Other than getting to drag a pet around with me on the boards, what else should I do with a week long gold membership?

Don't mind my avatar; I'm still figuring this site out.

The big incentive is to be able to get a lot more points, IMO.

More quests means more stuff to stick in your shop for free, and then you get an autopricer!

And are you familiar with Petsite terms, and "Restocking?" Because that's where you hang around common shops for stuff you can flip in your user shop for a profit.

Its kind of a research/guessing game, where you look at the item/availability/where it is in the store (fewer available, lower on the list and more expensive is USUALLY better) and grab em. You can search them to see the cost, but risk missing them, or just buy them, and then check the user shop price on the purchase page, as you can't see the price on the main shop page.

Gold Accounts can Autoprice their shop for free daily, so you don't have to manually adjust the price, and you can have multiple shops. Also, gold Accounts can have more items in the inventory, so you can restock more easily without having to stop and dump your stuff in the shop's Quickstock menu.

If you do want to try RSing, I suggest starting with Music Shop or Spells Galore. Almost everything there is cheap and has a decent Return on Investment. Plushie Parlor, Stick it to the Man and Bean me Up are good, but more advanced RS spots, as it takes some income and you can lose money if you don't know what you're doing. Some shops, like the Apocalyptic Apothecary are total RS duds, be warned!

That's my big use for GAs. I like RSing if I am able, so I get use out of its features.

And if I do my quests, I can usually get enough Morty Cards to earn enough free cash shop credits to be able to get a new one next time I feel like I can play actively, but I've had a heck of a dry spell on those- only a few a week instead of a few a day, so I definitely need to save SP for a new medal. But, in THEORY, more quests also means more Morty cards, which means more CSC, which means more chances to engage in cash shop goodies, too.

If you're a bit of an artist, you may want to look into the Custom Wearable scene if you haven't already.

if you haven't checked it already, this page in the Cash Shop lists all the benefits of having a gold account.

in my opinion, the biggest benefits to having a gold account are the extra quests, the autopricer, and extra vending. also you can keep the extra shops/galleries you made while you had a gold account even after it wears off, so i would recommend making 6 if you have interest in it. if you have interest in battling, a gold account also reduces the time it takes to finish a training session (by 15%) and gives you an extra skip on the daily battle quests.