Guide: Red Dead Online - How to Make Money

How do you make money in Red Dead Online? As opposed to the single player portion of Red Dead Redemption 2, you arguably have a bigger need for cash in Red Dead Online because everything's more expensive. Guns cost more, horses cost more, and even clothes cost more. Fortunately, getting your hands on some dosh is pretty straightforward -- it's just that you'll need to grind for it more often.

How to make money in Red Dead Online

Below, we've listed all the best ways to make money in Red Dead Online. Rotate through most, if not all of these activities and you should build up a decent amount of dollars as you continue to play. Keep the money rolling in, and your time with Red Dead Online will be a lot smoother.

Hunting

Hunting is always going to be a viable source of income in Red Dead Online, and if you know what you're doing, it's also one of the easiest ways to make some decent dosh. Good or perfect quality pelts can fetch fair prices -- especially if you collect a few before selling them all at once at a butcher.

What's more, meat is plentiful, and although you should always keep some meat for yourself so that you can cook and eat it to restore your health, stamina, and dead eye cores, feel free to sell any excess meat to butchers for a reasonable price. Again, like pelts, the money quickly adds up if you have a lot of meat to sell.

As for tips when it comes to hunting, always try to shoot your target in the head, otherwise you risk damaging the pelt. For larger animals, like bison, bears, or elk, you're going to need more powerful weapons in order to take them down in as few hits as possible, so you may need to save up some cash for guns like the bolt action rifle before you go hunting for the big boys.

Co-op hunting is also totally viable. If you're playing with friends, you can time your shots in order to get cleaner kills. Two bullets to the head are better than one, as the old saying goes.

Story missions

As is the case in the single player campaign, story missions quickly become a good source of income. The story missions in Red Dead Online pay out in relatively large chunks, but they're obviously quite limited and they generally take longer to complete than lesser activities.

Still, if you're really hurting for cash, completing a story mission can get you a good chunk of change without the need for grinding. If, for example, you have you eye on a better gun or a new outfit, opting to play a story mission may just give you that extra handful of dollars that you need.

Treasure maps

While looting the bodies of your enemies, you may stumble across treasure maps. In the single player campaign, you'd have to set out into the world and find landmarks in order to continue your quest for loot, but in Red Dead Online, you simply get a treasure marker placed somewhere on your map.

In other words, finding treasure in Red Dead Online is a heck of a lot easier, and so treasure maps can be a solid source of money on a semi-regular basis. Whenever you get your hands on one, slap a waypoint to the treasure's location on the map and get over there for a quick cash injection of up to several hundred dollars.

Looting

Kill a whole hideout full of bandits? It's time to get looting. Walk over to a dead body and hold triangle to loot. You'll often find a few dollars on bodies, and sometimes, you'll even nab usable items such as food or tonics. Of course, this means that if you're looting medicine off the bodies of your enemies, you won't have to go and buy it, so you're saving money in the process.

The thing about looting is that the money you find can very quickly rack up, especially if you've killed a whole bunch of people. That said, you need to be wary in Red Dead Online as bodies do tend to disappear a lot faster than they do in the single player campaign. If you're desperate for dosh, you might want to stop mid-fight to loot a few corpses -- just be careful that you don't get blasted while doing so.

Side missions

Side missions pop up all around the map, and most of them consist of straightforward objectives. Side missions generally don't reward you with as much money as story missions do, but like almost every other way of making money in Red Dead Online, the profits can quickly rack up if you grind them out.

The only issue with some side missions is that other players can attempt to sabotage them, and this can make them a potentially risky venture.

Competitive multiplayer

Competing in Red Dead Online's multiplayer modes nets you a bit of cash each time you finish a game, but the payouts aren't exactly huge even if you win. Multiplayer matches, whether you're playing standard shootouts, territory capture, or races, can take a while to get through, so arguably, the amount of money that you get for competing isn't really worth your time.

Still, if you, and maybe a few friends, are up for some competition, multiplayer modes can be a nice way to add some extra cash to your wallet.