Meet Delia Timms - Online Business Idea
By sandy.naidu | Category: Service BasedWelcome back!
| My guest today is Delia Timms. Delia runs a business called ‘Find A Babysitter’. It is an unique online introduction site that helps parents meet babysitters and nannies. Delia was a speech pathologist by trade. In 2002 after the birth of her first child, she quit her regular job. In 2004, Delia was contemplating returning to work - Delia however had problems finding a babysitter for her kids. It was this problem that marked the origins of ‘FindABabysitter.com.au’. With the help of her husband, she created a website which introduces parents to nannies and babysitters - She turned her online business idea into a real business. The design of the site, the ease of use, the unique concept, the huge database of nannies and babysitters and the happy clients are all responsible for this rapid growth. | |
| Since its launch the website has attracted lots and lots of parents - It has grown tremendously and by Delia’s own admission has exceeded all expectations. For all the mums who are not based in Australia - Delia is creating a media buzz here in Australia with her hugely successful online business. She has become a role model for many business mums. Read and Be Inspired…. | |
| What was your main motivation for starting the business? How did you come up with this business idea? |
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The seed for Find A Babysitter.com.au was planted in late 2004 when I was contemplating returning to work, with two small children under 2 yrs of age. I read a newspaper article about a site in the USA that was an introduction site helping parents meet babysitters and nannies. I felt like I had been on a crazy childcare merry-go-round since my first child was born in 2002. It seemed that the methods of finding care (centres, agencies, newspaper classifieds, big job posting sites, word-of-mouth) were difficult, slow, unreliable or prohibitively expensive. I had been using a lovely nanny to care for my first child (and had referred this great nanny onto a friend when I stopped work to have my second child). Facing the nanny search again I recognised that a website was a wonderful way to find a carer. It would offer an efficient and affordable way to get in touch with a range of babysitters and nannies who could meet my needs. |
I realised that I was not alone in this childcare struggle. It was a hot topic amongst friends. Most of my friends needed help with their children and very few of them had support networks for childcare. I decided to do some market research, write a business plan and convince my husband to build the site! We launched in July 2005 and the site took off immediately. We had customers joining online within days in Melbourne, then the site took itself to Sydney one month later, then Brisbane the next month, then Perth and so on. By Christmas 2005 we were national! |
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| Your website works on a subscription/membership model. As a business owner I can see that there is a huge advantage in that you get paid upfront. Having said that membership/subscription models must be very hard to sell to the customers. How do you address this? Any suggestions on what key points a business owner must focus on when trying to sell this kind of model? | |
| We chose the subscription model because we felt we could offer a service that was really good value for money. I decided against advertising on my site because as an internet user I disliked being bombarded by ads on other sites. I think it is distracting and too ‘busy’ visually for the user. I didn’t want that experience for my customers. To help my customers do a price comparison I created a table (posted on my site) to show the costs associated with each method of recruitment. Find A Babysitter’s memberships ($50 for a babysitter and $80 for a nanny & job posting x 3 mths) are very affordable, particularly when you look at job sites that charge over $150 for 1 mth and agencies charging over $1000 nanny placement fees. Finally I think our testimonials also help visitors decide whether the membership is a good investment. There is nothing like words from another parent to demonstrate genuine results. | |
| I understand that your business has grown greatly since its launch. Do you ever get overwhelmed by its growth? How do you stay on top of it all and focused? | |
| Yes Find A Babysitter has grown significantly! We have not been overwhelmed, if anything we have been pleasantly surprised and have grown with it! (just like our parenting skills have grown as our kids have!) We have been fortunate that the site is designed to manage larger and larger numbers without significantly increasing our workload. We have enhanced and upgraded the site to cope with bigger numbers and to offer better features to meet customers’ needs. Personally I have structured my work time more, have more processes and a routine to keep organized. I try to manage my phonecalls and emails efficiently during set work hours. We also stay on top of things by having regular meetings ourselves, writing action plans and documenting progress. We also take advice from other experts to help us stay on track and move forward in the right direction! That said, there is no doubt that the site is much bigger than anticipated and there is more work and responsibility involved. We do find ourselves working late at night to fix something or respond to a late email at times. And we do take laptops on holidays! However we accept that this is part of running our own business and overall the rewards for building a successful site outweigh the stresses. | |
| I must say that I absolutely love your site. It’s easy to navigate and the colour scheme is wonderful. Did you do a lot of business planning and research before you started your site? | |
| Our site design is a tribute to our talented graphic designer, clever IT input (from my husband), usability testing and my own judgement. My main research was surfing lots of other sites (not necessarily parenting ones – but just good sites I liked) and reading about website usability. We also sat friends and family down at our computer and did usability testing before launching, accepted the feedback (sometimes with a big gulp) and modified the site. Our customer feedback has also been invaluable in educating and guiding us to improve the site. It is crucial to listen to customers! | |
| What kind of online and offline marketing strategies do you employ to get the word out there? |
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| We use a range of marketing strategies that we’ve refined over the last 2.5 years and continue to monitor! We think it is important to check the Return On Investment on each strategy to see if it is working. Most of our marketing dollars are spent on search engine marketing. But we do invest some money in traditional print ads. Additionally I’ve been very fortunate with gaining great publicity (based on the childcare topic and starting an internet business). Finally ‘word-of-mouth’ has been incredibly powerful. Parents (& mums in particular) are great at sharing ideas and supporting each other – so I think this has helped spread the work about FAB! We are very grateful for this and do our best to ensure our customers have a great experience. So combined, these things make a great marketing mix for us! | |
| If you had your time again is there anything in your business you would do differently? |
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| Good question! Things to do differently would be – to ‘expect the unexpected’. This sounds clichéd, but it is true that your business journey will be full of ups and downs. You need to anticipate that it won’t be smooth sailing all the way and be ready to deal with it! - be prepared to work harder on the site AFTER it is launched! It is easy to think that all the hard work is in planning and creating a site, then after launch day it will be simple. The hard work starts after you go ‘live’ and have real customers with real questions and real feedback! - create clear boundaries between work and home from the beginning. In the early days of starting-up it was very tempting to work day and night. There were times when I took phonecalls or sent emails with the kids in tow when I should have waited until a better time (when the kids were asleep!). I am sure all working mothers can relate to this! I don’t know if there is a magic bullet for this work-family-life tension. My own answer has been to write down some personal rules about work time (eg not checking emails at 11pm at night!), family time, exercise etc. This is a great way to keep everything in check and give different aspects of my life the right focus. |
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| Finally, your five keys to success? | |
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| Sites Of Interest | |
| http://www.findababysitter.com.au/ | |
| This interview was published on 11th May 2008 | |
| Visit Delia’s website to get more information about her finding baby sitter services…. | |
To get more online business ideas click Idea Home Based Service Business. |
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