It’s Friday, and while my wife and I don’t have plans to hit the town tonight, I was asked by a friend of mine to check out this web site: Sittercity  This site provides a way to connect with babysitters, nannies and pet sitters to connect with the families that are looking for such services. (Note: we have no relationship or affiliation with this site)

They seem to have a well thought out service, which appears to been featured all over the media, and they seem to have taken all the measures to make a comfortable, secure experience for parents looking for a qualified babysitter for that big night out.  The bottomline is that this may be a valuable service to those who don’t have someone they can trust to refer to for babysitting services.

What I don’t understand is how the individual babysitters who can create their own profile, market themselves. Take a look at these actual photos that are posted along with each of these actual babysitters profiles:

        vs.   

We know not to judge a book by its cover, but we also know, a photo says a 1000 words.  Of course, it’s not a photo that matters, but the babysitters credentials and how well they can relate to your children, but let’s say all things are the same - they both have outstanding credentials - which one of these babysitters would you like to see your child interacting with? It’s not that the photo of the girl on the right is particularly risque or anything, but don’t these photos each display very different messages, while offering the very same babysitting services.

Now, I am  sure I am going to catch some feedback from the Better Parenting University team for this post (and perhaps some of our parents) but as the marketing guy and blog writer,  I am just calling it like I see it.