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Our guild promises that you can make 10000 NP/day by following our tips. Many NeoPets users can claim that they've played for a long time, but never seem to be able to earn that much. Are we inflating our figures? To check our claims out, I started a brand new account. Armed with only 250 NP and a newbie pack containing a Rainbow Gun (which I gave to my pet), some assorted food items (Tigersquash Corn Dog and a Can of Neocola) and a book (The Big Book of Puzzles), The following report contains a fairly detailed account of how I made 100,000 NP in one week by playing only an hour and a half a day.

In this report, I'll occasionally capitalize terms (like SHOP WIZARD below) to indicate that I'm going to explain the reasoning behind why I did certain things. Note also that prices fluctuate on NeoPets. Prices mentioned in this report were current as of mid-April 2003, you'll have to do research to find out what the going rate for items are at present. Fortunately, this report shows you how to do such research - read on!

I began by clicking on the shop icon and opening a shop which cost me 150 NP. For another 50 NP, I upgraded the shop to size 2. Then I clicked on Quick Stock and put all the items in my inventory into my shop.

To set the prices on each item, I used the SHOP WIZARD. When you do a shop wizard search, it shows a portion of all the neopets users' shops with the lowest price on the top, but as I said the page doesn't show everyone's shop, just a group of the shops with the lowest prices for that item.  So, if User_X is selling a Main Codestone for 1000 NP and I did a Shop Wizard search for "Main Codestone", I'd only have a 1 in 8 chance of seeing User_X's price on that page. Instead of seeing User_X as the lowest price, you might see the page with User_Y having the lowest price at a reasonable 4600 NP or you might see User_Z having the lowest price at the somewhat inflated price of 5100 NP.

To RESEARCH PRICES, you should do a shop wizard search, check the first few prices for the item and who's selling them, and then (since you can't refresh the search page) click Back on your browser (for Explorer users, use the Backspace hotkey) and click on the Search Shops button to do another search. If the same names/prices come up, go back and click search again. What you are looking for are the lowest prices on at least three different search pages. Obviously, if you can do more than three, your researched price will be more accurate - you might discover one page where several shops sell the item you're researching for a lot less than the other pages, but doing too many searches takes time and can actually get you banned from the shop wizard for up to an hour.

After doing my research, I set the prices on my items at insanely low prices (35 for the book, 23 for the neocola, 4 for the corn dog). They all sold very fast, netting me 62 NP. Realizing I wasn't gonna be able to make any serious profits until I had the NPs to buy some inventory, I decided to play some games.

GAMES are a great way of making some NPs when you have nothing, but since you can make NPs faster in other ways, you shouldn't spend too much time on them unless you want to. The maximum number of NPs you can earn for most of the games (the shockwave games) is 1000 NP and you can only play most games three times a day. While you may find there are a number of games that you can get the maximum for, but if you want to make NPs quickly, you'll resist the urge and only play games that give you a good number of NPs in a short amount of time. I always try to play games that award me at least 100 NP for every minute I spend playing them and try to get into the habit of playing the three or four games that take the least amount of time to play every day. Also for some unknown reason, from midnight NST (that's California/Pacific time) to a bit after 1 AM, you can play a game three times and the number of times you played per day counter will reset, so you'll be able to play the same game another three times later that day.

As for what games will net you the most NPs in the shortest time... it changes frequently as the games and the NP amounts awarded change. Often, the featured game of the day is a good game to play, since you get twice the NPs you would normally. The shockwave games I played regularly during this week were Volcano Run, Chomby and the Fungus Balls, Dubloon Disaster, Meerca Chase & Zurroball. I also played Poogle Solitaire and Grundo's Gym every day and Pyramids when I had a few minutes to kill at the end of a session. All of the Meridell games were not working, otherwise I would have played Ultimate Bullseye and Potato Counter and would have placed bets on Turdle Racing as well.

After 3 games of Volcano Run (the featured game), Dubloon Disaster, Meerca Chase & Zurroball (all of which I tried to play fast rather than get a good score), I emptied my shop till and had a total of 3095 NP. It was time to get some inventory for my shop...

