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    How would you make a million dollars in one month?

    Holy crap, this is an interesting question…..

     

    How would you make a million dollars in one month?

    million-dollar-bill

    But seriously, let’s say I kidnapped one of your kids (and not the ugly one, but the good one)….and you had to come up with a $1,000,000 bucks by the end of the month to get him back.

    How would you do it?

    I already asked how would you make:

    This is a pretty difficult question to answer, so I again asked some very very successful friends in varied industries how they would make $1,000,000 in around a month to help jog your mind before you answer in the comments. 

     

    SOFTWARE BACKGROUND GUY:

    “HOW WOULD YOU MAKE AN EXTRA $1,000,000 IN A MONTH?”:

    To people with billions of dollars, a million dollars is a thousand dollars. Solve a problem that someone with billions of dollars has.

    I would create a custom piece of software that saves a large company money, and sell them that custom solution. I would find WHO to sell it to through LinkedIn.

     

    INVESTOR & FINANCE DUDE:

    “HOW WOULD YOU MAKE AN EXTRA $1,000,000 IN A MONTH?”:

    There’s usually no way to inherently increase the value of an investment by 10x or 100x very quickly, unless it’s inherently super risky.

    So in this situation of making a shit ton of money quickly, I’d find a small pharmaceutical company that’s on the verge of an FDA approval announcement, and bet heavily for (or against) them.

    That’a the only way I can think of increasing an investment that rapidly.

     

    REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER:

    “HOW WOULD YOU MAKE AN EXTRA $1,000,000 IN A MONTH?”:

    Well you’re talking a little crazy about making $1,000,000 that quickly, so I’ll give a crazy answer.  The stars have to align for this to happen, but I HAVE seen it done several times:

    You go and find a large apartment complex that’s in trouble and running under terrible management.  Perhaps a complex that owes $20million to bank, but their property is only appraised and worth $15million, and they are about to go bankrupt.

    You approach their bank and step in as a “solvent entity” to take over that loan.

    You say, “I don’t think the property is worth $15,000,000 as appraised…..but I’ll still offer you $16,000,000 and you don’t have to go through with the foreclosure process on the property.”

    The bank might be happy to sell you the loan, because they don’t wanna deal with the whole bankruptcy and foreclosure process. So you might be able to buy this $20million dollar loan at a SIGNIFICANT discount at around $16million.

    Now if the property forecloses, YOU get full ownership.  You can usually put in just a few hundred thousand dollars to increase the value of that property to $18million.  So now for roughly $16.5 million you sold a property for $18million.

    You just made $1,500,000 in profit in a super short amount of time.  

    The stars have to align for this to happen, but I’ve seen it done.

     

    SF TECH GUY:

    “HOW WOULD YOU MAKE AN EXTRA $1,000,000 IN A MONTH?”:

    If I wanted to be shady I'd make a pyramid scheme? Otherwise I'd borrow from friends or investors? But if you break down one million dollars, it requires an investment of $10,000 from only 100 people.Like....you just need to have 100 customers for something. That's doesn't sound totally unreasonable.

    An interesting way to look at how to make $1,000,000 in one month would be to break down the numbers, for example: Using this product pricing calculator you can work backwards:If you sell a product, to make $1,000,000 in one month:make a million dollars pricing breakdown

    • You need 5,000 people to buy a $200 product.
    • You need 2,000 people to buy a $500 product.
    • You need 1,000 people to buy a $1,000 product.
    • You need 500 people to buy a $2,000 product.
    • You need 300 people to buy a $3,333 product.
    • You need 200 people to buy a $5,000 product.
    • You need 100 people to buy a $10,000 product.
    • You need 50 people to buy a $20,000 product.
    • You need 25 people to buy a $40,000 product.
    • You need 5 people to buy a $200,000 product.

    Breaking it down in this way can makes generating a million bucks far more attainable. Can you sell 100 people a $10,000 product or service? That would be $1,000,000 in revenue! It might be difficult to do this from scratch, but thinking about this problem backwards can really help you plan out how YOU would make a million dollars in a month.

     

    Hope this $1,000,000 exercise stretched your mind a bit!  Go through the comments below, there’s some good suggestions on how people would make a million dollars in a month.   Also comment with the way YOU’D make a million dollars in a month, or how you’ve seen it done before.

