15 Ways To Make 1 Million Dollars

1,700 new millionaires are created every day; that's over 620,000 new millionaires every year. How come so many people become millionaires, and why can't you do the same? Well, it's actually about positioning and how valuable you are in the marketplace. If the marketplace thinks you serve 1 million or more, it will in turn give you that amount.

We researched people that we know about who've made more than $1 million in the last couple of years. Who knows, maybe some of them will spark an idea which will be the beginning of a lifelong journey for you. With that said, here are 15 ways to make $1 million in no particular order. Welcome to Alux, the place where future billionaires come to get inspired.

Number one: be in the top 1% of a lucrative profession! Shocking, right? Be really good at a job that pays really well. It's super easy to become a millionaire if you know what you're doing and you're specialized. Doctors, lawyers, and upper management in the US and Europe earn on average over $150,000 a year. If you're really good at what you do and are highly specialized, you can double or even triple that amount.

The highest paying job with the lowest barriers of entry is sales. If you know how to sell, you can make a ton of money, no matter where you find yourself. Compared to doctors and lawyers, the 1% of salespeople earn north of $250,000 a year, which will have them pass that $1 million mark in just 4 years. Not to mention, selling is an incredibly valuable skill for all strategies that we discuss in this video.

Number two: write several books that sell. Okay, the trap many people fall into is they think they have to write the next Harry Potter or 50 Shades of Gray in order to get rich from books. The likelihood of you knocking it out of the park is incredibly low. Okay, with that said though, getting to $1 million from writing books is a pretty doable job if you find the right angle and an audience willing to purchase.

Few people know this, but in order to become a New York Times best-selling author, you only need to sell around 10,000 books. It can be even as low as 5,000 books if you've been on the list before. If your writing is good, just keep putting out more and more books until one of them is a hit. There are plenty of examples of people who did it this way, but our favorite is by far Amanda Hawking.

You probably have no idea who she is. She's been rejected by almost every single publisher in the game. None of her novels were ever given a shot. She was broke and really wanted to go to a Muppets convention, but she needed the money for gas to drive to the event. So, in order to make some of the $300 she needed, she self-published her novels on Kindle. One month later, she’d made over $20,000.

So she added all of her novels up. There, 20 months into it, she made over $2.5 million from books which were not good enough to get picked up by a publisher. Pro tip: If you have a podcast, a blog, or a YouTube channel, or any kind of audience, people will want to support your efforts and are even willing to pre-order your book just to share that journey with you.

Number three: license a patent or a trademark to a big company. Another creative way to add value to the world is by being an inventor, designer, or engineer. If you can figure out a way to solve a problem better than what's out there already, you could be sitting on a gold mine.

A great example of this is Lonnie Johnson. Again, you probably have no idea who he is, but you've probably heard of the Super Soaker, right? Well, while toying around (pun intended), he created this cool toy but didn't have the skills to create an entire company to produce, market, and sell individual products. So he licensed the technology to a company called Hasbro.

He got paid a 3% royalty out of the price of every unit sold, making over $100 million from this deal alone. He now has 250 patents and a net worth of over $350 million. Pro tip: We know patents are expensive, okay? But there are certain ways to protect yourself even without having an internationally issued patent.

What you need to do is document how your invention works in extreme detail and have that in writing, or burned onto a CD or USB drive and mail it in a sealed envelope to yourself. When that envelope arrives back to you, it should contain the date and stamp of a government institution. Never break that seal. If it comes down to it, this is your undeniable proof that you are the first one to figure this out, and rights should be awarded to you in a patent case or, at the very least, end up in a highly lucrative settlement situation.

Number four: start a drop shipping company under your own label. For those of you who have no idea what drop shipping is, it's a very fun and interesting business model where you find a supplier who can create, package, and deliver a product on your behalf. Your job is to bring in the sales.

So here's how it goes: let's say you found a supplier who can package and deliver weight loss tea from China for $5 a package. You now set up a website where you can sell that exact product for $20 a piece. When that order comes in, you send over $5 to the supplier with the details from the order, keeping that remaining $15 in profit.

Now, we didn't choose weight loss tea by accident either. We've actually studied and analyzed the success a young entrepreneur named Greta Von Real had in this space. She's the one who started the entire Instagram model fitness tea phenomenon. Six months into her business, she was bringing in over $1 million per month. If that number shocks you, you might want to read up on her since she's one of our personal heroes.

During new product launches, she made over $1 million in a single day. Just to let you know that these kinds of numbers are possible and worth mentioning is that drop shipping as a business model is extremely competitive, with very low margins. On the flip side though, it's probably one of the most documented and easy to pull off models out there. Just because it's hard, doesn't mean it isn't possible.

Number five: start a small business and keep growing. Although most of the ideas mentioned on this list are super specific, the way most people end up millionaires is by creating a small business and just growing it. We know it sounds a tad more general, but this comprises the hustler mindset which is focused on growth. Starting a new business is always difficult, but the path is more or less the same no matter which business you choose.

