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Daycare Center and Family Home Forum>Rolling My Eyes At This CL Ad
cheerfuldom 05:50 PM 07-25-2011
Lots of misspellings in an ad I saw today.....including baby and babysitting. First class all the way! LOL
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daycare 05:54 PM 07-25-2011
Hey that's my ad. Lol jk
Was there supposed to be a link ?
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Crazy8 06:35 PM 07-25-2011
I'm considering putting an ad on CL for my Fall openings. This is the first time I've had to even advertise in years (all my families are done having kids) but I'm afraid of all the crazies coming out with an ad. I did a newspaper ad ONCE 10 years ago - I got 1 phone call from it so don't even want to bother paying for that. Used word of mouth for a long time but now as my own kids get older and all my long time families get older we just aren't in the circle of knowing people with young ones anymore. I have a website and a FB page but I need to do more or I'm going to be looking for a part time job in the Fall.
Any tips on how to make a nice serious ad on CL???
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daycare 06:51 PM 07-25-2011
Originally Posted by LittleDiamonds:
I'm considering putting an ad on CL for my Fall openings. This is the first time I've had to even advertise in years (all my families are done having kids) but I'm afraid of all the crazies coming out with an ad. I did a newspaper ad ONCE 10 years ago - I got 1 phone call from it so don't even want to bother paying for that. Used word of mouth for a long time but now as my own kids get older and all my long time families get older we just aren't in the circle of knowing people with young ones anymore. I have a website and a FB page but I need to do more or I'm going to be looking for a part time job in the Fall.
Any tips on how to make a nice serious ad on CL???
I think no matter where u post you can get crazy people from any where.
I have successfully used CL for years.
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cheerfuldom 07:10 PM 07-25-2011
I had great success on CL but currently, my area is flooded to the max with people (men and women) offering dirt cheap rates, 24/7 care, all food and supplies included and other things that I cannot compete with. It used to be rare to find someone doing full time care (40 hours a week) for less than $125. Now I see more hours offered for $90 a week.
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TBird 07:48 PM 07-25-2011
Originally Posted by cheerfuldom:
I had great success on CL but currently, my area is flooded to the max with people (men and women) offering dirt cheap rates, 24/7 care, all food and supplies included and other things that I cannot compete with. It used to be rare to find someone doing full time care (40 hours a week) for less than $125. Now I see more hours offered for $90 a week.
These folks offering care so cheap need to teach a class on how you can do it and still provide quality food, care & programs. I am at a loss as to how they do it....
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Country Kids 08:51 PM 07-25-2011
There was an ad on CL today in my area. 3-5 days a week 8:30-5:00 I believe and willing to pay $300-$350 a month. What is sad is most providers in this area only charge $400-$450 a month so she is really paying part-time rate which would be the 3 days a week.
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PitterPatter 04:37 AM 07-26-2011
Originally Posted by cheerfuldom:
I had great success on CL but currently, my area is flooded to the max with people (men and women) offering dirt cheap rates, 24/7 care, all food and supplies included and other things that I cannot compete with. It used to be rare to find someone doing full time care (40 hours a week) for less than $125. Now I see more hours offered for $90 a week.
I saw a couple ads like that around here. One in our minitab paper only charged $15 per day for kids 0-12 from 7am to 6pm and all food, formula, DIAPERS and wipes were included in the cost!! HOW in the heck can she afford that?? My 1st thought was she won't change the kids much to save on diapers maybe. Maybe she has a husband and is just getting some extra income. Maybe she is just deseperate or crazy. No way could I live on that, especially after she pays out for diapers and all.
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AnneCordelia 05:19 AM 07-26-2011
I've only ever gotten crap calls from my CL ads. I've gotten every one of my clients from kijiji though. Many calls from my kijiji ad.

I just plugged in 'home daycare' and the name of my town into google. The top link was kijiji and then daycarebear. I made sure my ad was on the top 4 websites that came up on google (because it shows where people in my area click for daycare info) and was full in no time.
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AfterSchoolMom 05:39 AM 07-26-2011
I've used CL successfully in the past. Tips on a good ad:

Check your spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. Try to provide all of the necessary information without being overy wordy - some people see several paragraphs of information and just move on, or they scroll down to the contact info and then ask you the same questions again anyway.

Finally, Don't give out your phone number or email if you want to keep away "the crazies" - CL can make it anonymous for you. Oh, and don't schedule interviews with people from CL during regular business hours - try to have family or friends home with you when they're interviewing.


With that said, everyone is right about CL being flooded with discount providers. I'm seeing them every day for $75-90 PER WEEK for full time, or $110 with breakfast, lunch, and two snacks included. There's no way that those families are getting quality care.
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nannyde 06:58 AM 07-26-2011
Originally Posted by PitterPatter:
I saw a couple ads like that around here. One in our minitab paper only charged $15 per day for kids 0-12 from 7am to 6pm and all food, formula, DIAPERS and wipes were included in the cost!! HOW in the heck can she afford that?? My 1st thought was she won't change the kids much to save on diapers maybe. Maybe she has a husband and is just getting some extra income. Maybe she is just deseperate or crazy. No way could I live on that, especially after she pays out for diapers and all.
A lot of new providers start out offering the price they wanted when they had kids in day care.

It doesn't take long to figure out that there was a reason they couldn't get even bare bones decent care at that price.

There is a strong market for providers who are the learning phase of this. If parents can get two/three months of this price and move onto another one they can get a big block of time when they basically pay for child care what they would pay housing the kid themselves in their home during that ten hours a day. There's no pay for care in that rate. It's just the expense of physically having a kid under your roof and providing for their costs during ten hours of their twenty four hours.

Of course there is a huge market for that. The problems arrise when the provider wants to extract money from actual hard costs to house the kid so they can have some money for their work. That's where it gets problematic. As soon as that becomes a problem.. the provider wanting compensation for work... then rates rise, provider increases number of kids, or the provider eliminates basic needs and parents move onto the next provider who has to cycle thru the money deal to get it. As long as the parents can jump on the ride at the point where the provider is just breaking even for hard costs and before she wants compensation then jump over to the next provider... then it works for the parents. It's been easy to do that in this poor economy with such an influx of newbies.
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Country Kids 07:01 AM 07-26-2011
I saw another one today-4 children=15 dollars 1/2 days, 25 dollars full days=that is for all 4 children. I know times are tough and if thats truly all they can afford I bet they could qualify for help through the state.
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MarinaVanessa 08:10 AM 07-26-2011
Originally Posted by Country Kids:
I saw another one today-4 children=15 dollars 1/2 days, 25 dollars full days=that is for all 4 children. I know times are tough and if thats truly all they can afford I bet they could qualify for help through the state.
Yeah I bet they qualify and I don't know how it is in your area but I'm in CA and here in my area even if you fill out the paperwork and immediately qualify for childcare assistance there's approximately a 2 year waitinglist to actually get to the top of the list and get the money. We just don't have the money after all of our budget cuts.
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erinalexmom 10:15 AM 07-26-2011
Well I only charge $80 a week full time. But we have a low cost of living here. So I actually do ok. I really do provide a nice program for that. Low # of kids, good food, and lots of attention and edcuational activities however, like I said low cost of living here.
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cheerfuldom 10:36 AM 07-26-2011
the norm here is $150 a week with centers being at least $200 but normally closer to $300 a week.....soooo $90 a week is just plain crazy.
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