domain name, the search engines will more readily know what your site is about. Thus, people looking online in your area for dog walking services are more likely to be served your pages. But if you’re going to have plenty of written information about dog walking in your blog, it is no longer necessary to contain the key phrase “dog walking” in your domain name. It is wise, however, to include the city or region that you are serving. For example, you can call your domain FitAdventurerTampaBay.com or FitDoggyWalkingMiami.com which will indicate to the search engine that you are committed to serving a local community. This will help you show up quicker in local search results. Always keep in mind not to make your name too long because it makes it prone to typing mistakes when people try to enter it in the address box. It’s also hard to fit a long domain name in a small business card.

But why buy a domain name at all?

If you brand yourself as a business in your email and website addresses, then there is greater evidence that indeed you’re becoming a dog walker than if you share an address with @gmail.com or @outlook.com or wordpress.com or blogger.com as domain endings. You look more serious, more professional, and not just like a flash in the pan service provider. It’s also not too expensive. Nowadays you can own a domain name for a year for less than $12. It’s more than worth your investment to make you look good on email and on your website.

Here are instructions on How to Setup a Custom Domain on WordPress.com and the same on How to Setup a Custom Domain on Blogger.com.

For simple inspiration, you can visit the following two sites as illustrations of what competent dog walking blogs look like: Dog Adventures Northwest and Puget Sound Puppers.

Once you’ve completed the blog setup process, start doing the following on your blog:

  • Post pictures and video of the dogs that you have walked. Let your clients know that you post pictures and short stories of their dogs’ adventures.
  • Invite your customers to comment on your blog. This really helps to create an almost kindred relationship between you and your clients. Plus, it will give them reason to send prospects to your site.
  • In each post give two to three sentences about how the dog reacted to the walk, what it found on its way, how it interacted with strangers. Make it really mushy and fluffy. It’s not a science project. It’s an adventure! Write something like, “Rex just couldn’t help rub himself all over the tree bark. I mean, he was beside himself looking up that tree [Insert picture of Rex] trying to get the racoon. What a good boy!”
  • Describe your dog walking services in the “About Us” section of your blog and list your unique approach to dealing with dogs and clients under different circumstances. Keep in mind your target audience and what they want to hear from you. Give them what they want.
  • Create a form so people can contact you in writing. Don’t forget to present them with every medium that they can use to reach you – phone, social network, Boxer, WhatsApp, Skype, etc.
  • Create a post listing your services and fees, and then create a link titled “Services & Fees” on your menu or sidebar that directs readers to that post. Make it easy for people to gauge whether they can afford you or not.
  • List your dog walking business forms on a page and let your prospect download them. Explain on that page why you need them to read, fill out and submit the documents to initiate an engagement with you. Tell them how they can return them to you once completed and what your next step will be upon receiving them. Let them know how soon they can expect results from you.
  • In every post list the cities that you serve so that you can rank for them in the search results pages anytime anyone living in them looks for a dog walker agent online.
  • Register your website with Google My Business and Bing Places For Business, plus consider signing up for a Yelp account to register your website for local searches in that directory and to gather your customer testimonials once you begin to secure business for yourself.
  • Create a Facebook Group (not a Facebook Business page) to invite your customers and prospects to it and enable interaction between them and you. Link to it from your blog and vice versa. The value of having a group is that you can freely broadcast announcements and offers to your customer base from a single touch point, plus you can receive feedback and test ideas from them to report back more quickly and conveniently your results than through your blog alone. Set some ground rules. Encourage members to introduce themselves. Keep it private.
  • Surround yourself with dogs and create a welcome video that describes what the group is about and what participants can expect to receive from partaking in it, then launch it. Be sure to promote your group in your flyers and blog posts and other media that you use to reach your audience. And ask them to share it if they like it. Below is a video that shows you how to set up your group in a few straightforward steps.

Letting Someone Else Build Your Dog Walker Website

But let us assume all of the above is too overwhelming for you. You want a website but you don’t want a do-it-yourself approach to get it. What are your options? Well, you have several.

There are service providers who can handle just about everything for you through their online dog walker platforms. They allow you to schedule appointments, by providing your clients an access point online where to log into a portal to check their account with you and request scheduling of services. They allow you to accept and process their credit card payments, manage your calendar, manage your clients, pets and service plan and agreement records through a centralized system, and do so from the comfort of your mobile device. Of course, none of this is for free, though you can use these platforms on a trial basis free-of-charge or at a promotional rate.

