And Now, a Buck From Our Sponsors

We've all been watching commercials our whole lives. There's a commercial for nearly every entertainment venue in our lives: movies, cable and satellite TV, before content you watch online, all over webpages, in between levels of your favorite smartphone game, and even read to you between songs in your favorite music streaming service. Ads are everywhere if you use free services, and sometimes a paid subscription will turn them off.

But what if you could get paid for watching ads?

Internet marketing is huge. In the first half of 2016, around $32.7 billion dollars was spent on digital advertising in the U.S. alone (source: Wall Street Journal). That's a lot of money flying around for that banner ad you accidentally clicked on when you thought your page was loaded. There are a few services online I've discovered that let you tap into a portion of that revenue and finally get your piece of the pie, and put these computers, tablets, and phones you already have to work for you! Get yourself something nice, or maybe offset that phone or Internet bill a little!

The Skinny:

EngageMe.tv w/ Earnably

Right now, as of June 2017, this is one of the top earners. I've used this for a relatively short time so I don't have a lot of historical data, but as long as you are seeing ads this will pay out 1 cent per 3 ads viewed. Users have reported earning $50 per month on this service alone. The earnings may go up or down, but it's worth giving a try. This one takes an extra step to set up, but it's worth it.

Head over to Earnably.com and make an account. Once you've registered go to My Account (right hand side of the top of the page) and click Settings. Copy or write down your User ID (mine was 6 numbers). Then, go to EngageMe.tv and create an account. Then, link it with Earnably using your User ID from before. Now, you can sign in to EngageMe on an idle computer and start a video channel. You know you have a good one when it plays an ad right away and your green point meter goes up (it should say +0.3 Points when the ad is finished; 1 point = 1 penny).

What I like about Earnably is their auto-redeem option. Once you link your PayPal account (enter your PayPal email under My Account > Settings, same place you got your User ID) you can choose to automatically cash out once you get to $1, $2, $5, etc... I would recommend setting it to pay you at $5 for 500 points, because they take an extra cut for a $1 or $2 payout. Plus it makes more sense to my brain if 1 point = $0.01.

Keep in mind you can max out at 3 devices running EngageMe simultaneously. It won't run nonstop 24/7; occasionally you'll get a "Are you still watching?" popup so the advertisers know there's a human interacting with their stuff. Click Yes and you're good for a while.

Earnably is actually what's known as a GPT ("Get Paid To") or PPC ("Pay Per Click") site, which means there are other ways to earn besides watching videos. You can take surveys and offers through their offer walls, earn by downloading apps, and a few other ways, but its real power is through video ads. I'll have a GPT/PPC review in a separate post, but right now we're focusing on what to watch.

You can give their Android app a try if you're a 'droid user, but I usually have my phones elsewhere. Keep reading.

Earnhoney

This has been around for a while and it's pretty solid. Its advertising demand ebbs and flows, but when it earns it really earns. Just like EngageMe you get money when ads show up. Unlike EngageMe there's no prompt asking if you're still watching.

Make an account with Earnhoney, sign in, and start the medical or cars channel. Those have the highest earnings in my experience, but feel free to play around with the other ones. You'll know you're earning because you'll see green squares start to appear in the window just below the advertisement. Green for money. If the squares are red, you need to bring the window "into focus" by clicking anywhere on it. Earnhoney is picky like that. It has to be the top window otherwise you earn about a tenth of what you normally would.

Earnhoney relies heavily on Flash, so use Chrome if you don't have Flash installed on your computer (and you shouldn't, but that's a different discussion). Make sure to set your browser by going to chrome://flags and set "HTML preferred" to "off" and "Play all Flash content" to "on." That will give you the best experience.

I don't have an exact "X ads for 1 cent" metric because my balance doesn't update right away. You can install the browser extension if you want to check up on your earnings from anywhere. 100HD = $1.00, and you can cash out your first Amazon gift card for 200HD, after that it's 495HD for $5.00. PayPal transfers are full price. They pay two times a week; if you request payment on Monday you'll get it Friday, a request on Thursday is paid out on Monday.

There are a couple apps that work with Earnhoney, but in my experience they don't play for very long and the earn ratio is fairly low. I'd keep your phone/phones somewhere else.

Where, you ask?

Swagbucks Video

One of the most versatile and robust earning sites is Swagbucks. First of all, you get $1.50 free just for signing up, which is one of the higher starting bonuses out there. Now, Swagbucks is another GPT/PPC site like Earnably, in fact a much better one, but again we're just looking at playing videos right now. It's incredibly easy to earn on Swagbucks and I regularly make $2.50 - $3.50 per day with hardly any effort. One thing worth noting is they have a daily goal system in place that rewards you for earning so many "SB" per day (1 SB = 1 penny), and if you meet your daily goal every day in a month you get a sweet $7 or so bonus the following month. Can you say free money?

On a computer, if you're lucky you can get a nCrave playlist to run for a few hours. Sometimes they're available, sometimes they're not. Go to Watch on the sidebar, and check nCraves and Sponsored Videos. There's a sponsored vid called All You Can Eat which runs until the offer expires or until your browser crashes, whichever comes first. Similarly under nCraves there's a Discovery TV playlist that will go and go. Most of the others you have to manually click or manually restart, and that's not as fun! But you can also pick up a nice chunk of change running their apps.

That's right, plural. APPS. Here are some links to the Android version of their video apps.

Swagbucks - the original. This app has videos, surveys, the daily poll, shopping links, offer walls, and the ability to search and enter Swag Codes. More on all that later.
SBTV  - from here down, these are video only apps. This one allows you to pick "Favorites" by long-pressing videos on the different channels. Hint: There are a bunch called "10 second tips" that will help you earn a little faster.
Lifestylz.tv - this one also supports 10-second favorites.
Now they get a little less fun. For the rest of the apps just go to the "Short clips" section and watch (or don't) some mostly terrible stand-up comics.
EntertaiNow
MovieCli.ps 
Sportly.tv 
Indymusic.tv

You can pick up a minimum of $0.10 per app per day, but usually you will qualify for a "Bonus" which means they will keep earning as long as they run (sometimes at a lower rate).

Some days will be much better than others. Sometimes you'll get double or triple SB on a certain app (watch for the push notification from Swagbucks) but sometimes every other ad will need to be closed with the red X, or will freeze. You can have up to three phones per account running at a time, so if you have the resources to experiment then find out which app runs best on which device.

Swagbucks is one of my favorites because of the stacking bonuses, it makes it feel like it's worth your while even if it takes a little extra effort. I joined in February and have made over $325 on this service alone. They even give you a discount on your first $25 Amazon card each month (2200 SB, $3 off) and you can cash out to PayPal or any one of hundreds of other gift cards, some of which are discounted occasionally.

AppTrailers

This one in Android only, and it's run through Perk. (App download link) In its prime, Perk was a better earner than Swagbucks, but it has since declined and many are moving away from it. Perk is a pretty deep rabbit hole as well, being its own GPT/PPC service, but what I like about AppTrailers is it can work just as well by itself. It can be a little annoying with varying payouts and the "Are you still watching?" prompt, but its strength is in this: No minimum cashout, and it's fast. I got my PayPal notification less than an hour after I requested payment. Your mileage may vary with this one, but I've enjoyed it in the past.


There are other video watching apps like Checkpoints or Perk TV, but you'll get a better ROI (Return On Investment) using your phone to take surveys or do product reviews. You can check out any of those if you're interested, they are legitimate and do pay, but it would take you more than half a dozen phones to max out all the other services I've reviewed today! Get started, sign up and see what works for you, and happy earning!