How to Make Neopoints on Neopets.com

Neopets was created in 1999 to entertain bored college students, and has since grown into a widely popular game for all ages. Children will delight in the many games available, while adults (if they don't enjoy the games as much as the kids do) have many other options to keep themselves entertained. You can play the Neopets stock market, run a successful business by finding good deals on items to resell in your shop, collect a practically endless array of items, customize your pets and their home, and plenty more! But in order to do almost anything on Neopets, you'll need neopoints.

If you want to make neopoints in a hurry, your first stop should be the games room. Here you'll find many games of various difficulty levels and genres. To help you find games that appeal to you, Neopets allows you to sort games by type (action, adventure, puzzle, etc.).

Some games pay out more points than others, so when you open a game's page look for the score to point ratio under your "scores sent" area. 1 point = 1 NP means that your payout will be the same as your score. Experiment a bit to see which games you like, compared to how well they score and pay out. Sometimes a game will have a good payout ratio, but getting a good score is difficult. Games also only pay out up to 1,000NP each play, so if you're playing more for points than for fun, keep an eye on the ratio and your score so you know when you can quit with maximum earnings.

Always take a look at the featured game! This changes daily, and will pay out double your points up to 2,000NP.

As you can see, playing the right games will get you points pretty easily, but most players treat games as a supplement to some other form of earning points. If you don't have a lot of time to spend playing games, you won't earn a lot of points this way. And so most players look to other methods as their "main income".

Restocking is probably the best way to earn points, if you know how to do it well. You can't just throw items into your shop willy-nilly and hope to make money -- you need to put a little thought into it, and be willing to spend so that you can earn.

If you've been playing for any length of time, you've probably noticed that shops range from dinky little shops selling junk for 1NP, all the way to "neomalls" with hundreds of expensive items. Don't feel pressured or discouraged by these larger shops! While Neopets does have an "advertising board" for shops, most players simply use the shop wizard to find what they need, meaning your shop will have an equal chance at being found. This isn't the real world, where big businesses can crush the little guy -- here, everyone can succeed!

So, how does one get started with a shop? It's easy! All you have to do is go to "Your Shop" on the Neopets menu and you'll be presented with the option to open your own shop. You'll choose a name, a shopkeeper, and have the option to customize your shop or leave it plain. Personally, I like to make my layouts simple so that they'll load faster for people with slower internet connections. Nobody wants to lose an item to someone else just because they couldn't load the page fast enough!

Next up: do you want a theme for your shop, or do you just want to sell anything and everything? Some people like to specialize in plushies, for example, because this way people remember them as "the plushie shop" and might come back the next time they're looking for a plushie. Others like to sell a little bit of everything, because they reach a larger market this way. Both methods have merit, and it's entirely up to you which you prefer.

When you go the shop owner route, you'll need to spend money in order to make money. You'll want your shop to be a reasonable size to get you started, and you'll also need to spend points to buy the items you want to sell. And so we adhere to the saying "buy low, sell high". You might decide that you need to make at least 100NP on any item you're restocking, or maybe you're happy with any profit you make. That is up to you, depending on how quickly you want those points.

My personal tactic is to stock as much as I can, from junk items to paintbrushes, to cover all the bases. Players who want their packrat avatar love to clean shops out of their cheapest items, while the expensive items attract people looking for something more specific. Expensive items tend to take longer to sell, which is great for me because it means I can take more time to shop around for my next batch of items to sell and I still make a big profit when that big ticket item does finally sell. For people who want profit but don't have lots of time to sink into a freshly stocked shop, it's nice to forget about it for a few days and come back to a hefty profit in your shop till.

Don't worry if your shop doesn't take off right away -- it takes time to get the hang of things! With practice, you'll learn to recognize patterns: what sells well, what doesn't sell well, and what items seem to sell better at certain times of the year. Some items are simply very hard to find at a price lower than what you want to sell at, and sometimes even the items you normally stock will change drastically in value and leave you scrambling to adjust your game plan. Just stick with it. Use your profits to expand your shop until you're comfortable with the amount of items you can stock at once (I find around 200 items to be a nice size for myself, but you might want more room or be happier with less).

Restocking is probably the most common way of earning points, and it is a nice balance of risk and reward, effort and pay off, fun and business.

If you're willing to take a bit more risk than restocking, playing the stock market might be a good fit for you. Minimal effort, potential for great pay off. However, you're limited to buying 1,000 stocks a day and sometimes you'll see your portfolio sit in the toilet for weeks. But if you know what you're doing, or are willing to risk it, it's a great opportunity to make big money fast!

Now we come to the final options: contests and freebies. Neopets is great for really making players feel included in the Neopets world, and hold a variety of contests on a regular basis. Some of these will pay out in points, while others will win you items or trophies. If you like to write, you can enter the caption contest for a chance to win points; if you like to draw, there are regular drawing contests as well. And if you don't like either of those, there are other contests as well, such as the Lenny Conundrum, where you'll be given a riddle to solve in exchange for a prize!

To supplement everything else (or for days when you just don't care much), there are freebies spread throughout Neopia. Coltzan's Shrine, Fruit Machine, Tombola, and the Giant Omelette are just a few free things you can play or visit for a chance to win a prize. Some prizes are little, some are fantastic, and sometimes you might not win at all. But for a couple of mouse clicks, all the "not-a-winners" and small prizes are worth it when you finally hit it big.