How do I become popular?

Okay, so I'm in eighth grade, and I was wondering, how do I become popular? I'm not the most hated kid in the cl, but like, I don't get invited to too many parties, and also I want to have a lot more friends. I have one really close friend and like 6 other friends but like we aren't a group and like my six other friends I talk to sometimes...but we don't hang out that much. How do I become popular? I sort of want my own group. I'm a guy. But I would not mind having a few girls in the group...but I don't want to become one of those jerky popular people in my cl who no one likes. We have some of those...they're in the "in" crowd...there's like 12 different people in the "in" crowd...and a few of them are hated by a lot of kids in our cl...so I want to be "in" and have a lot of friends but not like an *** whole. I sort of want to be liked by everyone.