Happy Go Mobile, for example, is simple to use and saves time. It allows you to build your clientele by exhibiting your customer reviews on your own site. It is especially useful if you plan to do group walks, which is how you make the big bucks as a dog walker. Other platforms are designed primarily to handle single-dog assignments. So, you need to work around the program’s embedded rule to ask you multiple times if you know in advance whether you are scheduling more than one dog walk for the same time slot. Often you don’t know this in advance, nor do you know if a prospect will truly become a customer. So, Happy Go Mobile makes the task a snap.

Also, why keep the record in the system for someone who ended up not letting you walk her dog? With Happy Go Mobile you don’t need to worry about deleting records to avoid false accounts or invoices that you cannot delete. Happy Go Mobile will populate invoices directly using the data featured in your services schedule, which means that it will automatically insert any additional services that you may have had to include as part of an earlier engagement.

If you cut the invoice too early, Happy Go Mobile will simply pick up the add-ons to include them in the next invoicing cycle. This way it simplifies your management of cash flow. It tracks the ins and outs of checks, and lets you manage your client contracts directly by customer and pet profile. This makes certain that you always know what commitments you have between customers, and the information is accessible to you at your finger tips. You can also set it to recognize the maximum amount of work that you’re able to handle, thereby automatically creating a customer waiting list for you.

I’ve used the description above for Happy Go Mobile not necessarily as a review of dog walker website service providers but as an introduction to them, that you may learn what they more generally offer and how you can benefit from using one of them, if you can afford it. However, below is a list of the most frequented dog walker business platforms by professional dog walkers, if you wish to look beyond Happy Go Mobile. Take a look at their service plans. User pricing ranges from as low as $15 per month for a solo dog walker to over $100 per month for dog walking businesses contracting several walkers.

Attend Local Pet Events as a Professional Dog Walking Business Owner

    • Is the local SPCA holding a fundraiser? Good, then get involved. Speak with people. Show interest in their animals. By becoming a dog walker, you’ll need to explain your business. Hand out business cards. Get the word out about your services.
    • Most cities host events where pets are welcome. You can find out times and locations for these events through newspapers, bulletin boards, online classified ads, Craigslist and other online searches. Some major pet stores host events and training classes where your possible clients gather. So, visit and strike up a conversation. Don’t promote yourself at those venues. You’re not a sponsor, so they’re not there for you to advertise your services. Use them just to get to know people and ask to speak with them later. Be sure to keep up with what’s going on in your local community.

Place Ads On Free Advertising Platforms

  • Post ads on popular advertising platforms. Have the ads point back to your blog to provide visitors with further information about your business.

Some of the most popular online classified ads venues are:

INSIGHT

Consider selling dog products that you could buy in bulk and facilitate delivery for your clients as an extra service. Perhaps they’d rather not have to worry about buying the dog food, toys or treats. So, they might pay you not only to walk the animal and feed it, but to stock up on its weekly feed, or replace its broken toys. Also, it’s good to search ads on free advertising platforms. There are clients to be found through online advertising platforms like Craigslist. People will post their needs there in the hope of getting someone to respond and help.

Set Up a Dog Walking Customer Referral Program

When you start out, your more reliable source of income will come mainly from word-of-mouth customers unless you make a significant and steady investment in an on-going marketing campaign. So far, we’ve walked you through what you need to brand and position yourself, plus the basic tools required in your marketing toolbox to execute a promotion. But to make it all happen like clockwork, you need to organize yourself behind a formal marketing campaign. You can begin a campaign simply by encouraging referrals.

  • Reward those clients who refer your dog walking services to their friends and colleagues. Ask for referrals. If you have furnished a valuable service to someone, then what better time is there to ask for a referral than when they are content with the service that you’ve provided?
  • Pay clients who refer business to you. This is how they’d be more willing to help you in becoming a dog walker. You can do it by offering them two-for one deals or a commission on any deal you close from a referral that they send your way.
  • Set up a points system and tell dog walking clients that after they reach a certain number of points, you will walk their dog for free or at a discount, or they can use the points as a gift certificate for a local friend.

