I said one day I'd start a guide...sure, it's not very fancy (yet), but I thought I'd deal with writing things down first.
To start, everything I do here are things I've done myself. 100% confirmed...not that rumored bullcrap a wiki or forum post might give you.
So let's start with something everyone who plays Animal Crossing always wants to know: How to make money.
Without money, one cannot do very much in their town. Thankfully, there are many ways to bring in the bucks, some more profitable then others.
Fruit Harvesting
This is a common way people make money. It can be quite profitable, but very time consuming. Essentially, people go around town, shake their fruit trees, and sell the fruit. Native fruit sells for 100 each, while foreign fruit sells for 500. There are 3 pieces of fruit on each tree, meaning you can make either 300 or 1,500 from a single tree. The more trees you have, the more money you can make. A perfect town has over 100 trees, so if most of them were fruit trees, and most of those were foreign, then you'd be looking at 100,000 Bells from just fruit!
There's a downside though. Most are turned off by the fact that it takes hours to harvest every fruit tree. Another prblem is that fruit grows back every 3 days, meaning you'd only be making 200,000 Bells from fruit a week.
Money Rocks
Every day in your town, one rock is a money rock. When you hit this rock with a tool, it will spurt money for every hit you land on it. You can only hit it in a short time period, so you must work fast to obtain the maximum amount of money. The best way to do this is to use holes. What you want to do is dig 2 holes 2 spaces away from the rock. Make sure they're next to eachother. As you hit the rock, you should get caught inbetween the holes and remain close enough to hit the rock the maximum amount of times possible.
So how much can you make off the rock? Well, you start by getting 100 Bells, which doubles to 200 on the second hit, and continues like that. You can make 8,100 Bells if you hit the rock all 7 possible times. There also exists the Silver Shovel, which gives you a 10% chance of doubling the Bells that come out from that hit. This can double what you make to 16,200!
Again, this can be done daily, resulting in 56,700 Bells a week if done correctly each day.
Dig-ables
Just a general catagory for things you can dig up. This includes Fossils and Gyroids. 3 fossils appear daily, and can be sold for a good price after you have them identified at the museum (about 15,000 a day, give or take). Gyroids appear after it rains/snows, and can be sold for a couple hundred Bells.
Fishing/Bug Catching
All bugs and fish can be sold, some for much more then others. It's all about knowing what fish and bugs are profitable, but also somewhat easy to obtain.
Remember that they must be somewhat easy to obtain. Yes, you could make 225,000 Bells from a pocket full of Stringfish (each are worth 15,000) but they are so rare that it'd take hours to do that. You want to focus on fish that are easy to get, but worth a lot. Fish that fall under this catagory include Red Snapper (3,000) Barred Knifejaw (5,000) Football Fish (2,500) Char (3,000)
Back in November, I focused on only the fish above. If a rare one popped up, I did catch it, but going after only those allowed me to get 100,000 Bells an HOUR.
Turnips/The Stalk Market
This is, without a doubt, the best way to make lots of money, fast. It's also the best way to lose lots of money, fast. Without a doubt the hardest way to make money.
Every Sunday, Joan comes to town to sell turnips. The buy price for white turnips changes week to week, where as red turnips always cost 1,000 Bells.
Red turnips are planted in the ground like a flower. You then have to water it EVERY DAY until Saturday when you can dig it up and sell it to Nook for 16,000. If you miss a day of watering, the red turnip will wilt. Once it has wilted it cannot be saved, unless it is watered by a Silver Watering Can.
White turnips are where the money's at. Buying prices from Joan on Sundays usually range from the low 80's to the high 110's. Turnips are bought in bunches of 10, and 10 bunches of 10 can be grouped together in one's pockets. This means that you can have 15,000 turnips in your pockets at one time.
Tom Nook will buy white turnips for different prices each day. The price also changes at Noon, so there's 2 prices a day.
The idea is to buy a bunch of turnips for cheap, then sell them to Nook when he's buying them for 300+. The easiest way to do this is to contact friends/make a pool, and have many people look out for good prices so that you increse your chance of a profit.
If you do not sell your turnips by the next Sunday, they will rot and become worthless.
Depending on how many turnips you buy and what the sell price is determines what you will make. You may only make 100,000 bells, or you may do like I did last week and manage to make 2.8 million.
Also, keep an eye out for the very very VERY rare chance that the price shoots up into the quadruple digits. Someone I know had a friend who had a sell price of 5000 per turnip, and managed to make 127,000,000 Bells.
These are the most common ways to make money. There are other ways, but I won't touch on those today. Look forward to tomorow when I talk about using the Flea Market and other holidays to reel in the money.