NPC and/or Player Shops, Non-Adventure Pay, Commonner Experience

[Bugworlds]

How much does a NPC shop produce in GP or any other relevant currency? If I, as a player, happened to own an NPC shop how much would I be making off that? I imagine it still doesn't compare to pay from adventuring but I'm not sure how to work it out.

What about a player run shop? A shop with PC's with NPC classes, all run by one player who has an adventuring PC. I believe this would be the best way to work out numbers for all actions within the shop are controlled and known; even if macro'd. Abilities, skills, feats, etc. taken into account, and each character is given various duties. Purchase, manufacturing, and perhaps sales are tangible.

A NPC shop run by a DM could work the same way, but I'm more curious of less calculated numbers. What figure makes sense without much math a

What would a good shop to buy/create be? For basic crafting I think poison has the highest cost to create to final cost ratio, due to common ingredients costing 1/6th the cost of the processed item. That's only looking at input to output though, efficiency. Would it be worth the time to make very expensive magical items, assuming they can be sold, despite a lower input vs output?

As for other non-adventuring pay, what is worth it? Again, if you have access to adventuring pay that's going to be the strong option. I know there's a table which indicates the outcome of perform checks, for monetary gains. How much is pay for just common work? I've seen the figure 1sp and 2sp in various books.

And while I'm at it, how much experience is earned for a days work? I remember reading 5xp a day but I can't find anything to source that off of. I'm curious how fast someone with NPC levels would level up and how this compares to money gained per level by an adventuring character. Any bets a character with NPC levels only, and NPC speed experience, may get too old to reap the benefits of their levelling?

[NoACWarrior]

OK so - Non-adventuring NPC pay is level squared per day in gold pieces (PHBII hiring an NPC).

I think crafting poison could be the way to go since I think its 1/5 crafting materials right?
Theres another way to get cheaper money, spellcrafting services.
If you run a spellcasting service station you could hire NPCs at their base rate and sell out their spells at the going rate of 10 x Spell level x Caster level. Even with the spellcasters getting a bonus 1 gold (or more) and a free set of meals and lodging at your service station you should be able to make the money back and then some (maybe at a cost of 10% with a return 10 fold on your costs).

If you simply want larger lump sums of money, magic is the way to go instead, you only net a gain of 100% of your cost basis, and require XP expenditure, but get huge sums back in return with selling a single item. If you use an artificer it can be done a bit cheaper as well, and if you have enough money for a thought bottle the XP stops becoming a problem.