The Secret to Making More Money

Out of all the comments I receive, the most have to do with money. “How much should I charge?” or “How can I make more?”. It’s a good question for any babysitter to ask. If you charge too little, you might feel you’re being taken advantage of. If you ask for too much, you might not get the job. There is something that you need to know when you decide how much to charge, or how much to increase your rates. I call it “the secret to making more money” because it seems to me not too many babysitters know about it. Until now.

You get paid for bringing value to the market place

This applies to every job you will ever have, including babysitting. The “market place” for you, is all the people who need babysitters. The value you bring, is everything you know about babysitting and all your experience taking care of children.

It takes time for you to babysit. But you don’t get paid for your time, you get paid for your value. If you only got paid for your time, you wouldn’t have to know anything about taking care of children. But parents have this concern that their babysitter should know a few things about child care. So they hire a babysitter based on how much “value” that babysitter brings to them. In other words, how much that babysitter knows about safety, and handling emergencies , and encouraging good behavior – stuff like that.

So that brings us to an important question.

Is it possible to become twice as valuable and make twice as much money in the same amount of time. The answer is… it depends. It depends on whether or not the customer is able to pay more. Some are and some aren’t. But the point is, if you want to make more, you must bring more value to the market place. You bring more value by reading and taking classes and getting experience. The more you learn about taking care of children, the more valuable you will become, and the more confident you will be about charging more.

As you increase your value, you will not only be able to charge more money, but your reputation about being a superstar babysitter will spread and you will get so busy babysitting that you will have to turn down  business. When I was a babysitter, I got to where I could charge more than any of my friends because I had a reputation for good customer service and I became pretty good at taking care of children. The parents liked me and trusted me, and didn’t mind paying me more than other babysitters. They knew they didn’t have to worry at all about their children – that their children would be safe and happy with me. I brought more value to them, so they didn’t mind paying me more. To them I was worth it.

If you’re not comfortable asking for more money, it might be  because you don’t feel you can bring a lot of value to the market place. Become more valuable and you will feel more comfortable.

So… Instead of asking, “How do I make more money”, you should be asking, “How can I increase my value? What books can I read? What classes can I take? Who can I babysit with that can teach me how to be a better babysitter?”

The reason I wrote my book and created this blog is to 1) help you bring more value to the market place, and 2) provide parents with good babysitters.