In this edition 27 of MindMyHouse News: where to find us in the international media; we sort out the problem of many repeat alerts arriving in your inbox; MindMyHouse II, take a sneak peek here of our redesign of the site and tell us what you think; a home owner member in Costa Rica would like to invite you to help her care for her many beloved rescue dogs in her dog sanctuary; a home owner tells it like it is, why you need a cover letter AND your own sitter available listing; and finally, our regular slot featuring the email addresses of those would-be fraudsters who tried to use our service for no good and failed.

Dear MindMyHousies, well, it’s been over five years now since we launched MindMyHouse. It’s been an exciting time and throughout it all we have learned alot. The existing design has held up fairly well. Five years is typically the average lifespan for most decent websites. But there are many areas where we could improve things. [...]

In this edition 26 of MindMyHouse News: American freelance journalist, Jim Daniels, wants to talk to you about the weird and wonderful world of house sitting worldwide; we profile our longest-joining members, Larry Gregory and partner, Janis Stewardson from Canada; to the 45% of our house sitters who have yet to create their own listing – just do it!; “You wouldn’t mind letting the builders in would you?” Why this question upsets professional house sitter and long-time Blogger on Assignment, Tom Hill; and finally, a Nigerian fraudster makes it through our surveillance net (briefly) to entertain us with his eloquence and charm.

Tune into edition 25 of our little community e-newsletter for all of the following: Tom Hill publishes his excellent how-to e-book (free for 25 of you!) to help get you on your way to house sitting success; do our listings seem to disappear just as you try to click through to them from your email alert?; what do you take with you? part II, thanks to Linda Razzell for this one; and finally, an ever-shorter list of losers.

Tune into edition 24 of MindMyHouse News for all of the following:
when anywhere in Europe is good, our new ‘all of Europe’ search return and alerts; what do you take with you? Clare our intrepid blogger and full-time house sitter from Queensland, Australia has a handy penchant for writing lists; more great advice on how to have big adventures on tiny budgets (we like this one!) from the UK’s Guardian; and finally, how to succeed through our service versus ‘whistling in the wind’.

Tune into edition 23 of MindMyHouse News for all of the following: what’s a couple of years? Why we have adjusted our system of age ranges; our new banner advert exchange program with friends of MindMyHouse; vacation rental owners are welcome at MindMyHouse! Introducing our friends at www.vacationrentalscommunity.com; flashing the cash on a new Google Adwords campaign; the so-called ‘war on spam’ has forced us to make a small change to our Terms and Conditions; and finally, a regular slot: hall of shame – here they are for you to throw rotten tomatoes at!

Tune into edition 22 of MindMyHouse News for all the following: our email alerts system goes down then comes up again five weeks later; we ask you to re-subscribe to this humble community e-newsletter and re-create your alerts; our back-end is now much more highly developed; you’ve got mail! We roll out a new Message Centre facility for your enjoyment; beautiful words – you can now format your listings using our new WYSIWYG text editor; why do some of our sitter wanted listings contain no dates at all?; and finally, after three beautiful years as a free service we will be charging a small fee for annual house sitter memberships.

Tune into edition number 21 of MindMyHouse News for all of the following: we form a mutual appreciation society with a savvy blogger at www.thesavvyboomer.com; excitement builds as we prepare to roll out a new site feature: your very own MindMyHouse message centre; liability insurance for house sitters – who needs it?; and finally, please show courtesy to your fellow MindMyHousies and respond to EVERY email you receive through your membership.

Check out the twentieth edition of our little community e-newsletter for all of the following: we find inspiration in a house-sitting themed blog post by self-empowerment guru, Aaron Potts; attention house sitters – if you are not advertising your services with us, you are potentially missing out on 70% of the action; introducing Carole Livesey and Chris Lampard, two new intrepid profilees in our ‘Meet the house sitters’ section; if you fancy the idea of a nice bit of cultural exchange while travelling the world, check out www.Helpx.net; and finally, what’s up with our competitors’ collection of covert domain names?

Check out this nineteenth edition of MindMyHouse News for all of the following: ooooops! Our apologies for sending out multiple copies of our last e-newsletter; your opinions on our divergent sitter wanted listings – the home exchange question and others; hall of shame, here they are for you to throw rotten tomatoes at; a journalist’s request to interview UK people who work while on house sitting assignment; your editor gets to blah blah blah on American live radio about her favourite topic – house sitting of course!; and finally, more interesting MindMyHouse tidbits.

Check out this eighteenth edition of MindMyHouse News for all of the following: introducing two new Bloggers on assignment – house sitters extraordinaire Tom and Linda; meet our friends at UK-based ‘freecycling’ website UsefulGarbage; apologies to our UK members over some unreliable Geocoding map technology; hall of shame – an old loser returns to try to use our site for no good; looking good – do you want your photo included in our Meet the Sitters photo montage?; in the interests of even greater transparency we have created a new ‘site-at-a-glance’ statistics page; and finally: the editor has a little melt-down as she feels unappreciated. Awwwwwwwww.

Check out this seventeenth edition of MindMyHouse News for all of the following: walking the walk – our house sitting adventures in Auckland; when is an advert not an advert? When it’s a listing of course!; hall of shame – the latest fraudster who tried to use our site for no good; introducing approvals – why your pesky editor will be vetting your sitter wanted listings before they go live; and finally: when you really want to swap your house – ditch us for Digsville!

Check out this second anniversary edition (number sixteen) of MindMyHouse News for all of the following: take a look at us now that we are two years old!; ‘look mum, I’m on the radio!’ where to find us in the media; stupid fraudsters attempt to fool our members with spam scams; we are forced to take action as the AOL saga deepens; and finally, how to reduce the amount of mail you receive from us.

Check out this fifteenth edition of MindMyHouse News for all of the following: What else can I do? Boat sitting; AOL have finally lost the plot altogether; house sitting in an empty house-for-sale; and finally: more poll results: what’s in it for house sitters?

Something big is happening at MindMyHouse! This blockbuster 14th edition of our little community e-newsletter showcases an important new additional way of searching our site (called the Local Sitter Search) that has all sorts of implications for the way you use your memberships.

Something big is happening at MindMyHouse! This blockbuster 14th edition of our little community e-newsletter showcases an important new additional way of searching our site (called the Local Sitter Search) that has all sorts of implications for the way you use your memberships.