How To Get A Million Dollars For Free

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10 Foolproof Ways To Make A Million Dollars

Sell 714,286 Self-Published Books On A Kindle

Average cost of a book sold: $2

Profits you keep: 70%

Million-dollar math: For every $2 book sold, you keep $1.40. $1.40 X 714,286 books = $1,000,000.40

Who did it: Earlier this year, 26-year old Amanda Hocking was the best-selling "indie" writer on the Kindle store. She was selling around 100,000 copies per month at $1 to $3 a pop which set her on track to pocket a few million dollars.

Sell 477,483 apps in the App Store

Average cost of an app: $2.26, but since Apple doesn't let people sell apps for that amount well round up to $2.99.

Profits you keep: 70%

Million-dollar math: For every $2.99 app sold, you keep $2.093. $2.093 X 477,784 apps = $1,000,001.91

Who did it: Doodle Jump's Igor and Marko Pusenjak, Tap Tap Revenge and Peter Verterbacka of Rovio's Angry Birds

Rent your car for 8,680 days (208,334 hours) on GetAround

What it is: GetAround lets you rent your car to strangers for an hourly rate of your choosing. GetAround covers all insurance and other costs of operating the service, and renters are responsible for the gas they use.

There are no expenses beyond GetAround's 40% commission.

Average cost per hour: $8.00 per hour.

Profits you keep: 60%

Million-dollar math: For every hour, you keep $4.80. $4.80 X 208,334 hours = $1,000,003.20

Who did it: No one yet. Be the first.

Sell 10,262 business plans on eBay

Cost per business plan: $111 ( £68.00)

Profits you keep: eBay charges a $0.50 insertion fee, 15.0% of the initial $50.00, plus 5.0% of the remaining final sale price balance which leaves you with $97.45 per business plan sold.

Million-dollar math: $97.45 X 10,262 business plans = $1,000,031.90

Who did it: Earlier this year, Samuel Katabaaz tried to sell 99,999 copies of his startup's business plan for £68.00 each. The idea was to fund his startup without giving up any of the equity. It's not clear how many items he actually sold.

Complete 3,225,807 HITS on Mechanical Turk

What it is: Sign up to do freelance work at costs often below minimum wage.

Average cost per gig: In 2009, NYU professor Panagiotis Ipeirotis tracked all MTurk HITS (Human Intelligence Tasks) for two months and found the average value of HITS posted per day was $2,000. Most people, he estimated, use the site one day per week and earn about $20.

But most of the recent HITS we found only pay a few cents per completed task. Businessweek tried out the service for seven hours one day, completing about 15 jobs, and making just $0.63 per hour. That comes out to $0.31 cents per HIT. We'll use $0.31 cents/HIT for our calculation.

Profits you keep: 90% -- Amazon takes 10% commission of every final HIT payment with a minimum fee of half a cent.

Million-dollar math: $0.31 X 3,225,807 HITS = $1,000,000.17

Who did it: We hope no one. It sounds grueling.

Rent your Manhattan apartment for 10,520 nights

What it is: Rent a room in your apartment to a stranger for an amount and length of your choosing.

Average cost per rental: Hosts can charge renters whatever rate they want per night. Costs depend a lot on the host's location though. AirBNB has a rate recommendation widget based on the host's location.

When we typed in "Private Bedroom in NYC" it recommended we charge $98 per night. Even though NYC rates are higher than many other cities, we'll use the $98 estimate for our calculation.

Profits you keep: 97% of the total rent cost.

Million-dollar math: For every $98/night rental, you keep $95.06. $95.06 X 10,520 nights = $1,000,031.20

Who did it: If no one has done it yet, a few AirBNB users are well on their way. Daren from London says he has made $100,000 via AirBNB. Jeff from Paris says he's made $90,000.

Cofounder Brian Chesky also decided to go homeless everyday for a few months, so he probably made some good money using his service during that time.

Sell 1,000,000 pixels on a webpage to advertisers

Cost per pixel: $1

Profits you keep: 100%

Million-dollar math: $1 X 1,000,000 pixels = $1,000,000

Who did it: 21-year-old Alex Tew.

BONUS: Scam an angel investor

Everyone says it's easy to get funding right now (Bubble!). Act like you're starting a company, raise $1 million and run for the hills.

Who did it: A few startups come to mind, but we'll get in trouble if we drop names [Color, anyone?]

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