**Mini-survey** For parents who don't work F/T about occasional childcare

[KatyMac]

This wouldn't really be relevant for parents who don't work F/T as I am only open between 7:30am & 6pm....sorry

I am proposing an occasional or ad-hoc childminding service

This is for short-term occasional & 'as and when' care for allsorts of reasons

eg Dr/dentist/hospital appointment, shopping, gym, hair appointments

I play to charge approx 3hrs childminding fee as a registration fee (to complete a long form & set up children's folders) then approx 15% over the normal childminding fee per hour for the occasional minding.

The sessions are only bookable in advance and must be paid for when they are booked (haven't quite worked this bit out any suggestions?)

Does this sound realistic?
Is it a service you would use?
Am I on the wrong track, or is there a need for minding which sometimes can't be filled by family/friends/neighbours?

Thanks for you opinions/comments

Cash would seem to be the best way KatyMac. Can't you do a form for the parents to sign saying these are the booked hours, at this rate, and I have paid say £30 cash? Would the IR have a problem with that?!

KatyMac I offer this service although In am a nanny not a CM. If you look on my website www.hayleyevans.co.uk you can see what I offer.

ADVERTISING: on the usual websites such as gumtree etc, have a t-shirt that I wear to parks and outings, flyer mother and baby spaces when I do my weekly shop (with home made flyers v cheap to do), have some business cards in my pocket all the time in case I get chatting to someone, have sunshades on my car, and when I get the time / am not busy I approach local schools about putting something in their newsletters;also ask local shops and soft play places etc. I have also done some door flyering although that was the least successful method. Everytime ~I meet a parent I give them 4 flyer that they can pass onto their friends that give 1 hour free care - had 8 of these given back to me so far and 6 of those 8 have used me on at least 2 occasions since!

PAYMENT: I normally accept cash at the start of a job where the parents has contacted me quite last minute. Where someone has contacted me 5 days or more prior to the booking I ask them to transfer money into my bank account using their name as a reference. They can do this by either paying cash into my bank (barclays) or setting up an internet transfer using online banking or talking to their branch. I am also looking into setting up payment on my website which can be done using paypal I believe - I'll let you know when I find out more about this but I do not it's quite cheap!

AM I BUSY: Yes I am always pretty busy this month is mad - the majority of bookings are made at least 2 weeks in advance and about 1 in 10 bookings are 2 days or less notice. Have a look at my diary - 2.30-6.30 Mon-Thurs is my reg nanny work - everything else is temp work/babysitting. diary

Parents are happier to trust a CM rather than a nanny as they feel it is more regulated so I think it would be a success, keep at it! x

I would love this too
Just to have another option for inset days, the school holidays etc

avyeyelash that is really interesting - thanks for the info & do let me know abouthe payment thingie

PayPal E-mail Payments - seems that it can be done and charge is 20p plus up to 3.4% of invoice total.

nannynick that didn't work for me. Hree it is:
What is Email Payments? Question : Answer : With Email Payments, merchants can bill customers using the PayPal wizards for Outlook or QuickBooks, or with PayPal online forms. Merchants do not need a website to send and manage PayPal email invoices for a variety of services, including Subscriptions and Recurring Payments.

I use paypal and find it convenient although not cheap (for each £30, £1.22 is deducted as a fee) but it is the cheapest way I have found of doing it on my website. if you have google stuff already, try googlecheckout that might be better for you.

Hayley - I love the way you advertise where do you get the stuff and what are the costs?

nannynick that didn't work for me. Hree it is:
What is Email Payments? Question : Answer : With Email Payments, merchants can bill customers using the PayPal wizards for Outlook or QuickBooks, or with PayPal online forms. Merchants do not need a website to send and manage PayPal email invoices for a variety of services, including Subscriptions and Recurring Payments.

I use paypal and find it convenient although not cheap (for each £30, £1.22 is deducted as a fee) but it is the cheapest way I have found of doing it on my website. if you have google stuff already, try googlecheckout that might be better for you.

Hayley - I love the way you advertise where do you get the stuff and what are the costs?

Katymac - I am interested to know why you think that the Inland Revenue are funny about cash. Have you had a problem with them?

I offer ad hoc care, but am pretty trusting (not been burned yet!) and am happy to have cash or cheques when the child is collected. The parents tend to be people that I have met through groups we visit, so are not complete strangers.

Some of my work has been very last minute, and paying in advance would definitely not be possible - would you be able to accept cash in those circumstances?

I guess

I just used to work for them & I know how they view people who declare 'some' cash

Hey Overthemill, I don't really get what you mean?

I advertise on Gumtree, netmums, mumsnet & findasitter - they are all free.

