Nanny Placement Agency
The shortcut: The fee isn't for finding a nanny. It's for the family not having to interview 40 strangers who all sound great on the phone. Sell vetting, not lists.
Industry: Childcare & Education | Investment level: Small — $3,000-$10,000 | Time to launch: 8-14 weeks (license + screening contracts + candidate pool of 10-15)
Best for: Former nannies, daycare directors, early-childhood teachers, or HR/recruiting people who already know how to read a resume and run a real reference check. What you'll likely make: $1,500-$3,000 month 3, $3,500-$5,500 month 6, $6,000-$9,000 month 12. Math is in Section 4.
Market Opportunity
Most parents who hire a nanny do it badly. They post on Care.com at 11 PM, get 80 responses by morning, and have no idea which six are actually safe to interview. By the time they've done four phone screens with people who flake or sound nothing like their profile, they'd cheerfully pay $2,000 to make the problem go away. That's your business — handing an exhausted dual-income family three people they can hire today, all background-checked and reference-verified.
A 2023 Care.com Cost of Care report put average full-time nanny pay at roughly $766/week — about $40K/year — which puts the standard placement fee (10-15% of first-year salary, or a flat $1,500-$3,000) right where families still write the check. The wedge against Care.com and Sittercity is simple. They're a list. You're a person who already called the references.
What opens the door is geography plus parent network. You don't need to be in every city. You need to be the agency the moms in two or three zip codes name when someone asks, "who did you use?" One well-served neighborhood produces 18-30 placements a year. That's the whole business.
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