Hello, I am an in-home childcare provider. Where do you go on-line to find day care listings? I am just wondering if there are other places for me to advertise that I haven't thought of.
Thank you,
M.
I went to my state's early education and childcare website to check out a list of licensed providers and see if they had any complaints or violations. I also used my employer's referral list. They outsource this to a company (I don't recall who) and I don't know where they got their lists from, but there was a lot of overlap between my employer's list and my state's list so they may have been the same source.
call licensing, find out who is your Child Care Resource and Referral service and make sure you are listed there.\
Take out a pay per click google ad word account. Budget $30 a month to encourage calls/emails.
Put together a website (godaddy or other web host sites) or blog (blogger or wordpress) to feature your services. Put up lesson plans, pictures of your home and (if the parents are ok with it) pictures of the kids having fun, reading and being engaged.
Offer a minimal referral incentive to your current families. If a person signs up that they referred, give them a 'free day' of care.
Good luck with your business.
Have you given your information to your local schools? That's how I found my in-home daycare provider.
I found my current awesome childcare provider in the online classified section of my local news station. It helped that she was also listed in the Child Care Resource and Referral of my local university, so I knew she was legit and not a scammer taking advantage of a free service. I am leery of Craigslist postings especially for that reason. I agree with Christy J on creating your own website. That was very helpful to me, especially if there were pictures of the facility. Pictures just of current or past kids don't help much, but pictures of kids doing activities that you provide, or the space in which they play/eat/sleep can be helpful.
I went to NAEYC.com. My state also has a certification and rating program - it's called PA Stars, maybe your state has something similar. I also looked there.
Now that I'm in a daycare I love, the daycare spreads the word by offering us 50% off one month worth of charges if we refer someone who enrolls their child. They also give the person who was referred a discount on the registration fee. It's a good incentive for current clients to spread the word.
