Tried it a few times. Don’t think I even managed to make a buck. 40 to 75 cents tops, in one afternoon, all from well-wishing neighbors was the most I ever took in. Probably just as well, as having strange people drive up to a 9-year-old boy and asking about his wares might have led to problems.
I think I manged to take in over $12 one day, though I was actually selling popsicles.
I remember one time some lady complained about my stand, so a cop paid me a visit. When he saw my little setup, he said he was “going to be the laughing stock of the station,” then bought a few Popsicles for himself and coworkers. Awesome 
My top take was about $4.
My kids, however, got more than $100 over a three-day weekend once. We lived half a block from a park where a festival was going on that weekend, and their prices were cheaper than anything at the festival.
They started with fresh-squeezed but quickly went over to concentrate. Charged the same.
Do you know what the complaint was? Were you breaking health code or something? I’m trying to think of some way a posicle stand run by a child could constitute a complaint to the cops.
I don’t recall exactly, but I think she was upset that I didn’t have a permit or something equally ridiculous. Some people…
I personally made almost $30 in one day. We were offering lemonade, limeade and fresh cookies. The cookie girl was selling like mad, so I offered to join forces. Since her cookies were dry, but she was popular and sweet, she sold out quickly.
I still remember the day because it was when my father taught me about profit. $30-$12 for supplies. Woo! 18 bucks for only 7 hours of work in the hot sun.
I don’t recall exactly. Something like 15-20 dollars for the day.
I was selling Kool-aid though, and my parents were having a garage sale at the time (I set up in the shade by the garage where things were spread out).
Wasn’t there a news story about a little girl whose lemonade stand was shut down (or almost shut down) for a similar reason? It ended up being one of those cute Internet news stories that people circulated for a while.
I never did the lemonade stand thing, but I did grow gourds in my parents’ garden, load them onto a wagon, and take them door-to-door to sell them. I made like $60 off those things, and every year my neighbors expected me around Halloween with my gourds. I briefly spread my market into pumpkins. Neighbors started coming to me to buy pumpkins and gourds in the fall. I made quite a bit of money every year… into the hundreds, easily.
Then my parents decided they wanted their garden back, and that was the end of my business. Very sad.
6-7 years ago in Longmont, CO a little girl’s soda stand was shut down because the city decided she needed a permit and a stand that included stuff like a hand washing station and a few other pretty silly things considering she was eleven years old. It made the Denver papers, but I can’t seem to find a link. I remember, because I lived there at the time and her father and I were both regulars at the Lefthand Brewery tasting room.
Once a year when I was a kid my mom and a bunch of her friends would throw a gigantic yard sale. Our house was well-located, and yard-sale-ing is a big deal around there, so they’d have hundreds of people come through.
A friend (whose mother was also selling) and I sold lemonade and cookies for fifty cents each. (Our mothers made the cookies and lemonade, figuring it was worth it to keep us occupied during the yard sale, and occupied building a booth while they were setting up.) Nearly everyone who stopped by bought some. I think we had close to $100 once, but I’m sure my grandfather probably came by and threw a $20 in the till.
To give you a time frame, we usually went and spent the money on Atari games.
One of my good friends in elementary school, her dad runs a produce company that provides fruits and vegetables to most of the restaurants around town. Whenever she and her brothers were feeling a little low on cash, they’d just set up a fruit stand. The stuff they were peddling was worlds better than you could find in the grocery store. They made a killing every time. I managed to hook myself up one time. My family was having a yard sale, so she set up her stand beside, and we all split the loot.
-Lil
Best way yet to give a timeframe! 
It was never a big thing in Denmark with lemonade stands, so unfortunetly i cant really comment on that. Im sure we did something of the sort though, to try and make money but i cant recall what kind of stuff we sold, but it has most likely been to our parrents and neighbours.
I used to get bored with lemonade.
One time I made jell-o. But I couldn’t just do it simple, I had to make it a two-colored layered batch. But I messed up one layer, left out half the water, and all my work was ruined. End of enthusiasm for that year.
Next year we tried for ice cream sodas. I’m sure we sold them for half the cost, but it was a lot more fun while it lasted.
I never did the lemonade thing, but I talked my cousins into starting a sign company when they were visiting one time. I was probably about eight. The signs were just magic markers and construction paper.
We had a base rate (25 cents or something), and then we pulled out the Scrabble letters and used them as a reference for a per-letter price. Q’s and Z’s were 10 cents, X’s were 8 cents, vowels were 1 cent, etc.
I think we made a couple bucks from very generous and agreeable neighbors who probably thought we were nuts. I don’t know if my mom knew what we were up to, because I can’t imagine her actually letting us go door to door trying to solicit that garbage.
Probably not more than a couple of bucks. There wasn’t much traffic on my little suburban street.
A few years back I was driving through a suburban neighborhood with my now-ex wife and we happened upon some kids on an equally out-of-the-way street with… well, a very poor business model. They were selling brand name cranberry juice at 50 cents for a large Solo cup. 
It was adorable, though, so my wife and I gave them two dollars each for a couple of cups. Their eyes practically bugged out of their little heads. Thinking about it still makes me smile.
Our family was a bit off the beaten path: we sold painted rocks.
I’m pretty sure we never made more than a few dollars, but it was fun convincing people to buy hunks of rock with bright yellow smiley faces and purple flowers.
We also did a carnival dealy in conjunction with our garage sale. We lost money, though.
I never did the lemonade thing, but I did sell semi-precious gemstones* out of a muffin tin for a few years when I was a small thing ('round about ages 5 - 10).
That was reasonably lucrative though - I could generally manage to make at least 50 bucks in an hour. I had one day where I cleared over $500.
*Here’s a picture of what they looked like before we conned our dads into chipping them out of the substrate. Or we could spend a fair chunk of time picking them out of the nasty, silty river where they were generally found. Dealer’s choice.
