Have you ever wondered how the richest men in the world both in the past centuries and in this 21st century built their wealth?

Well, if you knew what farming was like before the advent of the tractor and other farm machinery, you would agree with me that the ways the rich built their wealth had passed through similar metamorphosis.

Now let’s see how they did it.

1)      They Had A Wealth Plan

Would you want to build a house without drawing up a building plan first?

Your answer to that question matters a lot, if you know what I mean.

The rich all through the ages had a wealth plan, though they may not have written it  down paper. Their wealth plan spelt out their financial goals, practical ways they would use in attaining it and a reasonable time frame within which to achieve it.

2)      They Had A Foundation

The biblical portents for houses built on sand were never good. Nor are they out of date, if you know what I mean.

So the foundation of anything you are doing matters more than any other thing. Simply put, you don’t start on the wrong foundation. Rather learn your lesson from those who did and suffered the consequence.

  The rich didn’t just wake up one morning and begin to build wealth that would outlive them. They had a very strong foundation. What was that foundation?

It was the profession or career from which they earned a living. It is something they put their very best into. They were also passionate about it to stay long enough in it and use it to build their wealth, by exploring other means of income. You see, any job you’re doing just for the money is not for you. Your job or career should be something that is in line with your hobbies and talents, and should give you maximum satisfaction. It should be something you would gladly do even when you’re not being paid for it. This is where success in your career lies and ultimately success in your building wealth.

Have you ever wondered why a writer would spend months or years in writing just one book? It is because he enjoys writing. And why does he enjoy writing? It is simply because it’s in him. It’s a natural talent or something he loves doing. And he is passionate about it. So discover yourself, discover what you love doing and you’ll build wealth for yourself leveraging on what you know how to do best.

We’ve mentioned that foundation is everything, whether you’re building a house or building wealth.

The rich know the power of passion and they also know that their foundation is their stepping stone to building wealth.

3)      They Employed Others

There is power in numbers. If you doubt it, ask the locusts that invaded a country and caused a great famine how they managed to do it.

The lesson here is that the rich did not remain employees. They became employers of labor, creating wealth for themselves by starting their own business. Most of them started small and leveraged on the productive power and talents of their employees to build multi-billion dollar businesses that employ thousands of people. The rich did not build their wealth alone. They used other people as leverage to build it.

4)      They Had Assets

You might ask what an asset is. An asset is simply something that brings you income, while anything that takes your income away is a liability.

The truth is that the rich have more assets than liabilities. These assets may include machinery used in manufacturing goods, land used in farming, vehicles used in haulage business and houses that are rented out. Donald Trump, a multi-billionaire and many others like him made their money from real estate.

So if you’re serious about building wealth, begin now to reduce your liabilities and increase your assets exponentially.

5)      They Invested In Stocks

Some people view investment in stocks with skepticism. But truth be told, the world’s richest men had substantial holdings in stocks. They did not only own their own companies, they were part owners of numerous other companies through share acquisition. So the rich built their wealth by diversifying their means of income, reducing their liabilities drastically and acquiring assets quickly; and finally having different categories of assets such as business, real estate, land and stocks.

Now let’s see 6 different ways you can diversify your means of income and use it to build wealth quickly and retire early.

1)      Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best and quickest ways of diversifying your means of income. Some people have made millions of dollars by promoting other people’s products.

Here are the best affiliate programs you can join today and start making good money:

www.clickbank.com; www.commissionjunction.com; www.paydotcom.com; www.affiliateseeking.com; www.affiliatecentral.com; and www.creditcards.com.

As an affiliate, you can promote products and services and earn good commissions using Google’s pay per click (PPC) advertising services. With just $25 you can sign up and start advertising your affiliate links on Google. It is not uncommon to earn thousands of dollars with a small advertising budget.

2)      Info Marketing

You can earn money from creating your own info product and marketing it on your website. Just do some research on a topic that a large number of people are interested in, write on it, put what you’ve written into a downloadable e-book format, create an irresistible sales letter and put it up for sale on your website. Of course you will need to advertise the website to make sales. And Google is the best place to start.

One good thing about info marketing is that you create a product once and you keep making money from it continuously. And it’s all automated.

3)      Market Your Service

Marketing your service online is another easy way to diversify your income.

If you are a writer, graphic artist, website designer, editor, proof reader, computer programmer or some other service, you can market your services without spending a cent on websites such as www.elance.com and www.rentacoder.com. You can also write good articles on different topics and earn money from them at www.ehow.com and www.xomba.com and numerous other websites on the net.

4)      Blogging For Profit

Blogging is one of the fun and easiest ways of making money online.

If you have ever kept a diary you would understand how blogging works.

You can go to www.blogger.com and set up your own blog in three easy steps.

You can equally go to www.adsense.google.com and sign up to have Google place ads on your blog after you must have set it up.

Google will pay you each time visitors to your blog click on these ads.

But before you can earn money from your blog, you’ll need to promote it so that it will become visible to the internet public.

To discover different strategies you can use to promote your blog without spending a cent, see my article titled “Blogging For Profit: Strategies For Promoting Your Blog.”

5)      Resell Rights.

Resell rights offers you the rare opportunity of obtaining the rights to other people’s products and resell same for 100 percent profit.

You can either buy resell rights to products and sell those products or simply sell the rights to people who want to purchase resell rights. These are two ways you can make money through resell rights.

6)      Domaineering

Domains are the second biggest real estate after houses and land. If you have heard about www.godaddy.com it should interest you to know that the owner made billions of dollars from buying and selling domains.

If you are looking for gold on the internet, then domain names is it.

You can go to Godaddy and buy domains as low as $8 and resell them at www.sedo.com or else where for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

I’ll advise you do some research on domains to know where to shop for the best domains to buy. You can start by searching the following terms on Google and Yahoo:

1)      Cheap domain names.

2)      Best domain names.

3)      Where to buy domain names.

4)      Where to sell domain names.

You can equally register new domain names on www.godaddy.com and sell them for profit; that is if you can come up with good words or combination of words that catch attention.

 Last Word: Building a house does not take a day, neither does building wealth take just the click of a mouse. Start small. And take things one at a time. Soon you’ll discover just how easy it is to end a journey once you’ve begun it.