What are some good ways to make bells early game?

[frankied]

So far I've only been doing the obvious fishing and bug catching, which is slow but working. What are some of the better catches to sell? What are some of the methods you all have been using for a quick buck?

 

[lunachii]

I sell fruit, seashells, fish, bugs and furniture I don't need. I have been travelling to the islands to get more fruit to sell. Some of the best sellers I've noticed is Red snapper, the zebrafish lol and sturgeon, butterflies also sell well if you catch the right ones, basically anything except the common one, tiger and the yellow. The white orchid mantis also sells for a lot. It's a prosess for me too, but it works

 

[BlueFlameAngel]

I've mainly been using fishing to make money! Sea butterflies are worth 1,000 bells and they're always the tiniest fish shadow you find atm in Northern Hemisphere so it's easy to select those and know you're getting 1,000 bells a pop. Red snappers (5,000 bells) usually have a fairly recognisable size too that's a bit smaller than sea bass and bigger than dabs. Football fish (2,500 bells) are same size as red snappers. When you become familiar with the shadow sizes it's really easy to only catch what you want and quickly make bells that way!

If you're lucky and it rains on your island, or IDEALLY you find a rainy Nook miles island (I'll explain why in a minute), it's really simple to farm Coelacanth (15,000 bells). Coelacanth have a big shadow that's slightly larger than the sea bass. If you scare away every other shadow in the ocean and keep doing that while you walk up and down your beaches, you majorly increase the chance of a coelacanth spawning. However, this is easier on a Nook miles island because those islands are smaller and there's less ocean space available for unwanted fish to spawn. I used this method yesterday and today on rainy nook miles island to fill my inventory with coelacanth in about an hour's time.

 

[moon_child]

Pop balloons. I’ve gotten some with 30-50k bells in them.