I am a pet sitter.
I started just for family friends, etc, but it ended up branching out and it's what I decided to do while getting thru community college.
I am small scale though - I did not want to take on more than just myself could handle with school and other priorities, etc. The good thing is that the dogs I watch have become like my 2nd dogs - all are friendly with Jackson so most of the time I bring him along. I have 3 dogs that I walk 5x a week and often will be watching one of them on the weekend, or others are sometimes usually long weekend jobs, etc.
I charge lower priced for this area. It's $12 per day for a 30 minute walk -- most places around here get way more than that. I charge $40 for overnights. I also sometimes take them to the dog park which they usually give me $5 extra.
I really LOVE it but at the same time, I'm getting a little tired of it. It's not always easy, especially with rowdy dogs who don't always walk well, so I've had to train some of them on my own a bit so that it's an enjoyable experience, LOL. Also, I kind of miss having some more people interaction - I LOVE dogs and most of the time would prefer their company, but admit it can be a bit lonely. I really do love the dogs and have been walking two of them since they were very young (8 weeks old). I've also become very close with the people and all the owners have been great. They treat me well, pay me well (sometimes extra), I've even done extra things for them such as taking a trip to the post office, or driving one of them to their car that was being fixed, etc.
It's been really good money for me though. Everyone is always like "wow!" and most of my college friends aren't making as much as me, except for the waitresses. And my hours are super easy, typically 11-3:30pm. But sometimes it sucks when it's ALL me - I can't really "call out"... granted, if I happen to wake up very ill, I will tell the owners and they've always been very understanding. But I think it'd be better if I had more customers and maybe one more employee or something as backup. I'm not an LLC or a company or anything.
Overall, I've had a great experience with it. And unfortunately, I'm going to have to quit soon and I know my people are going to very upset; but with schooling it's just not going to work anymore since my classes are all right during the time I usually walk the dogs. So I'm going to have to find another job and I'm afraid it's going to be so odd for me, LOL, I'm so used to basically making my own hours, etc.