The television has been a part of our lives’ for decades. Pretty much everyone watches it. But can you really make money watching TV?
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TV has become a major part of our culture these days. In fact, most people can’t think of one person who does not own one. In most homes, TV is part of the daily routine.
It only makes sense to try and monetize something when you do it so often. So let’s find out if it is possible.
Is Making Money Watching TV A Real Idea?
In May of last year (2014) Netflix posted a position on the jobs section of their website. The position they wanted to fill was that of a “tagger”.
What is a Netflix tagger?
Tags are a way of organizing things online. Think of tags as a category within a category. If you wanted to organize groups of dogs, you might start by categorizing them by breed, and tagging them by color.
To try and personalize the content you view via its streaming service, Netflix needs to organize all its content. They start by categorizing it. Once categorized, they need to tag it.
So a movie in the Comedy category might get several tags, such as, “buddy comedy”, “romantic comedy” and so on.
To personalize content at the level Netflix does requires thousands, maybe millions of tags.
How do you tag all this content?
Well, you have to watch it, of course. Or better yet, do what Netflix did — pay someone else to watch it and tag it.
When Netflix posted this job, it got their entire audience (a lot of people) and lots of other people interested.
The job was quickly removed from their website and it has not reappeared since. I’m sure the person they hired is hanging onto this job for as long as possible.
No. You Can’t Make Money Watching TV
The truth is, it was Netflix that started the whole “make money watching TV” thing in the first place.
You can see just by looking at Google Trends that, thanks to Netflix, millions of people flooded the internet with queries about making money watching TV.
You can also see how quickly the trend fell away.
A normal trend-line does not look like that. A normal trend grows over time, and fades away, slowly, over time.
You can see in the image above that, thanks to Netflix, this trend skyrocketed and dropped like a sack of potatoes within the span of about thirty days.
Sure, a couple of companies have come out since, promising to pay folks for their viewing time, but none of them present any real income opportunity.
One company, Viggle, was popular among entrepreneurial TV-watchers for a while.
What is Viggle?
Viggle is an app that monitors your TV and movie viewing habits and offers to reward you in return.
When you are ready to watch something, you simply grab your phone, turn on the app, and let it record.
You can watch whatever you want. The app is supposed to monitor and record what shows are most popular among different demographics, how long we watch commercials, and a number of other things.
Unfortunately, the Viggle app wasn’t very realistic when it comes to making money.
For each minute of viewing, you earn one point. You need three thousand points to equal one dollar.
Obviously that’s not a lotta dough.
Still though, even collecting a bit of change for something you are doing already isn’t a bad deal.
Well, apparently things got worse for the Viggle app.
Take a look at some of the latest reviews left for it in the app store.
Surveys
Sometimes the TV networks become desperate for feedback. This is especially true when new shows have been released.
For this, many TV networks enlist the help of The Nielsen Family Ratings Company. Nielsen, in turn, enlists the help of the public to help them provide feedback on the shows they watch.
Nielsen is known to randomly send envelopes with $5 to $20 (cash) via the US mail in order to entice new members to the “Family”.
Aside from the few dollars you might receive in the mail, Nielsen does not pay. And to make things more difficult, you cannot sign up to join Nielsen. Instead, you are picked at random based on your zip code.
If you are picked, you are asked to record your watching habits, fill out a survey, and send all this information back to them.
While it is nice to receive cash in your mailbox for no reason, we can hardly call this an income. It is merely a gift in hopes that you will fill out the form they send along with the cash — but you are not obligated to do so.
If there are other companies like Nielsen I was unable to find them. I’m sure they exist but on a much smaller scale than Nielsen or even Viggle. So there probably isn’t much point in digging too hard to find them.
About Paid Surveys And TV Watching Scams
One reason I wanted to write about watching TV and getting paid is that it’s a common concept promoted by “paid survey” sites. I review a lot of these companies to see which ones are legit ways to make money online and which ones are scams (hint: most of them are scams).
Anyway, they always promote the concept of doing easy things like watching TV, click ads, or sending emails and claim that you can make money doing these activities.
The truth is that they are being clever with their wording. Out of 100 boring surveys, you may be able to watch a 30-second clip of a TV show, or paid a penny per view. It’s never a good use of your time!