    Sincerely,

    Neville Medhora – A Kontinuously Kurious Kopywriter

    Interested in seeing how others would make different sums of money each month? Checkout everyone's answers for:

    P.S. If you need help coming up with million dollar ideas, use this Business Idea Generator to kick around some ideas! Or if you start a membership program use this recurring revenue calculator to see how much to charge people per month to make a million bucks.

    P.P.S. Comment on the post with your plan/scheme/plot to make $1,000,000 in about a month, or how you’ve seen someone else make $1,000,000 in a short period of time.


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    Guest Robert Maisano

    Posted

    Geeze! I knew this challenge was coming.

    I will have to go back to what I suggested in a previous post about creating an effective SaaS tool for big corporate CRM databases. But the only caveat to this is that it would have to serve other parts of the firm that is utilizing this tool; something other than CRM. I'd make it a tool that can integrate with the product (it would have to be digital) that the firm is selling/providing.

    So to summarize make an effective SaaS tool that offers solutions for CRM and product/service analytics. I'd get more specific but I'm afraid of rambling on!

    Link to comment
    Guest Evan Chacker

    Posted

    Hey Michael,

    Because of this Million dollar brain exercise, I am developing that exact software.

    Seriously, yesterday I was a customer paying for the development of this product, and today I've partnered with the programmer to bring this to market market as SaaS. I was up till 4AM writing the Beta list landing page and we're already collecting e-mails for pre-sale.

    It's main purpose is to collect customer testimonials & customer reviews. We're building the secondary features of allowing HR to do applications and video collection so they can see applicants to save time and money.

    If you don't mind sharing, what are some features you think would help us make this a home run?

    Link to comment
    Guest Cesar Gil

    Posted

    Hi,

    You know what.

    I would start a crowd sourcing project.

    Find really influential people and ask them to donate towards..uuh....science.

    So...if I can get 10,000 people donate 100 dollars to...well you know.....science.

    Then this will work. But it won't be sustainable. Unless it's like a tax on something that goes directly to me.

    But, that sounds wrong. I wouldn't want to do it that way.

    Link to comment
    Guest Chi Odogwu

    Posted

    Well since this series came out i've been working on the earn $100 and then the next step. However, i remembered this story from quora and figure it would work to find a similar situation where you can fill peoples needs and value and trade up to $1.0 million. The main takeaways network, keep your eyes and ears open, and be willing to act quickly. Enjoy.

    QUOTED - SOURCE FROM QUORA

    "Several years ago I met a Venezuelan oil and shipping businessman by

    the name Rafael Tudela. As I have come to know, respect, and admire

    him, he has impressed me as the quintessential street-smart executive.

    He has built a billion-dollar business from scratch in less than

    twenty years. He seldom deals in written contracts because his word is

    his bond. He has always made his own breaks. And his principal

    business, which is oil speculation, relies on his constant process of

    seeing opportunities where no one else does and taking advantage of

    them.

    In other words, Rafael Tudela is a genius at taking the edge. One of

    the best illustrations of this –of how he has the facts, knows what

    people want, and figures out a way to give it to them- is the story of

    how he got in the oil business in the fist place.

    In the mid 1960s, Tudela owned a glass manufacturing company in

    Caracas, but, a petroleum engineer by training, he longed to be in the

    oil business. When he learned from a business associate that Argentina

    was about to be in the market for a $20 million dollar supply of

    butane gas, he went there to see if he could secure the contract. “If

    I could get the contract,” he told me, “then I`d start to worry about

    where I`d get the butane.”

    When he – a glass manufacturer operating alone with no previous

    connections or experience in the oil business- got to Argentina, he

    discovered his competition was formidable: British Petroleum and Shell

    Oil.

    But feeling around a little bit he also discovered something else:

    Argentina had an oversupply of beef which they were desperately trying

    to sell. By knowing this one fact –his first “edge,” so to speak- he

    became at least an equal to Shell and BP. “If you will buy $20 million

    of butane from me,” he told the Argentine government, “I will buy $20

    million of beef from you.” Argentina gave him the contract contingent

    upon his buying the beef.

