11 creative ways people have made $1 million

• Building wealth often takes smart saving strategies, but there are creative ways to achieve millionaire status more quickly, too.
• Some people get there by going viral, while others get there by selling uncommon things in new ways.
• We took a look at 11 different ways people creatively made $1 million.

Getting rich is a long-term game ... for the most part.

While your best bet to accumulate wealth is to curb your spending, start investing, and develop "rich habits," there are some less conventional ways to make millions relatively quickly. 

Consider those who took advantage of social media and launched their own YouTube channel, like PewDiePie, or created a viral meme, such as the founder behind "I can has a cheezburger." Some also got creative when starting their own retail business — one kindergarten teacher sold lesson plans online, one woman sold secondhand clothes on an app, and one college student sold pixels for advertising space online.

Read more: 11 outrageous ideas that made people ridiculously rich

There are plenty of means by which you can grow your bank account if you think outside of the box. No guarantees these strategies will work for you, but here are 11 creative ways people achieved millionaire status.

Alyson Shontell and Kathleen Elkins contributed to a previous version of this article.

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Scott DeLong launched a personal blog that was generating major income within eight months.

In mid-2013, Scott DeLong launched a one-person blog, ViralNova, and put a few Google ads on each page. Eight months later, he was generating six figures a month and millions of dollars annually, without a full-time staff or raising any money from outside investors.

ViralNova capitalized on social-friendly stories with catchy headlines that would explode on Facebook, and within a year, the site had grown to about 100 million monthly readers.

In 2015, DeLong sold his website to digital-media company Zealot Networks in a cash-and-stock deal that could be worth as much as $100 million if Zealot appreciates in value.

Dong Nguyen created a viral app in three days.

It only took Dong Nguyen three days to create the most popular game of 2014, "Flappy Bird."

Nguyen said he was making as much as $50,000 a day on his free app by running a tiny mobile ad banner at the top of the game, meaning he only needed to keep it in the App Store for 20 days to make $1 million.

That's just what he did. After about a month, Nguyen infamously pulled "Flappy Bird" from the App Store at the height of its popularity because he felt his game was "too addicting."

Amanda Hocking became a best-selling author by publishing books on Amazon Kindle — without a publishing deal.

Amanda Hocking was the best-selling "indie" writer on the Kindle store a few years ago, meaning she didn't have a publishing deal and got to keep 70% of her book sales. She was selling about 100,000 copies a month at $1 to $3 a pop, which set her on track to pocket a few million dollars.

She's not the only one making millions publishing Kindle books. Bob Mayer and Jen Talty built a seven-figure indie publishing house in just two years, which they detail in their book, "How We Made Our First Million on Kindle."