Create a Profitable Dog Walking Pricing Schedule

Dog walking services are priced by the walk, not by the hour, even if you need to estimate your costs by how you spend your time. Therefore, a walk can last less than or more than 60 minutes. How long a walk lasts depends on the dog. A very fit dog can walk for hours. A very obese dog can crash after 10 minutes. You be the judge and set objectives accordingly. If the goal is to get the dog in shape, research the subject and propose a plan for the owner

NOTE: Be very judicious when scheduling simultaneous walks with multiple dogs at various stages of fitness. You don’t want to short-change any client simply because certain dogs couldn’t keep up with each other.

  • Also, walks can be long or short, depending on the route. They can be steep or flat, depending on the terrain. They can be safe or risky, depending on the location. Find out what kind of walks potential clients want for their dogs and how much they are willing to pay for each type.
  • Visit local competitor’s websites and check out their pricing schedule. Call them as a prospect and ask how much they would charge for the same type of walks that you plan to provide. Stay competitive. Only by becoming exclusive and unique can you charge a premium, and only for a very specific niche. So, find your uniqueness and exclusivity for your niche. Else, charge the going local rate.
  • Ask yourself how much your time becoming a dog walker is worth to you per walk. It’s difficult to generalize pricing for dog walking because it differs so much depending on the area, clientele and competition. Offer a baseline price to your customers that will, of course, cover your expenses but will maximize also the value expectation that your clients have of you, remembering that clients want simplicity along with their value. They want a stable pricing scheme that they can understand and use to compare to other service providers. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel.
  • A straightforward method of determining base pricing for your walks in your area may not be apparent to you without more experience. In this case, you should investigate using Wagwalking.com once you’ve set up your dog walking services brand. Wag Walking is the equivalent of Uber for dogs. Wag Walking is an app that you install in your cell to receive on-demand requests from dog owners for delivering dog walking services in your area. It lets you bid on the price for the walk.

 

  • Look at Wag Walking as a means of learning what the lowest baseline pricing for straight dog walking is where you live. But don’t look at this as the absolute price setter because it isn’t. Remember pricing depends on a client’s perception of the value that you offer relative to your competitors’ offers.

Make yourself distinct to a narrow niche and you can charge far more than your competitors for doing basically the same thing but differently.

Dog Walking Services Pricing Calculator

Use this calculator to estimate pricing for dog walking services that you aim to offer based on the criteria listed below. Your goal is to figure out your desired earnings, convert it into an amount to charge per walk, and then compare that amount to your competitors’ prices to adjust for your clients.

  • Estimate your desired weekly earnings. Don’t forget that you’ll be paying off your business expenses with your weekly earnings. Your business expenses will be items like doggy treats, water, gas, etc. So, be sure to determine a weekly earnings amount that will reasonably compensate you for your time and effort after deducting expenses.
  • Estimate the number of hours that you will spend walking dogs each week. Will it be 5 hours? 10 hours? 20 hours a week? Think about the goals that you have set for yourself. How many hours of walking will it require you to meet those goals? If you set a goal of walking 10 dogs per week for 30 minutes twice a week, then you’re looking at walking for 10 hours every week.
  • Divide your estimated weekly earnings by the estimate of hours that you’ll spend walking. By dividing your earnings by your walking time, you’ll end up with an estimated hourly rate.
  • Divide your estimated hourly rate by 60 minutes. Now you have a walking rate per minute.
  • Multiply your walking rate per minute by the number of minutes that you’ll spend on a single walk for a client. Now you know how much to charge for a particular walk.

Example: You’ve determine that your hourly rate is $45. Take $45 and divide it by 60. The result is 75¢ per minute of walking. You know that an out-of-shape Pekingese will take no more than 20 minutes of walking before giving up on you and needing carrying back home. You want to know how much to charge for a 20-minute roundtrip walk.

To do so, you multiply 75¢ by 20 minutes and you end up with $15 for a 20-minute walk for an out-of-shape Pekingese.

