Not sure what the question is.

Salary, like in almost all industries, is based on experience and deliverables.  If you know your shit, can design and detail like a boss, manage time, staff, and clients... then what else is left as a benchmark for compensation (either as firm owner or employee)?  With that said, I know many architects in their 40s who don't have either of these categories down... so, it depends is the answer.

One way of making more money is to shift the focus from a salaried employee to becoming a business owner. A bit like shifting the focus from a beer mug to a brewery.

Also, jeff685, just for fun, rephrase your first sentence after replacing the word "architecture" with "flipping burgers". Only a Dadaist experiment, of course.

depends on the type of house you design, I do mostly upwards of 3 million, but that's not what I aspire to. I'm in my 50's, employee of a "boutique firm" if you like to talk fancy and living in the most expensive zipcode in the us; my oldest son is graduating this december from college and my youngest is applying just now to a prestigious engineering school. I have very little savings, but that's because of my previous life. I have no debt besides mortgage and live better than 95% of the planet. It's all in the expectations. 

In general, in this profession, to make money you have to team with someone dedicated 100% to it, while you design and build shit. Don't know of anyone making money while designing alone.

Put your place on Airbnb with each business trip (paid for by employer or tax deductable, win-win!) or whenever else not at home.

There is little money to be made as an employee in any industry. The key is to become a partial owner (partner/principal) or open your own shop. In order to do either you need to, as others have described, be a boss at every aspect of the business.

If you want a comfortable middle class salary without much effort, get licensed while at a firm early on, then switch to a government job doing facilities or in the plans office etc. amazing benefits and retirement package, you’ll never get fired or laid off, and of course you’ll have practically nothing to do and get all federal holidays off. Pay is on a scheduled increase yearly regardless of performance. Just don’t expect to be rewarded for hard work in that scenario. 50-50 chance you’ll get student loans forgiven as well. But who knows these days about the pslf program.

Money is a shitty measure of anything, especially success.

There is not a lot of money to made in architecture unless you become a principal of a firm or your employer believes in doing regular salary benchmarking and increases wages accordingly. So, the name of the game is really how quickly you can make it to the top or to branch off and start your own firm. It's entirely possible to still be junior in the industry but to have the connections/money and business skills to start your own company and then to partner with more senior people in the profession who do not have what it takes to start their own practice. Just because you are more junior than others in the field of architecture does not mean that you might be one of the most naturally entreneurial people in the profession. It's all about what you can dream up and make happen and not about what people tell you.

If you want to make money quickly become a developer or better yet, partner up with one and start your own design/build firm or take some classes to learn about development and make the essential contacts so you can raise money and do your own projects. Another way to do it would be to partner up with a General Contractor in a Design/Build relationship. Additionally, become smart at saving money (even if it just a small amount) and putting it into lucrative interest bearing investments. You can then use that money to start doing fix and flips and then building more capital to then have the financial flexibility to do whatever you want.

Other than that, find a rich wife/husband to marry or find a way to buddy up with an old person who has no kids and wants to donate all of their money to you. :-)

If all else fails, I have heard that strippers make good money. Take all of that pent up energy from being a poor architecture grad and put it into good use at the gym to form a tight bod and then strut yourself on the pole! Lol.

Becoming an architect and then asking how to make money is getting it bass-ackwards.  If money is the goal, stay away from the arts.  And don't go into an industry with a labor surplus.

It's always been an old man's profession.  Never made any decent money til I was in my 40's that's because there was a building boom and I had some good staff and we were super efficient at delivering projects for a time.  Lately it's been really good as we have managed to parlay much of our expertise into being able to be efficient with larger scale projects and have been able to deliver those effectively ( cutting time and costs) which has translated in to being more profitable,  but that came after years of building up a large data base to draw from.

We don't go after every project but definitely go after projects which fit our "sweet spot" for effectiveness with several repeat clients. Once we were able to work at a rate better than 2.5 - 3x staff hourly rates profitability was greatly improved.