    Tudela then flew to Spain, where a major shipyard was about to close

    down from lack of work. It was a political hot potato and an extremely

    sensitive issue for the Spanish government. “If you will buy $20

    million of beef from me,” he told them, “I will build a $20 million

    supertanker in your shipyard.” The Spanish were ecstatic and delivered

    a message to Argentina through their ambassador there that Rafael

    Tudela`s $20 million of beef should be sent directly to Spain. Once

    again he had found the edge and taken it.

    Tudela`s final stop was in Philadelphia at the Sun Oil Company. “If

    you will charter my $20 million supertanker, which is being built in

    Spain,” he told them, “I will buy $20 million of butane gas from you.”

    Sun Oil agreed, and Rafael Tudela fulfilled his desire to get in the

    gas and oil business.

    Link to comment

    Well Yuumei was able to make a million within a few days-week (can't remember the actual time it took, but it was a fraction of the time given here). You can see the product here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/axent-wear-cat-ear-headphones.

    Then there's also the scribble pen. Can't remember how much it gathered in total, but because it was an idea that'd been circulating and already popular for about three years within a few hours they had hundreds of thousands. It got shut down repeatedly as being a scam though.

    But all I'd have to do is do some quick google searches, see what's trending, doodle some ways to improve those ideas, then start a crowdfunding campaign and do lots of forum advertising. Perhaps hire a "popular" artist on DA for under $50 to do a quick sketch with a link and some info about the project in the description so it'll get some traffic.

    Then there's threadless. I could go through artwork I've already got and submit it so within a few weeks I'd have a bit of income from that (small, but income nonetheless). If time wasn't a issue I could get some images royalty free from websites that sell images and submit that for t shirt designs. Any that don't become popular enough to become a t shirt I can use the image elsewhere

    Then there's Tapastic. A comic website. I could spend 30 mins on making a comic each day that has an advertisement in the bottom linking to my crowdfunding campaign. If it gets really popular then Taptastic would give me as revenue. But for this bit it wouldn't be about the money, just getting interest in whatever the crowdfunding project would be so more people would donate to it

    Then there's the radio and tv programs I could advertise on with (hopefully) little cost.

     

    Then again I could just get a business number, and get my "business" to take out a loan from the bank for a $1,000,000.

    Link to comment

    I would sell 1 web page to a million users!

    The typical web browser screen has over 2 million pixels, and I'd create one web page and sell each pixel (and make pixels clickable to display photos) for $1 and make a draw for $1,000,000 to a lucky winner. Total will be $2,000,000 (plus some change to pay for my coffees) and the prize is $1,000,000. Do the math, you have your extra $1,000,000. (I'm not sure what I'm waiting for!).

    PS: I'll put my kid's photo on a pixel and announce another $500,000 to whoever brings him back, if I'm lucky, your roommate will bring my kid while you're eating your tacos and I get to save another $500,000.

    Link to comment

    I think the key to this one would be to try multiple strategies at once. First I'd gather up my clostest friends and tell them what had happened to my kid, and convince them to get the next two weeks off of work to help me get him back. Then I'd start assigning certain people to various endeavors.

    If I had 3 friends to help me, that would be 4 people total working on this. Every guy would then employ several virtual assistants based on our starting budget.

    One guy would start cramming info on real estate: numbers, the local market, local buyers and sellers, local deals, fastest way to get a return on a deal with as little money down as possible. His VA's would compile lists of likely markets and supply him with more research on how to get the best deals. By the end of the month he should have flipped as much real estate as he could get his hands on. Any money over what's required to meet the 1,000,000 mark that he makes is his to keep.

    The second guy would be I charge of setting up online courses to promote through Clickbank and other affiliate sites. His VA's would collect research on the most profitable niches and the current trending niches and find the top five niches to create courses in. The VA's would also work to collect content and then the head guy's job would be to organize the content into courses and pitch it to affiliate networks and blogs in that niche. Again, any money made over the $1M mark is his.

    The third guy would be in charge of software developement. He would talk multiple mulit-million dollar companies to find a pain point that a software could be developed for. Then he'd contract with a software developer to start development and make pre-sales to get the cash for my kid up front.

    The last guy would be me, and I would hire VA's to help me contact as many famous, intelligent and wealthy people as possible to host several seminars, conferences, giant parties and teaching events as possible. If I could even get two big events of this nature organized in a month I could potentially pull in a few hundred thousand.

