Anyone can become rich. Don’t believe me? It’s actually easier than most people think but it’ll take your time, effort, and energy. Are you ready? Let’s go.
Table of Contents
Invest in index funds
First of all, I’m not a financial advisor, nothing I say is financial advice. You must do your own research.
I’m hinting for you to look into index funds and come to your own conclusion.
What is an index fund? If you invest in an index fund, you’re investing your money into buying stocks from a collection of companies.
There are many types of index funds but the gist is that it allows you to invest in many companies simultaneously rather than choosing a select few to invest in one at a time.
This reduces the risk because if one company doesn’t do well, the others will do well enough to make up the difference.
Traditionally, index funds have an annual return of 7% — 10%.
For those who don’t want to analyze stocks individually, an index fund is a great way to invest.
Warren Buffet has famously made a bet of one million dollars against large hedge funds (who are responsible for picking stocks for their clients and making money for their clients) that they can’t outperform the index funds and wouldn’t you know it, he was right.
There’ll be ups and downs in the market from year to year. It could happen that you invest in the market and realize you lose 10% of its value in one year but zoom out and look at the graph and you may see that within a 10-year span, the trend is going up and you do make more money than you put in (average 7% — 10% annual return).
If you can understand the compounding effect, it’s not about whether you’ll become rich but when you become rich.
Take a look at this graph:
If you start investing $500 per month continuously for 30 years with an 8% annual rate of return, you’d end up with $750,648 while your total contribution is only $180,000. You’d actually make $570,148 from your monthly $500 contribution!
Now, this isn’t an exact number. The true figure could be lower or it could be higher but traditionally we have seen an average annual rate of return that is between 7% — 10% so this number of total gain should be somewhat accurate.
Keep in mind, that the earlier you start, the more you’ll end up with.
Getting rich via an index fund is a safe bet but it’s incredibly slow. You don’t want to wait 40 years to get “rich”. You also have to take into account inflation. $1 million in 2060 would be worth a lot less than $1 million today (nevertheless it’s still money and you may still end up with more if you invest in the index fund).
1. Build a brand
If you don’t want to wait years to become rich with index funds and other investments, there’s another way. Build a brand online.
Most people who have become rich via the internet did so in the last few years and within only 1–3+ years. And their secret is building a brand first.
A brand is the identifying characteristics that make up a business. For instance, if you were to start a personal finance brand called HelloMoneyTree, you should think about what theme colors you want to associate with your brand, what slogan if any, where will you share your content, what kind of content will you share, what audience will you attract, how you plan on monetizing your brand, etc.
When you create a brand, your business can be easily associated with the niche you’re in and you can attract a loyal audience base who would check out whatever you put out (which means monetizing opportunities).
With a brand, you can go on and extend your presence to other platforms if you wish.
For instance, I can start a YouTube channel covering everything I posted on my HelloMoneyTree blog if I want even though I started out my personal finance brand as a blog in the beginning (Although I won’t because I’m not interested in creating videos. I rather blog and write things down).
You can start out on YouTube and then move on to blogging and podcasts for instance.
If you want to learn how you can become a content creator and make money this year, click here.
A brand is one of the most powerful projects you can start in life.
If you want to build wealth, think about what brand you want to start and go for it. You don’t have to figure it all out in the beginning, you can adjust as you go along.
The path will become clearer as you move along.
Click here to learn how you can start your own business despite self-doubts and fear.
2. Study others in your niche
Once you’re done picking your niche, you need to study what others are doing with their niche.
Here are a few things to ask yourself:
- What color themes do they use?
- How do they monetize their brand?
- What platforms are they? What is their primary platform?
- What content do they create?
- Do people like their content?
- Are they making money in their brand?
You want to study others in the niche to know what you should do better and what you should do to replicate their success.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. See what works and do it in your own style.
If you realize that there’s money to be made in the food brand, and your competitors are on Instagram more than on YouTube then, focus on creating content for Instagram first.
Are your competitors posting reels rather than videos? Do that!
You can observe your competitor and implement what you learned in your own brand.
3. Put out high-quality content /product
You should put out high-quality content and products for your audience.
Both quality and quantity are important so make sure you have both.
As long as you are putting out high-quality content in a niche that has a market all you have to do is to do more.
You’ll know that it has a market if people are making a full-time income or becoming millionaires from the niche.
Putting out crap in high quantity will hurt your brand.
To build a brand, people need to trust you and you should secure that trust by giving your audience what they want in high-quality.
4. Be consistent
Next, you need to be consistent. You’ve done your research, you’ve created some quality content, and now all you have to do is to do more of it and be consistent.
Don’t put out 1 product / 1 piece of content today and nothing for the next 2 months.
Your audience should know what they can expect from you and when they can expect something from your brand. This is a great way to build trust and establish a loyal fan base.
Be consistent with your content so your audience won’t forget about you.
5. Give it time
There is no overnight success. You must give it time.
For bloggers, give each article at least 8 months to reach its full potential ranking on Google before you give up.
