Pet Grooming BusinessWritten by Randy Wilson
Do you like animals? Would you like to work for yourself? Pet grooming could be career for you. A grooming business is more than just washing dogs. It can include cleaning ears, trimming nails, brushing teeth, and shaving animal’s coat in stylish ways. The animal can be a dog, cat, pig or other type of animal. With an animal grooming business, choice is yours. You can have clients drop their animals at our house or you can start a mobile pet grooming business. The options are limitless. Starting a pet grooming business does require that you become a certified pet groomer. Research different dog grooming schools in your area, and choose one that fits your needs. Try to find one that offers pet grooming business management classes with actual pet grooming classes. Once you are trained, or while you are in training, you should start to create a pet grooming business plan. Since you will incur some start up costs for your training, licenses, insurance, and equipment, having a business plan can help you obtain a loan to get started. It is estimated that industry will grow over 10% in next five years. This means that your grooming business will likely grow quickly as long as you are professional at all times. This also means that you will have to complete some office work daily as well. Owning an animal grooming business is not just animal grooming. Pricing can be difficult to determine, but a few phone calls to local grooming salons, or individuals who perform grooming, will give you and idea regarding what services you should be providing and an estimation of fees. You will need also to decide if you business will be just a dog grooming business or if you will groom other pets too. Because your business is client oriented, you will need to build a clientele list. The best way to do this is to get your name into your community. You can place flyers at pet stores and veterinarian offices, and animal shelters. You can create a press release for local newspapers and radio stations. You can even offer your services to local animal shelter. If they like your work, they will refer people to you.
| | Write from Home: lessons from the editorsWritten by Stephanie Olsen
Writers talk about rejection all time – just part of job. But getting rejected by a no-pay publication really scrapes barrel. I know: it's happened to me more than once and now that it's been years [of therapy] later, I can admit lessons learned.1. Competing Market My first novice article submission was to an AboutCom site. The writing was good, and loaded with links to other helpful sites. It was latter that got piece booted. The website editor simply did not choose to publish articles that might lead readers to sites similar to her own. This goes directly to "study back issues" mandate offered by experienced writers. Even if you don't agree with a specific editor's approach, you need to write to those specifics or submit elsewhere. 2. Preaching to Choir Animal organizations are usually sorely in need of donations, whether financial, by way of goods or content for newsletters. However, an article on care and feeding of feral cats, garnered from years of experience in rescue work, was rejected on grounds that it was targeted to wrong readership. Acting on that advice, I searched out and submitted to "how-to" publications directed at readers not involved in stray cat rescue, and published article multiple times. For example, a gardening ezine was interested in it from point of view of "pest control" rather than any humane reasons per se. Semantics aside, people who might never have read thing in some radical animal rights newsletter were potentially reached.
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