It all starts with solving a problem, figuring out how to get paid, and then bringing in people so you can focus on what is important for the business to grow. Everyone's got a few business ideas in their heads; it's just a matter of implementation. Although that might sound overwhelming, the process is pretty straightforward and simple. That's why we've created a video called "15 Things to Know When Starting a Business," which you can check out by clicking in the top right corner. If you're planning on starting your first business, there probably isn't a more important video to watch than that one.

Number six: aggressively save money and put it in index funds for several years. You need to understand the power of this compound interest and use it to get rich. You know someone might have said it's the most important mathematical discovery in the world, and by someone, we mean Albert Einstein, who numerous times said that compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn't, pays it.

If you understand money and investment funds, you know that a 7% annual return is easily doable. Now, it's a matter of just how much money you can save. Traditional strategies go like this: if you're able to save 10% of your yearly income and let's say you earn $50,000 a year, it'll take you 40 years to get $1 million saved. But who wants to be a millionaire when they're old? That's not the Alux way, but it gets a lot more interesting if you're able to play around with those numbers.

You should try to increase all of the three most important variables: one, the amount of money you earn; two, the amount of money you're able to put aside; and three, the return on your investment. Now, while the first two depend on your own choices, the third one, on the other hand, is pretty straightforward.

For example, the first thing we should do is take the money out of a 7% mutual fund and put it into an index fund like the S&P 500. For those of you new to this, the S&P 500 is a fund made up of the top 500 companies in the US. If a company isn't performing well, it gets taken out and replaced by a newly worthy company. For the past 90 years, the S&P 500 has generated an average of 10% yearly returns.

Although we're not sponsored by them, we would recommend you look into Vanguard and Robin Hood.

Number seven: become an influencer. Most people mistake content creators with influencers when in reality, they're two different categories. Content creators focus on the content itself, honing their craft; influencers focus on their personal brand and visibility. It's much easier to make money as an influencer than it is from being a content creator.

Just to give you an idea, people like Cristiano Ronaldo, The Rock, or Selena Gomez can charge around $2 million for a single sponsored Instagram post, according to marketing analysts. But let's say you are not already rich and well-established. Well, an account with 500,000 to 1 million followers, an engagement of anywhere between 3 to 5%, and a good track record of working with brands, well you could charge around $1,000 for a sponsored post. If you're also in a good niche like beauty, fitness, luxury, or tech, well those numbers can go up even higher.

Number eight: purchase a franchise and make it really successful. If you're not the creative type, a franchise is a simple and lucrative way to get yourself into business because somebody else has already optimized it for you. You just need to make sure that things keep on moving the way they should. A franchise, for those of you who don't know, is a company that creates a lucrative business with an already established brand that's made out of simplified systems which can be duplicated over and over again—think McDonald's or Starbucks.

So how does this work? Well, you reach out to the company with the aim of buying a franchise, and there are two types of costs you have to know about: a standard franchise fee and a percentage of the business that you're generating. So in exchange for this money, the company provides all of the tools you need to get the business up and running.

You can find profitable franchises starting as low as $10,000, but depending on what you're looking for, there are obviously more expensive options. For example, a Dunkin' Donuts franchise fee is between $40,000 to $90,000 depending on location, but that's not all. The company requires you to have at least $250,000 in liquid assets just to make sure you can keep the thing running. It's up to you to find the right franchise for your geography and budget.

Number nine: create a subscription service where 1,000 people pay $83 a month. Okay, so it's time we introduce you to what's called millionaire math, which means how many ways can you get to $1 million in one year? So off the top of our heads, considering subscription services, you've got 5,000 people paying you $17 a month for 12 months, 2,000 people paying you $42 a month for 12 months, $11,000 paying you $83 a month for 12 months, 500 people paying you $167 a month for 12 months, or 300 people paying you $27.68 per month for 12 months.

You get the idea, right? All of these will get you to that seven-figure promised land. That's why everyone is doing subscription services these days, and you've seen the popularity of the likes of Netflix, Tile, Spotify, and Apple Music increase. It's all about finding a service that people are willing to pay and stick around for.

Number ten: work for someone who is a multi-millionaire, or even better, work for someone who is a billionaire. The quick way to making your first million dollars is to work directly for someone who's made $1 billion. Rich people value time above everything else, and they really value people who are able to save them time.

The best way to do that is to find someone who's incredibly wealthy and help them either save time or make money. Either way, you'll find that their generosity is directly proportional to the value you bring into their life. Now before you take a shot at this, it's important to know that you should already have a trust-based relationship with that wealthy individual because, look, okay, the last thing you want to do, and we cannot stress this enough, is to spam the hell out of them and tell them how you have this idea that'll change the world.

