Starting a business is tough, so to keep you enjoying it, many people suggest choosing something you have a passion for. Which is why I went looking for ideas for starting a pet business – because I just love animals, particularly dogs. And from a business point of view, many people treat and love their pets like their children, with no expense spared keeping them healthy.
So in my hunt for ideas for starting a pet business, here’s a list I came up with, and my initial thoughts as to how they’d work. Further down you can read the story of my experience of trying one of them.
7 Ideas for Starting a Pet Business
- Dog walking – check local laws, in some countries (e.g. UK) you’re well advised to have public liability insurance. But in any case, I’ve been put off this idea as I was walking my son’s two dogs and one of them was attacked and injured by another dog not under proper control of its owner (not the first time this dog had savaged another one).
- Pet sitting – if this is done in someone else’s house it should be relatively risk free
- Dog boarding – you need to pass stringent checks, and your earnings will be limited by the number of dogs you have room for
- Pet grooming – I have no qualifications for this and judging by the struggle to hold my ‘grand-dog’ down while he’s groomed, it’s not a simple task
The above 4 ideas all share the two big problems that you are limited to your local area, and your income is limited by the number of hours in your day.
Online Pet Business Opportunities
5. To remove ‘local’ limitations you can look at ideas for starting a pet supplies business online.
- There are plenty of places to sell pet supplies such as food and toys and clothes and beds. Think Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Etsy for starters. And the costs compare favourably to opening an offline shop – as long as you’re making enough sales to pay the monthly fees. Because whether you are holding your own stock and shipping direct, or going for Amazon fulfilment, you’ll pretty soon find that it’s a crowded market-place.
Starting a Blog to Sell Pet Products
The next of my ideas for starting a pet business was
6. Starting a blog to sell pet products. This seemed a better idea, because for, just the cost of my hosting, I was able to incorporate
- Digital information products such as dog training courses – excellent because of the zero fulfilment cost
- Affiliate programs for several of the earlier mentioned categories – in particular food supplies – reasoning that I’d get repeat customers from a well-chosen dog food. Still thwarted – most pet food suppliers wouldn’t ship internationally because of the size of the product packs.
Because I’m an experienced blogger I actually started a blog selling pet information products and supplier. I had a little success, but the over-riding problem was that I just couldn’t get enough visitors to my own blog to make it a profitable venture. It was a ‘me-too’ blog among many others, and because this was a part-time venture for me, I just couldn’t put enough time into it to make it work. I suppose I could have taken paid adverts – but that’s so risky….
When I thought all was lost, and the dream of an online income from a pet business would never come true, I found a way to work within a team and have….
My Own Online Pet Supplies Shop
- 7. Working WITH a team of bloggers, not competing
This turns out to be the best of my ideas for starting a pet business online. The shop is already setup for me with NO cost, ordering and customer service are handled by head-office, and the products are ‘small’ to keep shipping costs down, and can be sent to many countries of the world.
But what about the competition that made me fail before….?
In a nutshell, instead of competing, I’m working with a team of bloggers to build an authority blog – one that Google likes because we publish regular quality articles. And the article include our own affiliate links, so we get credit for sales. As there are about a dozen authors already, sometimes we can publish as many as ten articles a day, and it’s just going to grow as more people join us.
Because Google likes our blog and the techniques we use, instead of us having to look for customers, Google (and other search engines) sees people asking for information, and if one of our articles answers the question, our blog may be offered as a solution, and sometimes that customer buys after reading our articles. Sometimes they set up a regular shipment, earning us repeat commission.
For team members who prove themselves active, there’s a way that the team will promote our posts and help us find customers. They don’t charge money for this, but they do expect regular participation. The phrase they use is “You carry your fifty bricks, and we’ll carry fifty too.”
New to Blogging – Can You Still Earn?
Full training is given within our helpful Facebook group, so if you’re new to blogging or an experienced blogger this can work for you.
In fact this is the perfect, risk free, way to try out blogging without any of the technical hassle and costs of starting your own blog.
It’s perfect for part-time bloggers as you just put in whatever hours you can spare.
Alternatively you can participate by making videos. I bet videos with your own pets in would attract a ton of views!
The Pet Supplies Shop – And an Extra Bonus
So, click HERE to see my free pet supplies shop where customers can shop direct.
Bonus – I automatically get a shop for ‘human’ health and wellness products from the same range, to keep pets’ owners fit and healthy too! Click here to see the whole health and wellness range.
So you can restrict your efforts to pet products, or promote human products too. And of course, you’ll want to keep your own pets – and yourself – healthy, so do try the products yourself.
To learn how the team concept helps us, click here. You can open a free trial account and learn exactly why people who have never seen success online before are finally seeing how they can build a regular monthly income, with what I believe is the best of all the ideas for starting a pet business.
