What do you think about my idea?

[thirtysomething]

I am looking for a business idea that will not take up too much time and be very flexible - am wondering about setting up a babysitting agency as there is nothing at all like this in my area. The plan is to find lots of prospective candidates from local childcare courses, nursing courses, local nurseries etc., carry out CRB checks, references and interviews, then once they are on the "books" try and match them up with families wanting evening babysitters. I was thinking of charging a set fee, say £30 per family per year and lining them up with say two potential babysitters each. I don't think I would be short of customers given the sort of area I live in. Just wanted to bounce the idea around a bit and see what MNetters think about this idea! Is this a reasonable amount to charge?

too cheap

I think you've got something there but like cheesecake I'd say it sounds like a lot of work for very little profit.

I would think a professional sitter service would be popular for evening babysitting, also for things like during job interviews, hospital visits, funerals etc, when some one is olooking for one off care.

I don't know about a yearly fee to get set up with a sitter. When I worked as one at a holiday complex the family paid a booking fee to the nursery and we collected our fee on the night, according to how many kids and nuber of hours, charged more for after midnight etc.

Have you seen Baby-Sitters.net?

They charge £14.95 for six months membership which allows members to contact any babysitters of their choice.

I think fixing people up with babysitters might prove troublesome as you may not be in a position to recommend their trustworthiness/reliability etc and it would have come back on you - the babysitters-net service leaves them to do the interviewing etc for themselves which might be a better way to go about things...