Pets Hideout Rabbit Boarding & Grooming is live!

I just wanted to say that our rabbit boarding/grooming/pet sitting business is officially on the internet. Here it is!! Pets Hideout 

I sat on this project for a long time - more than 6 months - because I hadn't made up my mind about things like our name, the URL domain, what CMS to use, and even my SEO strategy. Stupid things really, considering what this project is: an ultra low-stakes prototype. 

Over the weekend I decided to clear this project sprint-style, making decisions as quickly as possible.

The first step: buy a domain real quick. I've tried 3 domain providers: GoDaddy, Vodien, and Google Domains. The first 2... god! So hard to use and so much hard-selling! So I went straight to Google Domains. 

Now, what domain should I get? It was between something generic (e.g. rabbitboarding.com) or a proper name. The former is SEO best practice but it's just not me. A name, then. There are people who can come up with really good business/website/pet names but I am not one of them. Rather than wait for the Muses to bless me with the perfect name, I came up with 3 pet-related names on the fly and bought the first one that wasn't claimed by an existing business. Perfect is the enemy of cute.

Next up: choosing a host. Google Domains gives you a few choices; the free ones are Google Sites or Blogger. I looked at Blogger first, thinking I'd do this thing the SEO way by flooding my website with content.

But the layout wasn't very customisable and it didn't look like a business site. Cringing a little inside, I opted for Google Sites. Well I needn't have cringed, because it was good enough for what I needed. The  pages were easy to set up and edit, the content blocks easy to manipulate. I think it took about half a day to set up. The most time-consuming part was looking through my photo roll laughing at cute pictures of our previous bun guests.

The perfectionist voice in my head kept whispering that this site is going to suck ass on Google. But I told it to shut up because the point of this site is to give potential clients a bit more info than a Carousell listing. (Also a secondary purpose of this website is as a portfolio for our longer-term housesitting plans.)

The basic bones of the site are now up. I have things to add - like testimonials and photos of the space and posts about the pets we've taken care of - but it's OK for now. 

Another thing: I wanted to list us on Google Maps. This was surprisingly easy and took no time at all! With the help of our clients who have kindly given us very nice reviews, we are now ranking. Hooray.

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On another note...

The other day I was whining to Jon that I never know how to answer the question "what do you do?" and he suggested I reply "I'm a participant in the gig economy". 

Lolz. It's true though. I've successfully turned my interests into hustles. Except they aren't exactly side hustles. Like a vegan at a restaurant ordering 3 side dishes to form a meal, my occupation is several gigs mashed into one. I don't know if this is healthy. Maybe it's better to have a boring day job and keep your interests unsullied by financial incentive? I dunno. But this is more fun and it kinda works for me at this point.