Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
TrustedHousesitters owns the search. Your real money is in the long-stay direct booking.
House sitting is a two-funnel business and the aggregator platforms own one of them. TrustedHousesitters, MindMyHouse, HouseCarers and AussieHouseSitters rank top-three for every 'house sitter [city]' search and route every booking through their platform with their reference-and-rating system, their messaging, their fee. They are excellent for the short-stay city sit (1-week, 2-week) where the owner wants the platform's trust layer. They are terrible for the long-stay rural and lifestyle-block sit (4-week, 8-week, 3-month, 6-month, 12-month) where the owner wants a known sitter, sometimes with experience of post-renovation, post-purchase, acreage or lifestyle-block work, and the platform's matching simply doesn't surface it. The sitters who actually fill a full year of long-stay work do it on direct bookings won through a personal site, with their Police Check and Working with Children Check and public-liability insurance up front, and a past-owner referral page that turns one 8-week Hobart sit into the next three. Most house sitters live on their TrustedHousesitters or MindMyHouse profile and lose all the long-stay direct-booking work to the sitters who built a real site.
Good house-sitter marketing has three pillars. Pillar one: a stay-length page library that outranks the TrustedHousesitters and MindMyHouse listings on the long tail ('long-stay house sitter [city]', '4-week house sitter [region]', '6-month rural house sitter [state]') with pricing bands per stay length ($40-$100 standard 1-week, $200-$600 4-week, $500-$1,500 8-week, $1,500-$5,000 3-month, $5,000-$15,000 6-month), past-owner testimonials with name-and-suburb (with consent), and trust credentials front-and-centre. Pillar two: a direct-booking funnel that surfaces your Police Check, Working with Children Check, public-liability insurance, House-Sitting-Association-of-Australia or Australian-Federation-of-House-Sitters or Property-Care-Industry-Federation membership, and the platforms (TrustedHousesitters, MindMyHouse, HouseCarers, AussieHouseSitters) you also sit through, so the owner can verify you across multiple trust sources. Pillar three: a city-and-rural page library (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart, Darwin, Canberra, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Byron Bay, acreage, lifestyle block, rural-and-remote-rural) with the property type (suburban, acreage, lifestyle block, rural) and the care type (pet, plant, property, mail, alarm-and-security-and-monitoring, post-renovation, post-purchase, long-term-and-frequent-traveler) explicitly named on every page.
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Sets the plan around the three numbers that move the business: long-stay direct bookings per quarter (the year-payer), repeat-and-referral rate (the flywheel), and platform-cross-listed verification trust (TrustedHousesitters, MindMyHouse, HouseCarers, AussieHouseSitters 5-star history linked from your site so owners can cross-verify). Briefs the other agents so the stay-length pages, the rural-and-acreage pages, the credential surfacing and the past-owner referral outreach all push toward a full year of long-stay direct work.
Imports your existing site, ships a stay-length page library (1-week, 2-week, 4-week, 8-week, 3-month, 6-month, 12-month) and a city-and-rural page library (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart, Darwin, Canberra, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Byron Bay, acreage, lifestyle block, rural-and-remote-rural), builds a direct-booking funnel that surfaces Police Check, Working with Children Check, public-liability insurance and the platform 5-star histories you also hold, and keeps the past-owner testimonial library current.
Owns the long-tail searches that actually convert: 'long stay house sitter [city]', '6 month house sitter [region]', 'rural house sitter [state]', 'acreage house sitter [region]', 'post renovation house sitter [city]', 'lifestyle block house sitter [region]'. Complete Google Business Profile, Service + LocalBusiness schema, 'background check verified' and 'insured' attributes, review prompts after every sit, and the technical fixes that keep the stay-length pages indexed and ahead of the TrustedHousesitters and MindMyHouse profile pages on the long tail. Auto-applies low-risk fixes.
Runs two distinct campaigns. Google Ads on the high-intent long-stay-and-rural searches ('long stay house sitter [city]', '6 month house sitter [region]', 'rural house sitter [state]', 'acreage house sitter [region]'). Meta on the post-renovation and post-purchase funnel, targeted at owners in the 55-75 demographic in rural-and-coastal postcodes who have either recently bought or recently renovated. Never bids on the broad '[city] house sitter' head term where the platforms dominate.
Turns every long sit into a consent-gated home-and-pet Reel in your voice: a Hobart-acreage Friday-update walkaround, a 60-second 'what a Police Check and public-liability insurance actually cover' explainer, a chook-coop morning routine Story, a post-renovation lockup-and-leave checklist. You film a 30-second walkaround clip (with owner consent), the agent drafts the caption with the stay length, the property type and the care mix, you approve.
Drafts the long-form pieces owners search before they book: 'how to find a house sitter without TrustedHousesitters', 'what to ask a house sitter for a 6-month trip', 'long-stay house sitting in Australia: what does $5,000 for 6 months actually cover', 'post-renovation house sitting: why a sitter is the cheapest insurance you can buy'. Two a month, in your voice, that catch the careful researcher before they default to a platform.
Your first 30 days.
- Existing Squarespace or Wix site imported, legacy hosting torn down; TrustedHousesitters, MindMyHouse, HouseCarers and AussieHouseSitters profiles cross-linked from your own site for trust verification
- Stay-length pages built and indexed for 1-week, 2-week, 4-week, 8-week, 3-month, 6-month and 12-month sits with full pricing bands
- City-and-rural pages built for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart, Darwin, Canberra, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Byron Bay, acreage, lifestyle block and rural-and-remote-rural
- Police Check, Working with Children Check, public-liability insurance and association membership surfaced on every page
- Direct-booking funnel live with platform 5-star history cross-linked and Sam-drafted owner reply templates
- Google Business Profile primary category corrected from 'House cleaning service' to 'Pet sitter', services expanded from 2 to 14
- Google Ads live on the long-stay-and-rural searches in your two highest-volume regions, Meta live on the post-renovation and post-purchase funnel targeted at 55-75 owners in rural-and-coastal postcodes
- Past-owner referral outreach calendar loaded: one quarterly check-in per past owner, drafted by Sam
House sitting is a trust-and-long-stay business that the platforms try to turn into a per-week marketplace. The sitters who fill the year are the ones who win the long-stay direct bookings (4-week, 8-week, 3-month, 6-month, 12-month) on a real site with the credentials up front, then keep the past-owner flywheel turning with structured referrals. The acreage and lifestyle-block work is the highest-margin lane the platforms can't quote, and it's won on a dedicated page and a Friday-update Reel.
Agencies are too dear to ship the stay-length-and-rural library and run the past-owner outreach for $2k a month. Tools are cheap but the long-stay pages don't exist and the platform-verification page never gets built. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the stay-length and city-and-rural pages, surface the Police Check and insurance, run the long-stay and rural ads, post the home-and-pet Reels, and draft the past-owner outreach. You film a 30-second walkaround with consent, approve the week, done.