Last Updated on February 29, 2024February 28, 2024 2 Comments This post may contain affiliate links. Advertiser Disclosure.This post may contain affiliate links. Financial Panther has partnered with AwardWallet and CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Panther, AwardWallet, and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

The other day, I was looking at my Rover account and noticed that I’m coming up on nearly 10 years of watching dogs on Rover. It’s crazy how fast time flies!

I started Rover back in June of 2015, just trying out this new app I’d heard about. At the time, I had a four-year-old Beagle and my thinking was if I was already taking care of my dog, maybe I could take care of other people’s dogs too. This was all part of the monetizing my life strategy I was doing, where I was side hustling and earning extra money doing things I was already doing. 

Ten years later, I’m still watching dogs on Rover. My dog is now 13 years old – a little less energetic, but still as food motivated as ever. I’ve probably watched over a hundred dogs at this point and have been doing Rover through a lot of big events – getting married, my first and second child. And we had a global pandemic in there too. 

After doing this for so long, I thought it’d be interesting to look at what I’ve made from Rover over the nearly 10 years I’ve been doing it, as well as share some of the interesting lessons I’ve learned over those years.

To begin, let’s take a look at my Rover data. Below is a screenshot of my earnings on Rover since I signed up for it in 2015.

One thing to note is that from 2015 to 2017, there was another dog boarding app called DogVacay. I had my profile on both apps and during those years, about half of my earnings came from DogVacay. Rover purchased DogVacay in 2017 and merged the two platforms, so from 2017 onward, all the money I earned from dogsitting came from Rover. To get a more complete picture, I pulled up my old tax returns and I can see that in 2015, I made $877 from DogVacay and in 2016, I made $1,530 from it.

You can see that in most years, I earned around $3,000 to $3,500 from Rover. This comes out to about $250 to $300 per month. There was a dip in my earnings in 2017, but I’m not sure if that is an actual dip or if I had money from DogVacay that I don’t have the records for. I’d guess that I probably earned money from DogVacay but can’t find the documentation for it. 

You can also see a fairly big dip in earnings in 2020. This, of course, was because of the pandemic which limited travel and the need for dog-sitting services.

In 2021, my earnings picked back up again to normal levels. Then in 2022 and 2023, my earnings seemed to have picked up substantially, increasing from $3,000 to $3,500 up to around $5,000. Much of this increase has to do with higher demand. I moved from my old house – which was in a college neighborhood – to a new house in a much wealthier neighborhood. I’ll discuss this more later in this post, but moving to this new, higher-income neighborhood is what led to an increase in demand for my higher yearly earnings.

It’s also important to note that my Rover earnings are limited because of how I operate my Rover business. My primary service is dog boarding, where the client drops off their dog at my house. I charge $30 per night and raise my prices to $35 for holidays. While I could probably charge more for my services, I’m okay with taking a little less to keep my business steady. Most importantly, I limit myself to watching one dog at a time, so what I can make is necessarily limited by doing that.

I also do cat drop-in visits where I stop by people’s houses to feed their cats while they’re out of town. I usually charge $16 for a 30-minute visit. This isn’t very much, but I do limit myself to only watching cats within a few blocks of my house, saving me travel time. By restricting myself to such a small area, I also limit what I can make from this service. 

Looking back at my earnings is revealing and yields some useful information, not only related to Rover, but in general when it comes to side hustling. Here are some of the main lessons to take away from my data:

Reasonable minds can differ about the employee vs. independent contractor status of gig economy apps like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Uber Eats, and the like, but with Rover, it’s pretty clear that you’re an independent contractor. This is because Rover is quite obviously a platform for dog sitters, simply acting as a middleman between clients and sitters.

In a lot of ways, Rover is like Airbnb, where the primary purpose of Rover is to provide a place to market your services to potential clients and provide an interface to handle transactions. Unlike other gig economy apps where they set the prices, with Rover, you set your prices and determine the services you wish to provide. How much you can make is partly controlled by you with how much you charge and what you’re offering. 

You can also earn more or less with the types of services you offer. You’ll earn the most if you’re willing to watch multiple dogs at once, potentially doubling or tripling your earnings. Watching multiple dogs comes with added challenges, however. For me, I only watch one dog at a time. I also only watch small pups (under 40 pounds). This limits what I can make with Rover, but it’s worth it for me to avoid the added stress and potential headache of watching multiple dogs at once or watching big dogs that can end up being more work for me.

How much you can charge and what the demand for Rover will be for you depends a lot on where you live. Living in a city is very important, as this is where most people will be who need dog sitting services. 

Your city also matters a lot when it comes to how much you can charge. Sitters in larger cities will usually be able to charge higher rates. I live in Minneapolis and charge $30 per night, which is probably around average to slightly below average. In New York, meanwhile, you can see sitters charging $60 or more per night. 

So, what city you live in will be a big determinant of what you can earn. The bigger your city is, the more in-demand your services will be and the more you can probably charge. 

One thing I didn’t think about when I started with Rover was how much your neighborhood matters. This makes sense when you think about it. Most clients are looking for sitters that live close to them, so the demand will be highest in places where people have dogs, travel often, and most importantly, have disposable income to spend on dogsitters. This means the best neighborhoods tend to be fairly dense, higher-income neighborhoods.

