Become a Successful Entrepreneur

It is safe to say that 99.9% of Neopians manage a shop. It is a great way to make extra neopoints, and there is no denying that certain malls are very popular; they are well-organized, well-stocked and carry an enormous variety of items. But an average player probably owns a small shop of a size less than 10 and stock whatever random items they manage to find on a daily basis. I will refer to this type of shop as a grab-bag since you never know what items will be for sale.

There are other users who have shops for selling specific items, and these are restockers. They search the Shop Wizard for below-average costs, purchase those items, and sell them at higher prices to make a profit. There are some items you cannot do this with because they are just too common, like jelly and omelettes. When you have items that are priced too high, no one is going to buy them!

On to the visual aesthetic. Here is a list of dos and don'ts regarding the layout of your shop.

Do

Have a shop name, preferably something that describes what you sell. If your shop name contains the word "junk" or "stuff", why should someone bother to see what you have for sale? "Emporium", while overused, is a good word to describe a shop that sells many different things.

Choose a cute shopkeeper. It can be a Faerie, a Neopet, or even a Petpet! Give your shopkeeper a name, too, to make the experience of buying more personable. And remember, a name is a proper noun, and nouns are capitalized!

Mention if you're having a sale, and it would even be a great idea to post your sale on the Shop Ads board.

Widely broadcast the fact that you are emptying your Safety Deposit Box so other people can buy items to get the avatar. :)

At least write a little description thanking people for visiting your shop.

Do Not

Put numbers for your shop name, shopkeeper or description. It's lazy.

Have an annoying layout that takes five minutes to load.

Have a layout that makes the font difficult to read.

Have page music. This is one of the most annoying features ever.

Sell garbage items. See list below.

Clutter up your description with a combination of blogs and images. One is okay... twenty, not so much.

Now you have some ideas of what your shop should look like, but what to sell? The point of the shop is make money, but maybe you don't want to waste time endlessly refreshing the Shop Wizard for easy-to-sell items. Fret not, I have compiled a list of valuable items and how to obtain them.

Discovery Items

Things you can find by going about your daily routine.

Codestones, bottled faeries: obtained from winning Tombola, or you may get lucky and find them "on the floor".

Dubloons: can be given by Coltzan's Shrine, as a reward from Anchor Management, and found at the Forgotten Shore.

Paint Brushes: can be received from a Random Event, but they're very rare.

Morphing Potions: if you are lucky enough to land on the pink potion space on the Wheel of Fortune, a morphing potion will yield a nice chunk of change.

Wearables. During site events like the Altador Cup and Games Master Challenge, you can earn wearable prizes. A year later, these items become rare and can be sold for greater profit.

Tip: if you find something that look expensive (or you've never heard of it), check the price to see whether you should put it in your shop or on the Trading Post.

Easy Restocks

These are items that can be found cheap on the Shop Wizard and sold high to make a profit.

Healing potions

Battle magic potions (Downpour Bottle, Slippery Floor Potion, etc.)

Collectible items like stamps, seashells and coins.

Avatar items. Sometimes people don't know that an item can be used to get an avatar and sell it as junk.

Motes and other various Battledome items like cheap rings and snowball wands.

Books

Food. Playing Dice-a-Roo gets you virtually free food! Also, you can get Spooky Food from Apple Bobbing.

Garbage

These are things that no one will buy, not even if you sell it for one neopoint. Just discard it, because no one will pick it up from the Money Tree.

Underwater Fishing: kelp, fish, shoes, etc. The ONLY thing of value you might catch is a Bag of Broken Neopoints.

Pick Your Own: nobody wants to buy your piece of barbed wire or cotton. Certain berries can be worth NP, but for the most part, you find junk.

Shiny Obsidian

Prizes for solving the Lunar Puzzle

Snowballs: Some rarer ones are worthwhile, but not Wet, Poison, Yellow or Peach ones.

Toys you receive from Weltrude's Toy Chest (at the Petpet Park) or Anchor Management - they're just too common.

Tombola prizes other than codestones or faeries: This includes Mystery Island souvenirs, unlabeled tin cans, and Semolina.

Reject plushies

More often than not, I visit a shop and only end up purchasing one thing because the rest of it is junk. I cannot stress this enough: DO NOT SELL GARBAGE. It is a waste of space. Please feel free to use the Discard feature at liberty! If you have nothing worthwhile to sell, an empty shop is a lot less of a disappointment than stumbling upon a bunch of junk.

You have now been armed with the knowledge for opening a great shop. Keep it clean, don't sell stuff nobody will buy, and be friendly! Reaching out to other users will increase your patronage. Having a theme helps, too; there are plenty of shop blogs you can use that will match a shopkeeper. If you are selling everything that was in your SDB, make sure to let others know! Follow these tips and most certainly your small business will become more profitable than before.