A Look at What it Takes to Become a Millionaire

My first search, for the word "luxury," returns a healthy 160 million results. Here we see, among many thousands of other things; luxury homes, watches, car rental services, vehicles, furniture and gifts. Most are for sale, but none offered by any names I recognize.

Search #2.

Looking now at search results for "internet millionaires," we see 296,000. Scrolling through only the first 10 pages, I am noticing that this list is comprised almost solely of people offering to help me achieve millionaire status, not people who are the actual millionaires themselves.

Search #3

A more generic search for the simple "millionaire," however, did bring me a cool 19.2 million hits in 8 seconds and quite a mixed bag of listings indeed.

Millionaires, Billionaires:

Traveling now to Forbes.com, and using the same search term, "millionaire," we can locate those who are millionaires and also billionaires, with the omission of the usual fluff which is produced on your www.favorite-search-engine.com. Skipping the lists in general, go to the billionaires listed on this site and you will notice right there in poll position, the likes of Warren Buffet, who did not make his primary fortune online at all.

Next we visit Mr Bill Gates, co-founder, chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft, who can of course attribute at least a part of his vast fortune to the wonderful www.

Finally we take a look at a very young inclusion to Forbes' ever expanding list of 'those who have/are' - Mr.Mark Zuckerberg, who is not only a billionaire, but a self made billionaire and quite possibly the youngest ever. Not sure who he is? Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook in February 2004. Intended to be a fun little social networking site, Facebook has since sold $240 million in equity to Microsoft. Welcome aboard Mr.Gates. Facebook was created in a dorm room by Zuckerberg and two buddies Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. Today, Facebook has a whole swag of very young Executives, some of whom have not, and probably won't bother to graduate from college at all.

Aspirations: A strong desire for high achievement. An object of such desire; an ambition.

When planning your trip to the ranks of millionaire or billionaire, never second guess the abilities you already possess. Market yourself and expand on the areas of knowledge you already possess to include the internet, but don't rely on becoming an overnight sensation. Many try and most fail. The world's financial elite have come to be through perseverance and hard work, and some by pure accident. Surely Mr Zuckerberg had aspirations of making some extra text book and burger money, but I think even he must be a little surprised.

I am noticing something quite interesting though, when perusing this fine list of money producing folk. The mysterious exclusion of those who became millionaires from affiliate marketing. Did I skip a few pages or was I mislead over 8 years and many lost sign-up fees? I tend to feel that those who are the affiliate heads may be holding a share of what I had thought was coming my way.

Wait!

The sign-up fees. It is all beginning to make sense now....slap me later.

This writer is far from being a millionaire, yet. As an incurable optimist I say why not? If it is meant to be, then my hard work and perseverance too shall pay off, in one form or another. Perhaps it will come in residual form as a direct result of using the word 'millionaire' as a title for an article. If I wait long enough it is bound to happen.

Oh, the power of the written word.

Sources:

Forbes.com
Google.com