We’ll be honest with you. There are lots of ways to make bells in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Some are obviously better than others and while we’ll certainly touch on them, there’s one method that will make you way more money than anything else. The problem? You have absolutely no control over when you can do it. So if you need to earn a few million bells, here are our recommendations.
The Tried and True Methods
Setting aside selling the day’s hot item, if you’re first starting these are the things you’re going to want to do while you wait for an opportunity to earn some real cash.
Create an Orchard and Sell Fruit
For as long as Animal Crossing has existed, this has long been the most reliable way to earn money. Get some non-native fruit and plant an orchard. You can vary it up and with about 30 trees you can make approximately 50,000 Bells every few days.
Catch Bugs or Fish
You either need to have a ton of patience or wait for a rainy day if you want to earn a ton of Bells off of bugs and fish. It’s no longer easy to create tarantula islands and they’ve departed from the northern hemisphere for the time being. Many are instead turning to fish, but you’ll need lots of bait and a rainy day which adds coelacanth, worth 15,000 Bells, to the pool.
Hit Your Money Rock
You can earn up to about 15,000 Bells a day by finding the one money rock on your island every day. Take a shovel or axe and hit each of your rocks to figure out which one has the Bells. Make sure to get set up before hand by digging a few holes behind you. That way you won’t get knocked out of range before the rock is out of charges and you get the maximum amount of money possible.
Best Way to Earn Bells – Turnip Exchange
“Of course it’s turnips,” I hear you all say. But wait, listen. You can obviously buy turnips and then sell them at your own island or other people’s islands. Those 100 Bell turnips can sell for three to five times the amount you purchased them for. You can easily turn 500,000 Bells into 1.5 million Bells with enough patience. If you don’t know anyone, head on over to Turnip Exchange and join one of the queues. People will usually charge you something in return like Nook Miles Tickets or Bells, but it’s usually worth the wait.
But that’s not the focus of this section. The real way to earn huge amounts of cash is to be the one who has the island with a high turnip value. Just last week my Nook’s Cranny was taking turnips for 540 Bells each! And while I did earn a cool million Bells off of selling my turnips, I made another 7 million by making my island available for others to visit.
If you’re nervous about what to expect, here’s how it works:
- Choose to Host a session.
- Open your island and enter the Dodo Code.
- Define your native fruit.
- Enter your turnip price.
- Enter your time and island hemisphere.
- Put in relevant info such as what you want in return.
If your turnip prices are high enough, it’s not unreasonable to ask for 99,000 or 198,000 Bells (two max stacks). You can also ask for various resources like wood, furniture, or Nook Miles Tickets.
Just make sure to build a fence around the path to your Nook’s Cranny. You don’t want strangers roaming around your island taking resources and such. In addition, the faster the process goes, the more money you can get before the shop closes or the prices roll over. For your sake, we hope it’s a PM spike rather than an AM. You have significantly more time to take advantage of the situation after noon.
My biggest piece of advice though is to just be patient and don’t expect anything in return. Just take what folks give you and enjoy the free funds. If you want, share the code on Twitter. Oftentimes acquaintances will give you much more in return than strangers.
But how do you know when to even expect a spike? Track your prices twice a day with Turnip Prophet. The site will take your inputs and show you the most likely outcomes for the given week. For example, the above graph and table are based on my data from Monday and Tuesday. With it, I know I can hold onto my turnips until Thursday PM and be guaranteed a profit. Sometimes it will be less certain, but if you have a chance for a large spike, plan to open your island on Turnip Exchange. If those prices end up above 500 Bells, you’re golden.
