Southern California Job Market : Using a Computer to Print Money : It’s legal, too. You can do a lot these days with a relatively cheap machine.

You can print a lot of things with a computer, but the best thing you can print these days is money.

In tough times, creating your own job using a home computer can pay the bills until more traditional employment opens up. Better yet, find the right niche and what started as an expedient can become a flourishing business.

Take Sydney Levine. As a film buyer for 18 years, she watched movies for a living. But a look through her phone log might have suggested another trade--say, private investigator.

In search of film rights for various buyers, Levine spent enormous amounts of telephone time tracking down whether movies were completed, in production or even canceled. From that investigative work, a business was born.

Levine started Film Finders just over a year ago. A room in her West Hollywood house became company headquarters. Today she maintains a computer database of 3,500 English-language movies, a compendium that tracks their state of readiness, offers plot synopses and records all acting and other professional credits on the project.

Her clients, companies looking for film rights to buy, order status reports weekly, quarterly or monthly.

“It is a great business,” she says. “I got so excited by it that I keep giving my friends other computer ideas.”

You can do an awful lot these days with a relatively cheap computer. A pretty fast IBM-compatible machine based on an Intel 386--or better yet, 486--microchip with a color monitor can be had for $2,000. Macintosh prices are also falling. And the advent of Microsoft Windows, packaged with millions of new IBM clones, represents a quantum leap in capabilities for these machines. Add a laser printer for $700, and perhaps some kind of scanning device, and amazing things become possible.

These include graphics-laden newsletters, professional-quality resumes and perfectly formatted screenplays. Mail-merge software, which comes with most good word-processing programs, makes it possible to write 1,000 personal letters en masse. A cheap modem, which lets a computer communicate by phone, makes elaborate research possible instantly.

But you might want to think twice before running out and buying a lot of computer equipment, especially if you don’t already have considerable expertise. Learning to use any system properly can take weeks, and you’ll also have to market whatever service you hope to provide.

The best thing is to ease into it by building on what you already know. Steve Bass, who writes a home computer column in PC World, trained as a family therapist and found his niche publishing a directory of internships for family therapists.

In a dozen years his business grew into Pasadena-based PCG Seminars, which arranges business workshops and teaches psychologists how to run their businesses on a computer.

There are many helpful sources of information for establishing a computer-based business at home, including computer users’ groups, computer magazines and on-line databases.

If you’re already pretty good with a computer and ready to branch out, mail-order houses and computer bulletin boards offer “freeware” and “shareware,” some of it quite decent, for perhaps $3 a disk. This lets users test-drive all sorts of interesting programs, which you can keep or use as an introduction to fancier store-bought versions. (Freeware is free. Shareware can be tried freely; if you like it, you’re on your honor to send some money.)

In her forthcoming self-published book, “Make Money With Your PC,” Lynn Walford of Los Angeles lists 150 ways to earn money with a computer. (The book is available from Walford at 800-356-9315.)

The notions range from traditional tasks such as copy editing, tax preparation and accounting to the artsy, such as animation and stationery design. Then there’s the downright flaky, such as numerology biorhythm forecaster.

Be aware that some businesses must meet legal requirements. Computers are great for tax preparation, for example; basic software costs about $400. But California requires all tax preparers to register and put up a $2,000 bond.

Still, you can crank out a lot of relatively simple returns with relatively simple software.

Walford herself started as a word processor--a computer typist--five years ago, then branched into desktop publishing and teaching people to use software. She even used a computer to design the cover of her book--with a program called CorelDraw.

“It costs $400. An artist would have charged at least $1,500,” she says. And she can use the software over and over.

Computers can be especially lucrative for the artistically minded. Financial difficulties forced Dean Guiliotis, for example, to abandon a career in the entertainment business.

“I fell back on art, which I had always done for fun,” he says. While working for a marketing firm, he watched someone create layouts on the computer. “I saw how easy it was to do,” the UCLA graduate says.

With a little financial help from his family, and some credit, he invested $10,000 in a sophisticated Macintosh computer setup and became a graphic designer. His Westside company is called Pen Arts Services. He reckons that he spends 100 hours a week designing corporate logos, business forms and covers for catalogues and videotapes.

Working at home can be lonely, particularly for someone fresh out of school with few business connections.

“We suggest that people straight out of college affiliate with other self-employed people who are doing well,” says Santa Monica author Paul Edwards. Levine, for example, employs several part-timers to enter her movie data and make telephone calls. By hiring yourself out briefly, you will learn the ropes and earn a little money.

Help is often available on the forest of computer bulletin boards. Many are as close as the cost of a telephone call. Others, such as Prodigy and CompuServe, charge a monthly fee.

Paul and Sarah Edwards, authors of an array of books about working at home, operate a 24-hour CompuServe Forum with advice from experts and lists of funding sources, business associations and other help for the fledgling entrepreneur.

And don’t forget computer user groups. These have formed around major programs and operating systems in many major cities. They meet frequently to help each other and trade computer insights.

In the July issue of Home Office Computing, the Edwards published a list of the 10 best home-based computer businesses for the decade.

The couple sought activities with low start-up costs that provide a good income and growth potential.

Nadine Marchman has a two-year start on one of their choices--medical transcription services.

She transcribes recordings dictated by doctors to insurance companies and other payers, and for the doctors’ own records. Work from just three doctors gives her more than enough business.

June Christopher hadn’t planned a life in front of a computer screen--the silver screen was more like it. But like so many other Hollywood wanna-bes, reality means paying the bills. Her solution was a computer. She began with a simple typing service, tapping work into a computer by keyboard.

But one day Christopher realized that she had old scripts that needed to be entered. Others too must need this service, she figured. One scanner and an advertisement in the Writers’ Guild magazine was all it took to generate a waiting list--not to mention the rent money.