Jobs

Since you live in a region that gets snow in the winter, how about walking dogs or doing grocery shopping for elderly neighbors that can't get out as easily when it snows.

I actually didn't think of that

As for how much to charge for shoveling snow, you could use your own home as the standard. Measure out the area to be shoveled and time how long it takes to shovel snow in that area when you're working at full steam. Decide how much to charge per hour of shoveling. If a customer wants an area half the size of your home's then the estimate would be half as much. If the customer's area is twice the size of your home's, the estimate would be twice as much.

To help figure out what your hourly rate should be, ask around the neighborhood to find out what people think might be a fair rate.

If you live near a commercial area, you might also get some income by offering to frequently check and shovel merchant sidewalks and parking lots during a snowy day.

There are probably houses with plenty of leaves to be raked, swept and bagged before the snow starts...

If you are crafty, you could knit and sell caps, scarfs, blankets. You could try to sell things that you no longer use on craigslist. With the snow shoveling you want to be competitive, find out the going rate from a local snow removal service and then drop your price A LOT!

That is not being competitive, that is called Race to the Bottom. Better to be the best and most reliable and then you can even charge more than your competition and you will still be in demand.

Im just saying, if they aren't opening a business, just a door to door in the neighborhood thing, it might be beneficial to charge less as they will not have the equipment that a reputable snow removal business has. Don't low ball yourselves but make it worth it to choose you instead of the other guys.

I wonder if you aren't talking about different things. To seriously undercut someone with professional equipment on an hourly basis isn't the same as underbidding on the basis of square feet of snow removed.

Agreed. Without knowing anything but what was told, and only making a generalized statement to help (perhaps I shouldn't have used the words "A LOT"), I was basically just getting at calling around to see what local business were charging and base pricing on that....that's all.

Sure! If I were offering a service, I would darn sure find out what the competition was doing.

Also, can't help but remember my lawn mowing days when I would go around the neighborhood. I think I charged 5-10 bucks a pop....but that was some time ago...lol.

Speaking of lawn service, I briefly worked for another high school student who almost - I say almost - invented the modern string cutter aka the Weed Eater. He rigged up a conventional lawn edger with a rotating wire brush. It not only did a better job of edging along sidewalks, but cleaned out the spaces between sidewalk segments like johnny-be-good. It would have been a commercial flop because wire wheels tend to shed high velocity needles of wire. Still, it was a good start.