  • Compare your price with the prices offered by your competitors. If while becoming a dog walker you see that your prices are much higher than your competitors, then you’ll have to justify your higher price for your clients with a service offering worth that premium, or you’ll have to lower your weekly earnings expectations. If you still want to make your desired weekly earning without explaining price or adjusting it, then you’ll have to spend more time walking each week or get more dogs from harder-to-sell-to customers.
  • In becoming a dog walker it’s customary to offer discounts to clients who hire you for several days in the week. It’s called bulk discounting and the best way to present it is through service tiers. Example: Your client agrees to let you take her dog out for three 20-minute walks per week. You can create a 1-week, 3-week and 6-week tiers system where, rather than charge her $20 for each walk that would add up to $60 per week every week, you instead offer to charge her $55.50 for Tier 1 (1-week), $160 for Tier 2 (3-week) and $300 for Tier 3 (6-week tier).

Essentially, if she is willing to commit to a 1-week service package, then she gets a 7.5% discount. If she commits to a 3-week service package, then she gets an 11% discount and if she commits to a 6-week package, then she gets a 16.7% discount. So long as you’re making a decent profit and she can afford the long-term commitment, you will have longer term work that pays.

Don’t be afraid to adjust your pricing as you learn the business. If your services are of substantial benefit to your clients, then increasing your price periodically won’t destroy your customer base. If they find you valuable, they’ll be willing to pay extra to avoid losing you. If competition increases, then run another market analysis and come up with another segment to target.

Set Up a Reliable Invoicing and Payments System

Accept cash payment only. Set an expectation with your clients that you only accept cash for the time being. That’s not to say that dog walkers aren’t paid by check or credit card. They are. In fact, you may have clients who would rather have the convenience always to pay with plastic than cash. But understand that if you get paid by check and you don’t have a business checking account, you will have to ask the client to write the check out to your personal name rather than to a business.

So far, we have not discussed the nuances of having officially to file for a business license, get a tax ID number, and open a commercial bank account. This is because there is no point in doing all that if you soon come to realize, despite your best wishes, that becoming a dog walker is not for you. Why waste all that money only to learn that this was not the business for you?

But if your hobby becomes a more viable operation because your dog walking services marketing campaign has begun to generate calls, so that your offers are in serious demand, then that’s the time to stop doing business as yourself. That’s the time when becoming a dog walker will require you to create a legal entity, such as a Limited Liability Company or LLC. This is because at this point you will benefit from several tax law advantages and liability protection for becoming an officially certified commercial entity. That will be the time also to get a more comprehensive professional liability insurance. You must give yourself a deadline, however, to achieve this objective, lest you take on too much risk while operating under the status of doing business as (DBA) yourself.

Back to collecting payment in cash…It’s also preferable to do this in order not to risk a bounced check. Invoice your customers on a weekly basis if you’re doing more than 1 walk per week for a client. Professional dog walking services tend to invoice clients on a weekly or monthly basis. Sporty Dog Walker suggests you do the same. It ensures consistency in the management of cashflow when you know that money is coming in on a fixed day of the week or the month just like payday. And it sets expectations for the customer to live up to a formal agreement. It helps them also better budget their dog walking expenses.

INSIGHT

  • It’s preferable to email invoices to your clients. It saves delivery time and postage.
  • Indicate when payment will be late and that you’ll follow up with a phone call, if payment is not received by a certain date. Here are some free templates you can use to create an invoice.
  • Just because professionals tend to invoice on a weekly and monthly basis doesn’t mean that you can’t use a different method for your dog walking business. Maybe your clients would rather pay you for each walk as each concludes. So, be flexible especially when starting out becoming a dog walker.
  • Develop a relationship with your clients first. Give them reason to trust you where money is concerned. But make it official too.
  • Whatever you work out with your client try to secure it in writing as part of a service agreement.
  • Although it is preferable to collect payment in cash when you begin your business, soon enough your customers will want to pay you in the most convenient way for them or opt not to use your services. For most consumers the preferred way of payment is through credit card. Therefore, consider that it is now feasible for you to offer to charge their credit card via a mobile card reader using one of several available mobile credit card transaction service providers, such as Square, QuickBooks GoPayment or PayPal Here.

Invoicing a client after completing several walks can lead to sizable bills and delays in payment. So, using a service like Square can expedite the transaction. There are nonetheless fees associated with accepting credit card payments. But they are well worth the price of not having to chase after invoices. You also give your frequent clients a far easier, smoother means to pay you than asking for increasingly larger lumps of cash.

