It seems as if painting a house would be a basic task, however, it does require a few basic skills. Are you physically capable of climbing a ladder? Can you physically endure scraping old paint?

Let’s say that a house is one story height and is 2,000 square feet. How do you figure out how much paint you’d need? The way I did it was go to my local hardware store and ask a lot of questions.

I received an estimate of $800 in 1985 to have my house painted and the total cost to do it myself was less than $100. I used brushes and rollers, instead of spray guns. If you’re looking for speed, spray guns are great. If you want it to last, there’s nothing better than a doing it by hand with a brush.

If you’d like to have the majority of your business built from referrals, which means do you think would give you the best rate of return?

How about yard work? Do you know anyone who is too busy or too old to keep their yard looking good? Almost everyone you know wants their yard to look great, but most don’t have the time or energy to keep it up on their own.  You can typically charge $15 to $25 an hour to clean up leaves, paint or repair fences, trim bushes, haul away unwanted items or wash windows.

It’s all up to you and your imagination. You might even ask someone who is already in the business if you can work for them. That way you’ll be able to determine if you will enjoy the work.

Farming is not as easy to predict your income or success. If you don’t have the land it is even more tricky. Since I was raised growing the fruits and vegetables which we consumed, this would be easy as far as the required knowledge. Yet, it would be difficult due to the amount of physical labor it would require.

Most cities here in the Bay Area have a local Farmers’ Market. It’s a great place for you to sell produce and flowers.

Most vegetables, such as potatoes, don’t yield as much per acre as produce that is more in demand such as fresh strawberries.

Think about the last time you bought a small basket of strawberries and how much your paid for them. I just paid a dollar for a small basket.

If you had an acre of land in strawberries, you should be able to generate about 20,000 baskets. While they are growning, you’d need to establish where would you sell 20,000 baskets of strawberries.