    At the end of the month each team would pool their profits and we could likely have over 1,000,000. Then we'd write a book, make an online course and sell speaking engagements on how we did it to make the same amount the next month!

    Link to comment
    Guest Evan Chacker

    Posted

    Since success leaves a foot print, it would make sense to model someone who has already accomplished this.

    Glen gave great example of this.

    Link to comment
    Guest Joel Seely

    Posted

    I'd create a trojan that snooped on the infected computers' E*trade, Schwab, etc. passwords when someone logged in to check their portfolio. It would send me back a list of the stocks in their accounts. Then on day 30 said trojan would put in market sell orders for every stock on every computer making the market crash. Meanwhile I would short all the stocks and clean up.
    Link to comment

    I would design Halloween emojis for Kakao Talk (~70 million users). I will price it with 0.90 cents.. Having great designs and maybe adding some animated stickers. This would very likely bring me more than a million dollars.

    But I don't do it.. I'm still the one who hesitates in materializing business ideas, after failing couple of times. Hopefully I'll do it after receiving the magical NevBox =D

    Link to comment
    PS. I live in Korea, and Kakao talk is used even in business. We exchange it with employees from other companies. No one lives without it in Korea.
    Link to comment
    Guest Glenn Osborn

    Posted

    Thanks Neville,

    After Bartering my way to fifteen different 5k to 25K Bootcamps and seminars

    by selling 1.2 million worth of seats... starting in 1989...

    The pocket of self made millionaires I met there - have referred me

    all over - because I Make them munny. In Part of our business we collect and share how each self made millionaire really-truly makes munny.

    Strategies that don't get put into books.

    So - I have more than one - Often entertaining - 1 million in a month story.

    =============

    =============

    "How Cuthbert in Australia Made a Million Dollars in 15 Minutes"

    60 seconds of background.

    ONCE UPON A TIME - Cuthbert opened a Teddy Bear Store and one week before he went Bankrupt he spent all his money on an ad in the paper.

    "FREE Teddy Bears - One Per Family"

    The article went on to say, "Your Little one is growing up fast. Soon

    your pride and joy will be -Out of the house- going to college.

    But right now. She is huddled in bed - All alone. Afraid of the monster

    in the closet. Or he is terrified of the Monster under the bed.

    Remember when you were a wee little rascal?

    The monster under YOUR Bed?

    Well, we can help. This weekend only (Starting at 8am Monday) - we are giving away a Free Teddy Bear - One per Family to everyone who shows up at our ________ store location.

    ============

    Loooong Lines the next day.

    Cuthbert tells me he was late to work because of a Traffic Jam.

    (HE CAUSED IT.)

    To Cuthberts SHOCK - he started making munny! Because most parents

    in line had more than one child. To Avoid Yelling and Screaming when they got home - Dad or Mom - got one Free Teddy Bear And BOUGHT 2 or 3!

    Cuthbert ran more ads. Did a radio interview.

    THEN ONE DAY a man showed up and asked an ODD QUESTION.

    "Do you have a Systems Manual? Directions for Employees with answers

    to anything that can go wrong?"

    Cuthbert held up a ragged 3-ring Binder. "YES I Do. Shelly forgot to lock

    the door and turn off the lights - so I sat down and wrote one."

    The man says, "Congratulations."

    "Sign this Contract and pay me 18 dollars. I am going thru one Hell of a Divorce

    and The hellcat I married is not going to get one penny from me. Because

    I'm selling all my Teddy Bear & toy Stores to You for 1.00 Each."

    The man said, "I came to you because I liked The way you are helping

    so many families and kids by giving away Teddy Bears."

    Thus it came to pass that Cuthbert got 10 Toy Stores for 18 bucks.

    Elapsed time to Multi-Millionaire Status?

    15 Minutes!

    Thanks,

    Glenn Osborn

    Link to comment

    To save my good looking kidnapped child, I would make a list of 200 of the most interesting cities in the world – US and abroad. I would then find amateur photographers in each of these cities who have a large databank of fascinating photos of these cities. Working together with my husband, my ugly child and about 10-15 unpaid interns/students, we would put together an ebook for each of these cities. I will offer the photographers a royalty of 70% of sales starting with the sales made in the second month (after all, I only need the $1million in the first month). I would tell them that I need to recoup my production costs before they can get royalties. Also, in the second month, I could start paying the interns.

