Just to allay your fears about the stock market, I've only seen one of my stocks go to 0, and that was about 3 years ago. Since then I've invested probably over 3 million in the stock market. A good sell price for me is around +75% to capture my profits (and then reinvesting the amount back into the stock market). I tried doing 100% or even 200%, but I find that more often than not stocks don't reach the 100% barrier and you're left with a smaller profit overall from this price point.
A side note about the stock market - it is a good place to put your money, but liquidating it back into neopoints takes a long time if you need the profit from stocks for a specific neopoint goal (like Adam avvie). That said, if you don't have very many liquidated neopoints, you might want to stay away from the stock market - it takes awhile to realize your profits.
Do your dailies, although I find most of my dailies' neopoints from my bank interest. I only do Edna quests below 750 np, Esophagor quests below 500 np, and Taelia quests below 2500 np. This is because Edna quests and Esophagor quests often give worthless items as rewards - keeping your budget for each quest at these levels will help maximize your returns. You won't finish many quests, but overall you will gain more np than if you spent 5k on an Edna quest for a spooky doughnut.
Games are good if you don't have a fast connection and know how to restock - you can gain 15k per hour playing the ones that yield the highest np/min. To find this ratio, simply divide the neopoints you get from a game by the time you spent playing it, although this sometimes makes playing games a chore. Look at guides or websites to see which games are the best for gaining np.
Last is restocking - I make on average 100k per hour doing this at non-peak times (12-3 am NST or 8-10 am NST). You want to get familiar with what are common items, and which ones are rare ones. Neoitems.net helps with this, as it will show you which items are really rare, and which ones show up rarely but are not worth much. I like to take a restock period or two to "check" items in an unfamiliar shop - you'll miss some good items, but this way you won't buy that 5,000 item and find out it's worth 2,000. You need a GOOD connection for restocking, and even that won't guarantee you the item.
Because restocking is random now, I keep 5-6 shop windows open (1 being igloo garage sale). Then I constantly refresh each shop window and if nothing changed, I move on to the next shop window. Only go for the rare items - items that net you 500 np or less in profit are not worth the trouble, and you might miss a restock in another shop. Sometimes you can go for the cheaper rarely seen items instead of the 2,500, 5,000, and 10,000 items, as those are clicked on first. For items that I've never seen before, I sometimes like to check it on the shop wiz in another browser window to see if I will lose money on the item, although items you've never seen before (after restocking in that shop for awhile) are generally big profit-makers. Another tip is to move onto the next window if you just bought an item and don't think you'll be able to get another item from that same shop - it saves you a click to "go back to the shop".
Use your number keypad to type in the amount. It also helps to do numbers like 1212 or 2323 because it is very quick to type that out compared to 1280 or 2270. I however like to put in an amount 100 np less than the haggling price - this is usually enough for the shopkeeper to accept the offer. This technique is often difficult for people not skilled with the numpad, but helps your profits in the long run.
Make your screen display as large as possible so you make the icons smaller and don't have to scroll for the haggling page to click on the neopet.
Some shops are also populated more by restockers than others. For example, the spooky food shop is very populated - I've yet to get anything better than chocolate covered peanuts (3k or so profit). I can't even get to the haggling screen for festering coffee (22k) or candy skull (80k?) - it's that difficult, and those profit margins aren't even that large compared to other shops when factoring in rarity and difficulty. The ice food shop and chocolate shop are also very populated, partly due to the chocolate shop having an avvie. Learn a shop and find out what is rare and what is not - that will often make you a lot of profits, even more than restocking at popular shops. The general bookstore is a good place to start, as it will restock with a lot of books - the only downside is the profits are usually small to negative gains if you don't restock rarer books, and 2,500-10,000 neopoint books are bought VERY quickly. Most of the time, you can make 100-1,000 neopoints on each book you restock.
Always have about 100,000 neopoints on hand if you plan on restocking for an amount of time (or more, if you like to restock more expensive items). I've missed out on an 80k profit because I didn't have enough neopoints on hand.
Lastly, price close to the lowest price on shop wiz. Usually 1 or 2 np below the lowest price will sell out in a day or two, but if not, revisit your prices in a week and adjust accordingly.
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