Hey there everyone,
I have a few questions today for you performers out there. Before I get into those, let me give you a little background into why and what I’m asking.
I have been yo-yoing for a little over 3 years now, my brother almost the same. We both enjoy public speaking, as well as being up on stage and sharing our love for skill toys (Which has grown from yo-yos to also encompass juggling, diablo, spinning plates, and a little kendama here and there.) Since we are both young, I am 17 and he is 14 now, 15 and 12 when we started, we decided to start a small business of sorts. Since we loved performing and skill toys we thought why not combine the two and try to make some money? ;D We called our group Spins and Strings Yo-Yoing, and even got custom t-shirts and business cards.
We started off just doing performances wherever we could, and for free most of the time, and occasionally for tips. We did several historical reenactments, performance is 4-H, telethons, farmers markets, and a library program. It took us a while before we got our first paying gig, but eventually we did. The year after the first one we were able to triple that number doing performances as part of library summer reading programs.
Continuing to practice and try and get our name out there, we have 4 performances alone next month. Most of the time, it is still just performing for tips or things of that nature. This means that the influx of money we get in is relatively small still. We have a few paying gigs, and are going to see about getting into several different area Farmers Markets, but those won’t happen until the summer.
So my first question for you guys is, do you have any ideas for places or ways to make money from doing this? We don’t live in a big city, around 50,000, but are close enough to the Twin Cities in MN that we could travel there if need be. We would like to stay away from street performing if possible as well, cause lets face it. Not the easiest thing to do in the winters we have in Minnesnowta 
Second, as we have more performances, we have been looking into getting some sort of PA system for talking while we perform. We have looked at those full sound boards with multiple speakers, but currently don’t have the funds coming in enough to make it worthwhile. I’m not a techie by any stretch of the word and am having trouble when it comes to what to purchase. Currently we use a JBL bluetooth speaker for playing our songs for performances, and rely on our bare voices for talking in-between. If any of you have more experience in that realm, do you have any suggestions? $200 would probably be the max we would want to spend on something at this point. If we start to book more gigs, that number may increase, but that’s where it’s at right now.
Thank you guys for reading, and for any suggestions you might have!