INVENTORY is the term I use to describe the items for sale in a shop. Most of the inventory I sold in my shop, I bought in other people's shops and sold at a profit. Determining what kind of inventory is good is really based on how much of a profit you can get from selling it and how fast you can sell it.

There's been a lot of talk in the guild about people who have won auctions or done shop wizard searches and managed to get items worth several thousand NPs for less than 100 NPs. Obviously items like that are pure profit. Let's not assume you're going to find any such bargains. When considering what kind of profit you'll realize off an item, ask yourself, "Is it better to buy 40 items at 100 NP and sell them at 150 NP or 1 item at 4000 NP and sell it for 4500?" This question asks if it's better to get a larger percentage profit for each item you sell or just more NPs for each item you sell. Obviously, the 40 items would net you a bigger overall profit, but it would take longer to buy, longer to sell and require you to have a bigger shop to fit the inventory. Also, when you buy up all the cheap listings for each item ("cornering the market"), people with higher prices often lower their price just below yours, forcing you to either lower your price (and get less of a profit) or sit on your inventory until you have the lowest price again. Unless you're going to realize a huge profit on a cheaper item (over 100%), you should go for the quick 500 NP.

Since speed is a factor, you want inventory that will sell really quickly. You might have a Meerca Squirt Bottle for sale for 4700 NP which may be a very good price for that item, but who wants such an item? The item is only usuable by Meercas and it isn't the greatest weapon. Try to stick with inventory that a lot of people are looking for: Codestones & Dubloons are very popular, Neggs, Bottled Faeries, Scratchcards, Morphing/Transmogrification Potions, and certain battledome items usuable by any species also sell well. You can also turn a good profit by trading in items that appear as Faerie Quest objects (plushies/toys, books, candy/cake, etc), but often people dump these items at really low prices which may force you into the "cornering the market" situation mentioned above. Finally be sure to periodically check the shops around Neopia itself (the Bookstore, the Magic Shop, etc.). Even if you're not fast enough to snag some of the hotter items, you can find out what items are available and track them down on auctions and the shop wizard.

One of the items I saw in the magic shop was Stream of Light. I checked the shop wizard and found that the lowest prices on most of the pages was 500 NP or more, but I found a page where one user was selling two of them for 366 and another user was selling one for 400 NP. I snagged these and while in one of their shops, I found a Salt Mote for 200 NP which I also bought (because I didn't recall motes being that cheap). When I checked the wizard, I found out Salt Motes were trading for a little under 500, but I found another shop where I bought 5 more Salt Motes for 300 NP each. In order to fit all this inventory into my shop, I upgraded the size again and set the Stream of Lights at 495 NP and the Salt Motes at 450 NP.

Then I went to the guild and did all the activities I could (new users can't use Coltzan's Shrine, the Fruit Machine, Tombola and a few other things during the first few days). I got an omelette and a Healing Potion X from the healing faerie (which I sold for 70 NP). I played Poogle Solitaire & Grundo's Gym (an awful game when you start out - takes too long and provides no great reward, but should be played anyway since you occasionally get health food items which can be sold, your pet's stats can increase and after a few months of play, you'll be earning a couple of thousand NPs per game). I also snagged 150 NP off the Money Tree which I used to upgrade my shop again. I bought a scratchcard for 600 NP and won nothing (I would waste a lot of money on scratchcards - see below). I opened a bank account (the bank gave me 30 NPs just for that) and before I signed off, I took the rest of my NPs and bought a couple of really cheap books (Train Koi, World Class Wockys, Nest Builders Manual, When Your Meercas Hurt) haggling at the bookstore.