For everyone else with their own brands, you should also give it time.
I’ve seen countless success stories of YouTubers, Bloggers, and influencers who get a massive following and make a full-time income doing what they love in just 2 years. Many of them are making $30,000 — $100,000+ per month 3–5 years in.
2 years isn’t that long, neither is 5 years. Learn to give it some time before you give up.
I’d say 1–2 years of consistent high-quality effort should get you enough results. If you can’t make a full-time income then, you should seek out mentors if you haven’t already and continue pushing through 1 more year.
Keep in mind, that staying consistent would be a lot easier if you’re actually interested in what you’re working on.
It’s best to pick a niche with high-income potential and a niche that you have lots of passion for. It’s okay if you aren’t terribly knowledgeable about it in the beginning. You can always learn more as you go.
6. Network
There’s a saying that your network is your networth and I think that phrase can be quite true.
People sometimes charge a certain price for their products and services not necessarily because of their worth but because they know the right people.
There are countless amazing pieces of art but not all can fetch millions. Having the right connections can allow you to charge whatever price you want even if it’s millions of dollars for a simple purple square with a white line through it.
Click here to read the article.
You can network with those in your niche and support each other silently (or loudly, whatever you prefer).
In the beginning, however, you should focus on building some content first and then reach out once you have established yourself a bit more.
People are unlikely to pay you any mind if you have nothing to show for it.
7. Embrace failure
You should embrace any failure that comes your way because there’ll be plenty (big and small).
Failure is only a failure if you stay down. If you get up again, failure is only a lesson learned.
8. Don’t be afraid to try again
Expect to fail but don’t be afraid to try again. You won’t be starting from scratch next time. You’d be starting with experience.
The point is not to give up if your end goal is to be rich.
There are always more opportunities popping up and more things to try. Opportunities to get rich are everywhere.
You really could be just 1–3+ years of hard work away from getting “rich”.
If you want to find out how much you need to be considered “rich”, click here.
It’s best to stick to one thing for a while before you take on more projects. If you have decided to try blogging, just do blogging for at least a year. Don’t start a podcast about pokemon or start selling NFTs.
Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos said that he realized the importance of focusing on one thing at a time when he was working at Mcdonald’s at 16. This mentality no doubt aided him to riches.
Click here to learn how Jeff Bezos become rich.
It’s really in your best interest to just focus on one thing and then once you have seen some success, start automizing and creating other streams of income.
However, I must warn you that sometimes you need to know when to give up if you’re on a sinking ship.
Say you started a blog about an obscure ancient God and you realized that no one is searching it up or reading your content 8 months in, doesn’t matter how much work you put in, it’s best to give up and pursue another project.
Fail fast, learn fast, start again, and don’t be afraid of sunk-cost.
9. Invest your profit
Now that you’re making good money from your brand, maybe you’re making a full-time income and you’ve quit your job, (Congrats!) you should invest the profit back into your business and/or invest in other assets such as stocks so you can grow your investment portfolio.
It’s one thing to get rich and it’s another to stay rich.
You must learn how to keep your money which is why it’s crucial for you to start learning more about personal finance and investing.
Click here to read the Rich Dad Poor Dad summary. Rich Dad Poor Dad is one of the must-read books in personal finance. I’d say start with this book if you don’t know where to start.
10. Automize brand
At some point, you may want to consider hiring people to work on your brand for you so you have more time to focus on doing something else you want.
Some of you may not want to do so and that’s fine especially if you only need to work on your brand for a few hours a week.
It may make sense to keep it all to yourself so you have something to look forward to working on every day.
You can hire someone from Fiverr to help you do basic things. Many bloggers eventually hire writers and virtual assistants or even backlink experts in order to help them grow their brands.
11. Start another brand
Now that your brand is off the ground, you can start another.
Some of you may think, “Are you crazy? ANOTHER?”
Here’s what I’m thinking: A lot of you just want to get rich and never have to work more than 5 hours a week again. I mean all that stress surely isn’t good for anyone’s skin!
However, I’m sure there are also those who may want to take on more projects once you’ve seen some success with your first and that’s fine as well.
You decide how you want to go from there.
With the right business model and brand, you may just find yourself starting another project and that is one of the best ways to build greater wealth.
At some point, you really don’t even have to maintain any brand anymore. You’re essentially retired.
You could be retired 5 years from now have you thought about that?
You can retire early by monetizing one brand really well or you can do so with more than one brand at maybe a faster pace.
Just do whatever makes you happy. 🙂
Final thought
Here we are, at the end of the article. What do you think? Do you think you could become rich with these methods? Tell me in the comment below.
If you got an internet connection, becoming rich is really just a few highly-disciplined years away. This is an exciting time to be alive.
Ultimately, your health is what matters. Make sure you take care of your health while you’re building your brand and your wealth.
Imagine having both money and your health?
Click here to learn how you can stay healthy with a busy schedule.
Cheers! 🙂