Final Verdict?
Outside of working for Netflix, you are not going to make money watching TV. Why would anyone pay you to do something that everyone else is doing for free?! Shocker, right?
You may be able to rack up a few “points” here, a gift card there with a rare opportunity, but as far as making any notable or sustainable income…not gonna happen.
Still, there are lots of people who love to watch TV and movies. I have friends that know everything about directors, casts, and alternate endings.
I mean, just look at the whole Star Wars phenomenon. Do you love watching TV? Do you have a favorite TV show or are obsessed with something like Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, or Star Trek?
There are lots of people that are really passionate about this stuff. If passion describes you + TV, then you can make money from this passion… you just have to get creative about it. I’ll show you how to do it RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW.
You should do what I do: Affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is how I built my current business. I created a website about computers and a website about beer. Both of them make me money every month. Thousands of dollars per month!
I just write about the stuff I find interesting, do product reviews, blog about news in the industry, and write my opinion. I’m basically a blogger but with a specific topic in mind.
You can do the same thing for any topic, including TV, movies, entertainment, celebrity gossip…whatever is interesting to you.
If there is a movie or TV show you love then you can sell products related to it through an affiliate program. All you have to do is signup and join the affiliate program for the items you might want to sell.
For example, Amazon has an affiliate program and they have all sorts of TV and movie related items. If you join their affiliate program you will get a percentage of each sale you help to create. Stuff like box-set DVDs, or fan gear would work.
Turning Your Passion For TV Into A Business
One cool thing I thought of that would help anyone wanting to turn their TV habit into a profit would be the ‘translate’ your hobby of watching TV into a passion. For example, what are your favorite shows to watch?
If you like watching The Big Bang Theory, you could start an affiliate site about nerdy stuff like video games or drones. If you like watching love stories, you could start an affiliate site about dating advice.
Just love family shows like Family Matters and Full House? You can make a family advice website! I’ve seen some great websites on how to be a good modern dad, or how to be a parent of special needs children.
Affiliate programs are free to join, and all you really need is a few bucks for a domain name and hosting, plus a bit of time to learn about affiliate marketing. In fact, the startup cost for a website is tiny compared to traditional brick and mortar business, but they can make just as much money!
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Nathaniell
What's up ladies and dudes! Great to finally meet you, and I hope you enjoyed this post. My name is Nathaniell and I'm the owner of One More Cup of Coffee. I started my first online business in 2010 promoting computer software and now I help newbies start their own businesses. Sign up for my #1 recommended training course and learn how to start your business for FREE!
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Giulia
Hi Nathaniell, and thank you ever so much for the much informative post. What an eye opener!! Like you, I do a lot,of research in earn-from-home activities, but I hadn’t yet branched out into the world of paid for telly watching. It very much sounds like with paid for website viewing (the good old law of Website traffic attraction), where eventually you will get paid a far from decent figure, but that will be after 3 years of clicking on every email you get sent at a rate a penny each (!!!). Then again, I suppose you can keep adding this daily task as a side pocket money earner I addition to other ventures, as you rightly mention.
But thanks again, as you’ve now inspired me to look into it all much more in details.
Love. Giulia
Nathaniell
It still baffles my why anyone would want to work online for pocket money! If you are spending an hour or two per day earning some extra change for going out to eat or little shopping trips, why not spend that same hour or two learning how to completely change your financial situation. Sure, in the beginning it’s a bit slow, but if you keep the long-term picture in mind, you’ll be much better off!
It’s like spending time reading a fiction novel vs spending time reading a how-to book on how to do something. The latter can produce lasting results 🙂
Kris M.
Hi Nathaniell,
Great post! It looks like you really did the research on this possibility. I saw the title and said, “No way! Who’s going to pay somebody to watch TV when everybody else already does it for free?” It was great to see you confirm my instinct with the exact same question.
I’ve tried a few survey sites myself and they just aren’t worth the time and effort with the tiny amount of points you get and the time it takes to earn anything tangible. Thanks for sharing your knowledge on this. I will not fall for these types of scams.
~Kris
Nathaniell
That’s a good point. I guess people aren’t really paid to watch TV, they are paid for the work that’s involved after word. Reviewing, categorizing, or some kind of reporting.
