What should a kid charge to take out trash bins?

This one is different from everything else on the list, and it is worth being upfront about why: there is no adult market to benchmark against at all.

No company will drag one household's bins to the curb on a Tuesday. The job is too small, too frequent, and too local for anyone with a truck and overheads. So the price does not come from what a professional charges. It comes from what the problem is worth and from the arithmetic of the route.

What they are really buying

Never thinking about bin day again.

It is a small thing that happens every single week, and forgetting it means two weeks of overflowing trash. For a household that travels, it means coming home to a bin that has been at the curb for four days. For an older neighbor, dragging a full bin down an icy driveway is the sort of small task that quietly gets harder every year.

Nobody lies awake about their bins. They just never want to think about them, and that is worth a few dollars a week.

Where to start, and why

Somewhere between $4 and $8 a week per household, covering taking the bins out the night before and bringing them back in.

That sounds tiny, and on its own it is. The whole business is that it is not on its own. Ten houses at six dollars a week is sixty dollars for maybe twenty minutes of walking, twice, arriving every week without anyone having to be asked again.

You are the only option, so do not price like an underdog

There is no company to compare you to and no cheaper alternative. The customer's only other choice is doing it themselves, which is precisely what they are paying to stop doing.

That means the usual reason for a starting discount barely applies. What you are unproven at is reliability, and that is worth a modest gap for a month, not forever.

The discount should not last

Three months of never once missing a Tuesday is total proof. There is nothing else to demonstrate in this business.

A kid who has not missed a week in a year and is still charging three dollars has not been humble, they have been asleep. Raise it a dollar on everyone, with notice. Almost nobody leaves over a dollar, and the ones who would were never going to be easy customers.

Why density is everything

The only thing that ruins this business is spread. Ten houses on your street is twenty minutes. Ten houses across a neighborhood is ninety for the same money.

Take the customers who are close and charge more for the ones who are not. Your real cost here is walking, not effort.

Charge monthly, not weekly

Collecting six dollars from ten houses every week is forty small conversations a month, and it is the thing that kills these businesses. Twenty four dollars a month, collected once, is one conversation. Same money, a quarter of the hassle, and adults find it easier to pay too.

What raises the price

A long or steep driveway is worth more than a short flat one. Recycling on a different day is two trips, not one, and should cost more than one.

What this is really teaching

This will not make anyone rich, and it is not supposed to. It teaches the thing most first businesses never get near: recurring revenue. Fifteen small payments arriving every week without being chased beats one big payment arriving once, and plenty of adults have never worked that out.