HAGGLING is a skill that I understand but haven't mastered. Unlike the shops (or at the igloo garage sale), in the stores of Neopia, you have to haggle. It's time consuming and along with the five second rule (you can't purchase two items within five seconds of each other), it's meant to help those with slower connections. It doesn't really work that way, but it is a skill that can get you a lower price on an item. I've found that if you walk into a store and offer 80% of an item's asking price, they'll accept. There are circumstances though where you can offer less than 70% and have the storekeeper accept and other times when they won't accept 80% of the asking price (I believe this is influenced to a degree by how much haggling you do with the storekeeper because they do occcasionally get upset with you and kick you out of the store). My advice on haggling is that there are a lot of items that sell out in the stores very quickly and you shouldn't try haggling the price down too low if you want to snag that item. Whenever I go to the bookstore, I want the storekeeper to accept my first offer because the book I want will probably be out of stock a few seconds later.

Other items can be found on the Shop Wizard for less than in the stores. It is possible to make a good profit on such items. For instance, I was able to haggle with the storekeeper at the Toy Shop over some Cheery Blossoms that he was selling for 400 NP and get 2 of them for about 260 NP each. I resold them in my shop for 375 NP each (the lowest price I found on the Shop Wizard was 380 NP). They sold very quickly - it was a small profit, but it took me very little time to achieve.

At this point, I had no NPs in hand. I placed all my inventory in my shop and set their prices to match or beat the lowest price I could find on the Shop Wizard and then I logged out and went to work. When I came back, I emptied my shop till and my bank account and after playing 3 games of Chomby and the Fungus Balls, I had racked up 6681 NP. First, I checked the Shop Wizard for "two dub" and found someone selling a Two Dubloon Coin for 3685 NP. I bought the coin and went to The Golden Dubloon (on Krawk Island) and bought a Caesar's Salad for my Neopet. My neopet got a yummy meal and I got a One Dubloon Coin as change which I put in my shop and sold for 3825 NP.

A quick word on PROFIT. The Golden Dubloon trick is well documented (see the guild web site), so I'll only say there's a bigger demand for One Dubloon Coins than Two Dubloon Coins, due to the number of neopets of level 1 - 10. I made another small profit by swapping my Two Dubloon Coin for a One Dubloon Coin (140 NP), but if I had the NP I could have bought ten Two Dubloon Coins for a bit under 37000 NP and sold them for 38250 NP (a 1200 NP profit). It served as a big incentive not to spend any NPs knowing I could accumulate NPs much faster if I had more NPs.

I was getting tired of getting these small profits (earning less than 5% of my purchase price), so I decided to experiment on the extreme. One of the most underpriced items on Neopets (mainly because of its availability) is the Pale Elixir. An item that restores 9 HP in the BattleDome, it can be found for 35 NP or less (which is about 1000 NP less than the Bomberry Elixir which restores 11 HP in the BattleDome). As far as use is concerned, it's potentially more useful than Healing Potions I through X, but can be found for a lot less. With this information, I bought every Pale Elixir I could find on the Shop Wizard that was priced under 20 NP and put them in my shop for 25 NP. Then I found my entry on the Shop Wizard and bought every Pale Elixir that was priced less than mine (and added them to my inventory) so my name appeared on the top of the page.

When I discussed the Shop Wizard before, I mentioned that the listings are broken into at least thirteen groups of listings. The page that shows your listing is what I call YOUR SHOP WIZARD PAGE. Often to sell an item, you don't have to have the lowest price in all of Neopia. If you have the lowest price on your Shop Wizard Page, people using the Shop Wizard may just buy the item from you rather than hunting for a lower price (which may not even exist). People who were looking for Pale Elixirs had no problem paying my 25 NP price tag, if they bothered to check the wizard, they might've found a Pale Elixir for a few NP less, but most people just bought from me rather than waste the time searching on such a cheap item.

Understanding the Shop Wizard:

When you look at a Shop Wizard Page, you aren't looking at everybody's shop. I may have a Pawkeet for sale at 80,000 NP and you might not see my name/price info when you search for "Pawkeet" on the Shop Wizard.

What you're actually seeing is a group of shops selling a Pawkeet. Neopets has divided its users into groups based on the first letter of their user ID and there are 13 different groups (there used to be 8, these are the updated groups).