I think that would be the hardest part of owning a TV review website – actually taking the time to take notes, turning it into a blog post, and publishing content about your television interests regularly. I had a movie related website for a while which saw some success, but I got lazy with publishing content because I just wanted to enjoy the movies, not analyze them!
JeffWA
Nathaniell,
Very interesting article and right off the bat I could see a huge flaw in that gig that Netflix temporarily posted as a “job”. Were there any pre-set rules as to how long the individual had to stick with watching a television show in order to “tag” it to a specific category? I mean I could watch the first minute of a show and be able to tell whether or not it was a “buddy” comedy, “romantic” comedy etc. Would I then make more money depending on how many shows I could watch? Truly a farce and I understand why Netflix pulled it so fast. There was probably an overload as to the number of people who responded, and something that the company did not anticipate or could handle.
That other money making venture with the Viggle app was a joke too. The need to earn thousands of points to earn a small chunk of change in this type of venture is akin to doing surveys at sites that pay not even close to minimum wage.
Why people fall for these schemes is beyond me. Probably they’re all desperate and looking for easy ways to earn money quickly.
Jeff
Nathaniell
I don’t know all the details of the Netflix job since it was pulled, but I’m sure that it was quite popular once word got around. I mean I waste so much time watching netflix that I’d probably take less than minimum wage just to be paid to sit around. Although, I assume there was a little bit of work to it, like filling out forms which can be boring, and you might not get to watch all the cool shows. Some TV and movies on Netflix are pretty bad!
But now that I think of it, I wonder who does all the organizing behind the scenes? Do they just pull the info from IMDB? I would think that they maybe have a more detailed process because the ‘smart’ part behind netflix was something they are really pushing, ie that it can guess what you like.
As far as Viggle goes, if someone is going to spend that much time trying to earn money, they might as well do some researching into how to build a real business. It’s not as fun in theory, for sure, but once you dig it it can be really interesting. I mean, you get to exercise creative skills all day long putting together the layout of your site, writing articles, reading articles, and yes, even watching YouTube sometimes (for research).
Heather Grace
I am among those who are sad that you can’t make money watching TV… Really killed the dream. I wonder what that Netflix job paid??? But, yes, it makes sense. Nothing in life is free and money doesn’t come easy. It is hard work. I love the idea of affiliate marketing. Is that something a beginner could do? Do you need past experience with marketing or website building?
Nathaniell
Yeah if you really want to earn something for sitting in front of the tube, you’re dreaming! That doesn’t mean you can’t use that passion to discover a legitimate way to earn a living though! Think about what drives your passion to watch TV. Is it an interest in a topic? Is it the storytelling aspect? Do you just love a certain actor? Or do you get excited about relaxation? All those things can be made into a website.
So see? The idea to watch TV and make money didn’t really work out but if you dig into the psychology behind it, you can probably figure something out that will be profitable for you.
Paul
Hey Nathaniell
Interesting topic! I was sure eager to see if there was a way I could make money watching TV. I mean, how great would that be, right? Sitting on the sofa, eating chips and drinking beer while making money. It looks like you covered all the possibilities so I do not need to comb the internet. Thank you for that, much appreciated.
I do like your other option of making money online by writing blogs. I was surprised to hear that there are so many affiliate programs out there. What would you say is the average affiliate income percentage?
Nice website, going to check out some of your other posts. Looks like you did learn a lot about creating websites by the looks of things. Keep up the great work.
Cheers
Paul
Nathaniell
Yeah, that would be the ideal job wouldn’t it! I think in some ways you could get paid to watch TV, but maybe not in the ‘easy’ way like most people imagine. everyone has to work, so I imagine it would take a lot of training to learn about things like marketing and how to use TV shows to market. Or maybe if you were a writer, you could get paid to write TV scripts, and indirectly get paid that way. Technically you aren’t paid by the minute watched, but you kinda have to watch and learn about other TV shows to get paid, right?
Anyway, that takes a lot of education and backstory before you can actually make money doing it.
It’s a lot quicker to start a website! I’ve seen quite a few sites on different types of TV shows, especially Sci fi that were interesting for me to read. Even if you can’t find affiliate programs, you can always make money from ad revenue off of google or microsoft ads!