Yo-yo...a license to print money

Before C's school let out for the summer break, a motivational speaker showed up to put on a show for the kids as a special en-o'-the-year treat.

It was NED.

How it works is, this guy makes a deal with the school. For $1,500 up front, you get the yo-yo show and each student gets a $6 NED yoyo. For $1K up front you get the yo-yo show, a bunch of NED stuff and 30 yo-yos to hand out as incentive prizes.

Our little small town school opted for the "Free" package wherein we received the yo-yo show at no charge, but in exchange our office staff had to sell NED merchandise for 5 days following the yo-yo show.

Either way, this company made a pretty good nut for a 40-minute show and traveling expenses.

At our school they made a killing, as post yo-yo show sales were brisk for the entire 5-days and as of day three they had already sold over $1,500 worth of the spinning orbs, replacement strings, holsters, instructional dvds, and assorted NED merchandise.

Not a bad gig.

With the resulting yo-yo mania that had spread throughout the school between the highly successful NED show and Super Kids Day, it's no wonder that one of the activities slated for SKD was the American Yo-yo challenge.

After C showed some promise in the yo-yo challenge arena, I broke down and contributed to NED's bottom line for our school and bought C a boomerang model (twin ball-bearings for lighting fast auto return) in magenta.

She received her yo-yo on a Friday afternoon. After some instruction by yours truly, a few daddy-daughter arguments about proper technique, and several string shortening sessions, by Saturday afternoon she had the basics down and was imploring me to move her up to some string-based tricks.

Click here to check out her current technique.