Anne, I do want to find a job that I love. I've thought that if I do receive unemployment, I might use the time to start a pet sitting business. If it goes well then when unemployment ran out I'd need supplemental employment and would look for part time work. The peak time for pet sitting is Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break, early to mid summer, and holiday weekends. If I do this, I'd give it a year or two (2) before incorporating. Most folk just get bonded and insured and take it from there.

Hmmm, maybe you gals could help me with marketing ideas and a company name?

names:

Care Critters
Care Minders
Pet Minders

Yes, a blog would work here. You could even occasionally talk about your horses, etc.

Maybe do some fliers and simple business cards on the computer and post or place them at Vet's offices. I know when I go to my Vet there are several business cards and brochures for several different kinds of pet-related businesses from scooping poop to petsitting to arranging travel and boarding. You could also try advertising on your local Craigslist or free newspaper. There are also several pet-related websites where you could get the word out, although those may not be free. You could also 'hang out' where your anticipated clients congregate and spread the word that way.

Orchid and Yonuh, you gals have great minds!

Now, where's that post with free blog info? I know its somewhere on this site! I bet Orchid knows!

MustangG, I use Wordpress software. Yonuh uses blogger.

I don't know blogger.
But for me Wordpress.com was easy to understand but initially I spent a few days reading, thinking and set-up.

You need to think carefully about the name of your company because most likely the blog webaddress domain name that you will use, will contain the name of the company.

Here's some little video tutorials with demos:

http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/08/27/learn-wordpress-com-tutorial/

YOu can always set the blog as "private" until you are ready to release it publicly. Wordpress.com provides a good amount of free memory for blog to grow.

If you look at my blogs below, we have a decent amount on ..and we still haven't reached the limit yet.

At wordpress.com you will see at the home page, sample blogs other people have created. Wordpress.com offers a little over 100 different blog template designs to choose for the skeleton. M

If you have ever created a database or electronically filed and tagged complex sets of documents, you will find Wordpress.com blog set-up not that difficult.

Once you've set up, it is not difficult to add periodically articles and photos. I tend to like to compose my posts with photos and text surrounding them. Other people do it much more simply. I just choose a visual composition per article, that takes a few more minutes but is more aesthetically pleasing so that it might interest a reader to hang out and browse around.

Yes, there are all sorts of little gadgets you can do..automatic slideshows (cyclewriteblog has several), reader counters/geolocations, etc. And now Wordpress has built in twitter, facebook buttons in the design for people to share content, etc.

I can assure you that blogging plus belonging and participating in a few key forums/follow 1-3 key blogs, builds networks, etc.

Pm me as you progress.

Orchid has some good tips. I tried WordPress and just couldn't wrap my head around it; for me it just wasn't intuitive and Blogger is. I would suggest you try both and see which one works for you. And yes, definitely get your business name first before setting up the business blog. You could always set up a personal blog first for a test run before deciding which blog software works for you. Some hosting companies will allow you to set up a web site including a blog with guestbook and lots of other features. If you do a web site hosting comparison, you can get great deals on hosting.

I'm excited for you. This sounds like a great new possibility!!

Various people have switched from blogger to wordpress.com and vice versa.

I didn't bother trying blogger software. Once we realized that I had to set up the biz blog quickly, I just chose wordpress. We wanted to capture the experience of living in an Olympic host city during that time and how it affected transportation planning that time.

I guess my attitude was going by my gut instinct and trusting my own adaptability to design very large databases from previous jobs. It had formed a major part of my jobs in the last 15 yrs. Blogging software is actually...quite simple (to me) info. architecture compared to other more complex software I've had to design from ground up.

Pizza places, laundries, supermarkets, malls, sporting goods stores and large chains all have bulletin boards where you can
advertise your business. Pet sitting is an excellent business,
especially in an upscale neighborhood. Generally both people within a relationship have to work to pay for an expensive lifestyle and usually they own expensive pets with costly upkeep.
Good luck to you Mustang! Sorry about your troubles and will
pray for a rapid turnaround to those woes. Prayers and blessings,

Obviously the author has a preference in this comparison:
http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2009/09/25/blogger-sucks-wordpress-rocks/

She is one of the team volunteer support members who provides free technical support on wordpress.com. I believe she's provided support nearly daily for past 4 yrs. So she and team members deal with alot of newbies.

It seems like 4-6 weeks is an awful long time to wait for a decision on unemployment. What is in your favor is that the company will not fight you. As for blogging, I have set up both a wordpress and a blogger. The Wordpress offers many more options than the blogger/blogspot. However, I don't have the time to study all the bells and whistles, and I will eventually just have one blog, which is the easy to use but fewer options blogspot. You can see the difference in the exact same content: http://www.beyondthetears.com/bttblog of http://beyondthetears.blogspot.com
A Blog is an excellent idea for you. Since your passion lies in animals, imagine all the tips you can share related to a pet sitting business. By the way, I did get my current pet-sitter by calling on a card at the vet's office.