    Why travel books – well winter is approaching and people like to plan their trips in advance so these books will help them plan. Also, people who can’t afford to travel probably won’t mind spending $2.99 so they can daydream about travelling.

    I would enrol the books in Amazon’s KDP program so people could not only buy the books, but they could borrow them and I would get a royalty. I would set the price for these books at $2.99 so I would get a royalty of about $2.00 for each sale and $1.50 for each borrow. Assuming that I have 200 books and get a royalty of about $2ish per transaction, each book would have to sell/lend 2500 times to make $1million.

    To promote, I would do the following promotions on the books:

    – 10 books enrolled in the 99 cent KDP promotion

    – 10 books enrolled in the Free KDP promotion (I would promote the heck out of them on those free book promotion websites)

    – 1 book as a lead magnet on my website (i’ll get to that later)

    These promotions will get thousands of downloads (I did a promotion on a really niche book a few months ago and got almost 1000 downloads in 5 days). These promotions will kick the books up the Amazon charts which will cause lots of sales after the promotion ends and each book will link back to my WordPress website and will also mention that there are199 other books in this travel book series.

    Also, I think that you can pre-sell books on Kindle now, too. So, I would potentially be able to make money even before the books are written.

    Once I lead buyers to my website, I will get their email address using a lead magnet (which will be a free pdf of one of the books). On the site, I will have affiliate links to various airlines, hotels, travel luggage, etc. I will also get advertising revenue from the boards of tourism in different tourist destinations.

    If all this wasn’t generating enough revenue, I would publish books about another 200 cities. What I like about this strategy is that

    – there are virtually an unlimited number of cities to choose from

    – once you draw someone in with one book, you can entice them to buy the others

    – if people like your books, they visit your website where you will have your affiliate offers and advertising

    So now I have 3 revenue streams

    – Royalties (Steve Scott has made up to $60K in one month with about 20 books, so if I have 200 books, logically, I could possibly get $600K in royalties. But then, remember that I expect to have repeat buyers – people who bought 1 book and return to buy others.)

    – Affiliate revenue

    – Advertising revenue

    I may also want to do a partnership with travel websites, hotels, etc. if I am not making as much money as I need. Gotta pivot quick to save the kid!

    so, that’s my business plan for $1million in one month

    Reply

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    Guest Neville

    Posted

    It IS a cool thread huh?

    I imagine the fastest way to make a $1m bucks really quick is through investing, so thanks for weighing in!

    I'm sure some Wall Street'ers will see this $1,000,000/month thread and go, "Man, these guys are amateurs!"

    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Hey Bryan, this is a cool and unique idea!

    I think it's NevBox worthy because of the uniqueness.

    Now I wouldn't go after celebrity accounts because they are actually relatively poor....instead I would go "Kevin Mitnick" Style and find vulnerabilities in crazy large companies like IBM, Apple, Google. Although I would probably go for companies SLIGHTLY smaller than those.

    Then tell them you found a huge vulnerability, you know how to patch it, and your consulting fee is $1,000,000+.

    Thanks Bryan!

    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Hahahah, please don't actually kill me because of this thought experiment!
    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    hahaha.....next time let's try something a little less obviously illegal :-)
    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Yup, real estate seems to be a very legit possibility. Especially in this crazy market!
    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Oh wow, never even thought of something like this. We all learned something new, thank you :-)

    And glad you enjoyed the NevBox!!

    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Bahahhaah, I heard Herb Kelleher (founder of Southwest Airlines) say:

    "The best way to make a small fortune, is to start with a big fortune then start an airline."

    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    Isn't it cool that when you can sell a product in the $40,000 range, it's actually quite simple to hit $1,000,000
    Link to comment
    Guest Neville

    Posted

    This actually would probably work!

    I mean, not for like 99% of people, but for some :)

    Link to comment
    Guest Michael

    Posted

    Agreed. However, getting to a million in one month is incredibly difficult. This would take time, but the demand is there and this is a huge pain point in recruitment advertising.
    Link to comment



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