How billionaires made money. Here's how the world's billionaires make their money

By Annie Mueller Updated Feb 23, Becoming a billionaire seems like a great goal, but unfortunately, it's only a dream for most of us. The thing is, many billionaires didn't start out as such.

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Some certainly had economic and educational advantages but even without those, their smart decisions and business choices—plus a few key characteristics—led them to their billions. But if you've got the smarts to successfully create, patentproduce and market a product that people need and thus, will buy in drovesyou can build your future billionaire life on it.

Successful inventions aren't necessarily complicated or high-tech items but can be improvements on existing items. Being a billionaire takes an extreme work ethic and for many, quite a bit of patience.

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Billionaires are always learning and if you have the chance to ask them, they will almost always say they are the student, not the teacher. The most common traits among billionaires are work ethic and refusing to give up. Do: Innovate Innovation is the fine art of considering a current mainstream market and finding a creative way to improve the current offering.

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Successful innovators will identify the real needs behind customer demands and will meet them with a smarter, better, more efficient product, or with a service that provides more than its competitors. Others may develop a business that works in a way just different enough to stand out from the rest.

Investing, of course, requires a little seed money and some accurate insight into which investments are smart and which could result in a loss. If you can follow in the footsteps of billionaire investors like Buffett, then this might be the route for you.

Do: Be an Entrepreneur The third option for becoming a billionaire is in how billionaires made money time-honored tradition of entrepreneurial pursuits. Starting a business and taking it to success isn't always easy, but for those with good business sense and the ability to spot start-ups that have the potential to be great, entrepreneurship can be the vehicle to great wealth.

Billionaire entrepreneurs might work in one of two ways: either by coming up with a great idea and taking it all the way, as in the case of Bill Gates and Microsoft or by spotting someone else's good idea and investing in it early on.

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Both are viable ways to reach the success that can get you billions of dollars when it comes to your own net worth. Don't: Think You Know It All The moment you think you have nothing left to learn is the moment you kill your potential for becoming a billionaire. Especially if you're interested in building your wealth through inventing or innovating, you have to be curious, open-minded and always learning.

Those qualities allow you to look at old things in a new way, to see the potential for change and profit where others see only what already had been done. Investors who make billions from their investments avoid flashy, fun and high-risk picks and instead choose those with long-term potential to provide great returns.

Real estateenergy, steel, telecommunicationspharmaceuticalsand energy are among the picks, while high-tech and intriguing but risky options may go either way.

Don't: Quit Too Soon Entrepreneurial types who succeed realize that making money at home rarely comes overnight. One business idea might not pay off, but the next how billionaires made money.

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It's not easy to build something from scratch, especially when your something is a fortune of billions. Time is on your side if you don't rush it. Article Sources Investopedia requires writers to use primary sources to support their work.

These include white papers, government data, original reporting, and interviews with industry experts.

Here's how the world's billionaires make their money

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