Believe it or not, we get at least one hundred emails like that every month, and we never, ever reply to them. When most people think of multi-millionaires, they usually envision entrepreneurs starting companies, but the truth is roughly one in five millionaires work for someone else, and that is how they got rich. If you think about it, you’re more likely to become a millionaire working for a wealthy individual than by becoming a millionaire starting your own business.

If this is your plan, we recommend you find yourself a mentor. These people are open to helping you grow. They provide guidance and opportunities which you wouldn't have access to otherwise. But you know, we also understand that not everyone has access to quality mentors, especially in some more challenging geographies around the world.

So to level the playing field for everyone, we created the Alux app to act as your very own high-performance mentor right in your pocket. We hire industry experts, we pay their fees for you, and put them in a studio so they can teach you all of the distilled lessons that got them to where they are in their lives and careers, each one with their own dedicated collection of lessons for you. Not to mention daily coaching sessions spanning across enriching your five pillars of a good life: finance, relationships, intellect, emotional well-being, and physical health.

You have never had a mentor this comprehensive in your entire life, and it only exists in the AO app. As a gift from us to you, download the app, come back here, and scan this QR code on the screen, and you'll get 25% off the yearly membership. That's alux.com/slapp.

Number eleven: go viral on YouTube. Now, who would have thought that going viral on YouTube could make you a millionaire? This all changed in the last couple of years. Now, obviously, this depends on the type of video, if it's advertiser-friendly, and who's watching the video, but a ballpark figure would be somewhere between 500 million and 1 billion views.

For example, “Gangnam Style” alone made Psy over $8 million. It's not all YouTube advertising alone, but the exposure got him plenty of extra opportunities, hence why he is still cashing in big. Believe it or not, that video is still making him decent money today. YouTube is the new TV, which is why we are here ourselves.

Speaking of advertising: number twelve, have a blog that gets over 41 million views a month. Because having a popular blog can still make you a multi-millionaire. When we started out Alux.com, it was focused on publishing articles on luxury topics, and we still get a lot of visitors on those articles.

Out of everything we mentioned on this list, getting over 40 million readers per month on your blog is probably one of the most difficult ones to do, especially now since most things you read online are generated by AI, and everything gets diluted. But we figure we should mention this because getting money from ads on your content will always be a viable option.

Number thirteen: make an app that a million people use. There's still a ton of money to be made with apps if you know what you're doing and can actually offer a valuable service. The problem with apps is that unless the user feels the need to return to that app on a frequent basis, you've already lost.

The app ecosystem has evolved in the last couple of years. The secret to most apps has been the ability to bring in additional revenue within the app. Depending on how much revenue you can extract from every single user, the road to the first million dollars can be a lot shorter than expected if the customers find value in what you're offering.

That's the reason we invested so much time, effort, and money into making the Alux app as valuable as it can be. And if you really want to score big with apps, there's a book that we recommend called "How to Build a $1 Billion App" by the guy who created Candy Crush, in which they break down how to conceptualize and scale this kind of project.

Number fourteen: get over 100,000 Twitch subscribers. Live streaming is well past being mainstream now; it is extremely saturated. In China specifically, streaming is a pretty wild phenomenon to see, but the point still holds. The newest type of celebrity that we managed to create us as society is the Twitch streamer.

You need to be in the top 1% to make it a living, and the top 1% of that 1% to get rich, but the barrier of entry is pretty much non-existent. People don't even need to know what you look like or what your name is; you just have to be entertaining to them.

Number fifteen: buy, flip, repeat. Now, this is a fundamental rule of hustling and one of the most common ways to make some more money. This is what commerce was built on and its capitalism in its purest form: find something you can purchase at one price, then sell it for more to someone who's willing to pay a premium for it.

This buy, flip, repeat strategy has taken many forms throughout the years, and we're always excited to see it evolve depending on how the culture is changing. People do this in different markets: buying, fixing, flipping cars, houses, antiques, you name it. It's all about understanding how much some people are willing to pay for something and getting that something for less.

Now, Aluxers, we're curious to know what you're doing right now to get to your first million. Let us know in the comments, and we'll try to provide you with some feedback. Now, we know this has been a really long video already, so for those of you who are still with us, here's your secret bonus: come up with such an original crazy idea that it might just work.

If those ideas previously mentioned are pretty straightforward, this time we're encouraging you guys to look outside the box and let your creativity run wild. Who knows what might come out of it? You know, there's this guy who made $15 million selling rocks as pets to people; another who made $1 million by selling pixels on his website for $1 million each; one woman became a multi-millionaire by selling sunglasses for dogs.

The world is full of crazy stories, and we hope this list sparked an idea inside of you. If you watched up to this point and you're already on your journey to becoming a millionaire, please write the words "first million" in the comments below, and we'll wish you luck ourselves. It's always great to see how many of you are watching these videos until the very end.

We'll see you back here next time, Aluxers. Take care.