My own experience bears this out. I’ve lived in three neighborhoods in Minneapolis since I’ve been a Rover sitter. When I first started with Rover in 2015, I lived in a dense neighborhood with many young people. Demand here was good since there were a lot of apartments nearby with people who had dogs. That being said, the amount of business I got was tempered because I was new to Rover and didn’t have many reviews yet. 

In 2016, my wife and I moved to a college neighborhood, which in retrospect, isn’t the ideal neighborhood for doing Rover. College students often don’t have dogs and if they do have dogs, they’re not traveling as often and don’t have the extra money to spend on dog sitters. As a result, when I lived in a college neighborhood, my earnings often capped out at around $3,000 to $3,500 for the year. Most of the people who did book me didn’t live in my immediate neighborhood either.

In 2021, we moved to a much wealthier neighborhood in Minneapolis and you can see that my Rover earnings increased significantly from $3,500 to $5,000 per year. This all happened without changing anything about the services I offered. The increased earnings are due to increased demand for my Rover services, most likely because the people in my neighborhood have more money to spend on dog sitters and may travel more often.

In short, not only does your city matter but, at least based on my experience, where you live in your city matters a lot too.

One of the frustrating things about Rover is that it can be slow-going when you get started. Since Rover is a marketplace app where you’re competing with other sitters to get picked, most potential clients are going to pick sitters they’ve already used or sitters who have more experience and reviews.

When I started, I felt like I was getting passed up for potential bookings by sitters with more experience.  To compensate for this lack of experience, I had to keep my rates lower and accept more pups than I would have liked. I mainly did this to boost my reviews. This initial work seems to have helped because once I got a decent number of positive reviews, I started getting fairly consistent booking requests. Having repeat clients helps a lot too since I’m watching the same dogs a lot (this avoids any surprises since I know exactly what I’m getting into). 

Now, with nearly 10 years of experience and over 100 reviews, I don’t feel like I have any trouble keeping myself booked. Demand for my services might be more than I’d like now. 

I’ve often said that Rover can be a fairly passive side hustle. With other gig economy apps, I’m usually not making money unless I’m actively working. For example, if I’m delivering for DoorDash or Uber Eats, I need to be out doing deliveries to earn money. If I’m out delivering food, I’m not doing other things.

Rover is very different because I can earn money from Rover even when I’m doing other things. People who board their dogs with me know that I have kids and a job and other responsibilities and that their dog will have to be home alone sometimes. That means when someone books me, I’m getting paid even when I’m not doing anything with their dog. 

This works particularly well with l0w-maintenance dogs, which are pretty much all the dogs that I watch now. Some of these dogs fit in so well with my household that I barely even notice them. A lot of these dogs I’d probably watch for free even.

The other thing to remember is that I already have a dog that I need to walk and take care of. Watching another dog doesn’t really change my day-to-day dog care duties. The fact that I’m getting paid to do things I’m already doing is a big win and it’s why Rover works so well for me.

Making an extra $3,000 to $5,000 per year from Rover hasn’t been difficult for me. With so many years of experience, I’ve gotten everything streamlined now and I have a good base of repeat clients that makes dog sitting very easy for me.

While an extra $3,000 to $5,000 in a year might not seem like much, it’s important to remember how much it’s worth when you think of it from a financial independence standpoint. I’ve written before about concepts like the Reverse Latte Factor and Barista Fire and how earning relatively small amounts can be worth a lot more than you think.

When it comes to Rover, the concept of Barista Fire works particularly well. Most financial independence experts will tell you that you can withdraw 4% of your portfolio each year and have it last in perpetuity. So, if you needed $50,000 per year to cover your lifestyle, you’d need to save $1.25 million.

What’s interesting is if you take this concept and put it into reverse. While $3,000 to $5,000 per year from an app like Rover (or any side hustle) might not seem like much, it feels like a lot more when you consider that you’d need $75,000 to $125,000 invested to generate that amount of money each year. 

The below table should give you a good idea of just how valuable earning small amounts of money can be.

What do you think is easier? Saving $75,000 to $125,000 in investments. Or earning $3,000 to $5,000 in a year. I know for me, it’s the latter.

We’re still early into this year, but I’m expecting my Rover earnings to be similar to the past two years. My main thing now is not overbooking myself because some people like to book me way in advance. I don’t travel as much as I’d like to these days, but I’d like to travel more, and taking impromptu trips isn’t possible if I’m also committed to watching a dog for a random weekend in the future. 

So yeah, that’s a look at what my Rover earnings have looked like over the nearly decade I’ve been doing this. It’s worked out well for me and has been a nice sort of not quite passive income, but sort of passive in some sense.

This post may contain affiliate links. Financial Panther has partnered with AwardWallet and CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Panther, AwardWallet, and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

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Kevin is an attorney and the blogger behind Financial Panther, a blog about personal finance, travel hacking, and side hustling using the gig economy. He paid off $87,000 worth of student loans in just 2.5 years by choosing not to live like a big shot lawyer.

Kevin is passionate about earning money using the gig economy and you can see all the ways he makes extra income every month in his side hustle reports.

Kevin is also big on using the latest fintech apps to improve his finances. Some of Kevin's favorite fintech apps include:

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Filed Under: Side Hustle