I have a t-shirt that I wear to places (have some for children too, although only friends and relatives wear them might be a bit cheeky to ask mindees?). The t-shirt is a pastel green colour and it's from primark & cost about £2 I think? I bought some transfer paper from ebay and designed the words using photoshop then just ironed it onto the top. If you want to see a pic of my top go here

I designed some very basic flyers that I put on cars during visits to supermarkets - have a nose here for an old example - these are quite cheap to do. It costs about £5 for 500 * 180 GSM paper and I buy my ink online; I get 3 loads of coloured cartridges for £5. 1 Cartridge does a heap (don't know exact number but know it has to be min 250 pages) of flyers. I bought a paper cutter as the flyers are a6 (4 to one A4 sheet) and that was about £8 from staples.

I enclose these same flyers with the "pack" I give each parent about me - the flyers in the packs are printed on perforated a4 paper so don't have to mess around with scissors and the idea is parents I go to meet hand them out to other people that might need to use me. The paper was quite pricey as I could only find it in staples - it was about £8 but I can't remember how many sheets that was for.

Nannynick also did a fab flyer for a newsletter which I hope he doesn't mind me sharing here with you. It can be found at www.nicksbabysittingservice.co.uk/NASHR.pdf

I made my business cards myself, they are very simple but get the job done - again very inexpensive and you can get special perforated paper to save all that cutting. Mine are a bit unusual as they are small Moo card sized. I stole the idea from this company and parents think they are really cute. My design is very simple have a look here front and back the flower and kite change colour to match the images on my website. I always make sure I have about 10 in my car & in each coat and handbag so that I am never without one.

The sunshade I got from ebay for £3.50 just goggle something like personalised sunshade; you can also get personalised car signs like the normal "baby on board signs".

So basically advertising doesn't cost much at all !

navyeyelasH what I meant was t-shirts, sunshades - all great ideas!

my problem is cos i'm national it's expensive to advertise the service i offer - do loads of ads online but would love to be able to give parents something to give their mates/hang in their car.

sunshades are fab - i can get those done and everybody in my family can have one (and there's lots of us!)

thanks

National advertising is expensive. When I worked for a toy company (garden toys), I found that:
Junior Magazine
Right Start Magazine (bi-monthly)
were the best for us in terms of cost v response rate.
This was back in 2000, so things may have changed a bit, but could be worth seeing what those magazines offer these days. A classified ad would cost around £100 per month. Not cheap, but a lot lower than magazines like Country Living (also got good response rate, but I think it may have been 8-10 times the cost).

Right Start was associated with Tumble Tots. It still is - see here - Tumble Tots members get a years free subscription.

i have done Junior (poor response at huge cost) and other 'posh' end baby mags. Now I just do online no print stuff.

But would like to do stuff like t-shirts and sunshades/car stickers but the huge order needed in the places i've found put me off. my dh balks (?) at the thought of the family car being painted company colours!

I think the ad market has changed quite a bit over the years. Not even sure how many people actually buy magazines these days. Pre-Mumsnet days, parents brought magazines. Now we have Mumsnet... why do we need parenting magazines?

I'd love to know what works well for advertising Babysitting, and what doesn't. I find that flyers are useless these days, but worked back in late 90's.

How much would that work out at?

I looked into drop-in care in France when my daughter was little but actually it ended up being much more convenient to employ an occasional babysitter.

katy - that sounds a wonderful idea and its roughtly the same as i do on my days off (but obv as a nanny, so in their homes and not mine)

sure you will get lots of enquiries - obv you dont want to rack up huge advertising costs,i find that ads on gumtree, netmums and Nj, as well of word of mouth fill my 2 days easily - i often get enquires for days/hours that I cant help with as already booked

I have no problem with declaring cash with the IR, and my hubby who is SE also gets paid in cash alot - obv pre payment is easier but often I get a call in late eve/early hours of a morning and need to be somewhere an hour later, so it is not always possible

good luck with your new buisness xx

Thanks everyone I am trying to contact the local paper to see if they will write an article

katymac, i've had really good response from local radio. they are often very short of local news and radio is a great medium to reach mums.

I founnd their website and clicked 'submit a story' - they got back to me, interviewed me on the phone and it was broadcast throughout the day on the news programme (local mum makes it easy for parents to have a night out' kind of tosh) and i got lots of interest!

read ' the buzz' marketing book - i got it second hand on amazon

good luck

Good Idea - I'll ring them on Monday

I think this is a great idea.

I know an excellent childminder and she was generous enough to offer me adhoc childcare recently. It was fantastic.

You should think about offering vouchers. I can't afford to use my lovely childminder atm, but I'd love my 2 year old to be able to keep going there for the odd morning (and I know the CM has space). I'm considering suggesting to dh that instead of a b'day present he "buys" me 5 morning sessions for dd with the CM and the same at Christmas. I'd love that.

My sister used a facility like this in Australia. It was brilliant. it worked like this. Phones opened at 8.am daily for the day the week ahead. ie If you called Tuesday am the furthest ahead you could book was the next Tuesday. This was to stop too many advance bookings which fills places and defeats the object of short notice child care. Time limits half day or full day only. Payment not sure but here you could use paypal nice and easy or cash. I searched for one when my 1st DS born to no avail and came to the conclusion it was not available in the UK. Good luck if you do decide to do it.

Fingers crossed