How to become rich

Unfortunately, the only easy way of getting rich quickly is to buy a lottery ticket, do some online gaming or taking a punt at spreadbetting or "investing" in penny shares. The chances of any of these routes making you richer are very slim but there's always a chance.

I've worked in online gaming for 5 years and I've certainly done well out of it :) A houseedge on a game can vary anywhere from -1% (when promoting a new game on a new channel) to +20%. Online gaming companies also make significant money from interest on deposits.

The most reliable way to become rich is to spend less than you make, and invest the surplus income in assets with a high rate of return over a prolonged period. So, there are 2 things to work out - firstly how to find a job/business opportunity that makes you the most money, and secondly how to find an investment which pays a high rate of return.

To find a job/business opportunity which pays good money, it comes down to that old favourite "supply and demand". Let's take a few examples of jobs which are at extremes of how much money you can make.

1. Footballer. In the old days, footballers got paid very little, turning out to play for their local team. What's turned this around is a massive increase in demand. With football being attractive to a large number of people, it's a relatively easy way for advertisers to get their message to a large number of people. For this reason, commercial TV pays football clubs large amounts of cash to allow them to televise football matches. In turn, the tv companies use the audience figures to attract advertisers. For the same reason that football's attractive, it's become of interest to various parts of marketing who've focussed on the sport, driving up revenue so that it's no longer the preserve of relatively poor people but has wealthy individuals paying for seats and merchandise. This would have made football clubs rather than footballers rich but for the fact that it's also attractive to some rich people to own a football club and there are only so many football clubs to buy, meaning that some rich folk are willing to run clubs at a loss so long as they can continue to bask in the related media attention. There are very few top class footballers, and the clubs with all of the money have to vie for this small pool of talent. That's why top premiership footballers are earning millions, league 1 players £50,000 and league 2 players on average wages.

2. Doctors and Lawyers. Both jobs pay well not only because of the relative complexity of their jobs but also because of the large reduction in the supply pool which occurs because of the methods of recruitment. Both of these professions require a candidate to have top grade exam results and then to go through years of training. In the case of barristers, the only way to get in to the profession is to obtain pupillage i.e. to work for free for another barrister for a number of years. In this way, the supply pool consists predominantly of highly intelligent children of other rich people.

3. Chief Executive Officer/Managing Director. The pay involved in this role is determined by the value of the company and the industry that they work in. The main reason why these guys get paid so much is that they've survived all of the politics to get to the position that they inhabit. Although, they get paid the most, they also have a very high rate of attrition which again requires a huge salary in order to attract other candidates to take on the role.

4. Hollywood Actor. Again, in the old days actors and actresses were relatively poorly paid and it wasn't a profession that held any respect - "Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington". What's made the top actors so wealthy was film and video. Hollywood's a business and, if a new actor becomes a box office hit in his first movie, then he's a more reliable hire to a film company than an unknown. Hence all of the film companies will clamour to hire the star for a new film, pushing up his pay demands, whilst prior to him getting his first film he was likely waiting on tables for minimum wage. The entertainment business is quite unusual in that there's a large supply of candidates, but the supply pool for hits is limited due to companies self-limiting the pool to known successes.

5. Refuse collector. This is a role that can be done by anybody and doesn't require any great communication skills and little training. Unsurprisingly, the pay is very small.

6. Tube driver. This is an unusual role in that it's not highly skilled, and hence attracts a large pool of candidates, but pays far above the average wage. The reason for this is that the job is controlled by the unions who have the ability to threaten the employers with strike action to ensure an above average rate of return for their members. As the London tube serves millions of commuters each day, and it's not possible to train up replacement tube drivers due to the uniqueness of that network, there is too much risk to an employer in allowing prolonged strikes to go ahead.