Tracking Your Dog Walking Business Finances

Last in our list of becoming a dog walker and correctly setting up your dog walking services is the subject of keeping a record of your revenues and expenses. There is no faster way to go broke than by not tracking how cash is flowing through your hands in or out. At first, if you are disciplined and wish not to spend more than the price of an accounting ledger book and a pencil, you can keep track of your financials by hand. As the number of transaction increases, you may want to use a spreadsheet. But for more convenience, you have the option of some cloud-based accounting services.

  • Zoho Invoice, for example, is a free online accounting package from a well-reputed company that lets you track your business finances, unless you want to start with the granddaddy of all small business accounting packages, which is QuickBooks by Intuit or one of its competitors such as FreshBooks.

Zoho allows you to invoice up to 5 customers for free before requiring you to tier up to less than $10 per month for the opportunity of creating invoices recurrently, create estimates, track your time and expenses, and make online payments. It is accessible via your mobile phone through a security layer for completely safe financial transacting. You’re also offered access to a client portal that delivers you the convenience of accessing your estimates, invoices, and timesheets from a single place. There you can learn where you stand financially with your business in a snapshot

Estimating Your Dog Walking Business Cashflow

To keep your operation alive and healthy you need cash. You need cash flowing in and out. Cashflow is the blood of your business. And just like blood through your body, it needs to be nutritious. Cash advances from a credit card are bad blood. Too many expenditures and not enough revenues is a hemorrhage.  Keep a close watch on cash because no cash, no business. Becoming a dog walker that can last depends on how well you manage your cash.

Ideally your business will generate cash incrementally month to month to provide the means for expansion. This depends on how you handle your customer relations and your costs. The worksheet below is a sample cash flow analysis. It will help you understand how to track the cash that you start with every month and compare it to the cash that you end up come month’s end. In between those 2 figures is what you bring in revenue and what you out lay in expenses, including your personal pay in the form of “owner withdrawls”.

  • Study carefully the Dog Walking Cash Flow Estimator below, filling out the colored fields. Test your own assumptions about your future business’ cash flows. You can also click on the bottom-right corner of the Estimator’s pane to download a free copy and work on it off-line. Prepare to run the financials for your own operation.


Becoming A Dog Walker Is Only The Beginning

We’re aware at Sporty Dog Walker that this article has been painstaking is describing the process of setting up your dog walking services as a new business venture from scratch. And it can seem overwhelming. Yet as we said from the beginning, the opportunity for success is enormous because there are millions of dog owners who want your service. We started with the suggestion that to begin offering dog walking services, you first need to think like a marketer and defined who you’re going to proposition in the marketplace. For that you need to select a market segment audience that you can target with your offers and discover what it is they want and why.

To prepare you to make your initial marketing pitch to them, you need as an essential component of your argument to ask yourself 3 key questions about your target audience, without whose answers you cannot position yourself as a unique dog walking service provider, distinct from your local competitors. However, once you’ve found what makes you unique and exclusive to this cohort of potential clients, it’s time to set up your dog walking services marketing toolbox, filling it with a variety of marketing collateral. Below is a summary of the marketing tools that we detailed out for you, and that you’ll need to fill your dog walking business toolbox with. They successfully start you out in becoming a dog walker because they all complement each other:

  • Dog Walking Company Name
  • Memorable Dog Walking Business Card
  • Dog Walking Advertising T-Shirt
  • Dog Walking Services Flyer
  • Dog Walking Services Door Hanger
  • Dog Walker Blog & Facebook Group
  • Local Pet Events Networking Contacts
  • Ads for Free Advertising Platforms
  • Dog Walking Customer Referral Program
  • Profitable Dog Walking Pricing Schedule
  • Dog Walking Services Pricing Calculator
  • Reliable Invoicing and Payments System
  • Secure Income and Expenses Tracking System
  • Careful Estimate and Monitoring of Cashflow

dog walking canine smile graduationWe are convinced it is possible for you to organize all these components as if you were coordinating for a serious hobby, so that you can start your venture small, using free or next to freely available instruments. As you begin to grow, it will then become necessary for you to incorporate, become licensed and pay for a comprehensive professional liability insurance, since the venture would have proven viable and your investment sustainable.

Becoming a dog walker is within your reach, if you follow this plan and discipline yourself to complete it to the end, no matter how long it takes you. But that’s only the beginning. If you stay true to the job, you’ll soon be realizing that you’ve become a successful entrepreneur. Now, that’s an accomplishment worth barking up a storm for!

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