Do you love watching videos? How about learning about new movies and products? If you’re nodding your head yes, then let’s turn your video-watching into cash!
When I began my work from home adventure, I experimented with a variety of freelance jobs that fit into my spare time. By testing out new gigs, I determined what worked best with my busy day-to-day routine.
I loved watching videos because it was something I could easily do in my free time while the kids napped or were having quiet time.
Whether you’re looking to earn a little extra cash or free gift cards, or you want to break into the side hustle scene, you can earn money by watching videos from the comfort of your home.
Best Ways to Earn Money Watching Videos
1. Swagbucks
With Swagbucks, you earn points called Swagbucks for taking surveys, shopping online, playing games, and watching videos! You can even make Swagbucks your default search engine and earn even more points for your web searches. With 500 Swagbucks, you can swap your points out for $5 in cash via PayPal or gift cards at many of your favorite stores.
Some other quick perks about Swagbucks:
- It’s available in the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Ireland, and the UK.
- Earn even more by referring your friends and family.
- Make money in a variety of ways by completing surveys, shopping online, and more.
- Earn a $10 bonus just for signing up.
Swagbucks is an excellent platform for making extra money during naptime!
2. Nielsen Computer & Mobile Panel
Nielsen, the famous TV rating company, also collects users’ browsing data. You can get paid for installing its app and performing online activities like surfing the web, watching TikTok videos, shopping online, and playing games as you usually would!
This means when you watch YouTube videos, you’re earning cash!
Nielsen rewards its app users via points and monthly sweepstakes entries. You can earn up to $60 per year in reward points for simply installing the app on your computer, tablet, or phone, and you can earn additional points by playing various games through the app.
3. Downtime Dollars
Downtime Dollars is a free app for iOS and Android devices that pays you to play games, take online surveys, watch videos, and more. The idea behind the app is that rather than intrusive ads interrupting your content, brands will pay good money to present you with meaningful interactions and worthwhile content.
Pay varies, depending on the content you view or the tasks you complete. You can cash out your earnings when you reach the $5 threshold for gift cards at retailers like Target, Walmart, Amazon, and more.
4. Survey Junkie
Another way to earn money watching videos is with Survey Junkie! They are a market research company that studies the way consumers browse the web. You can get paid for installing its smartphone app or web browser extension and sharing your regular digital activities.
In addition to its mobile app, Survey Junkie offers additional online earning opportunities through paid surveys and focus groups. Participants are rewarded via points, which can be redeemed for cash rewards via your PayPal account or gift cards from popular retailers.
Survey Junkie accepts users who are at least 18 years old from the US, Canada, and Australia.
5. InboxDollars
Another platform that pays users for completing short tasks is InboxDollars. With this site, you can earn money by taking surveys, reading emails, playing video games, and completing offers. But how do you earn money watching videos? Go to the offers tab and look for video streaming offers. For example, sometimes, they have an offer where you can earn $12.50 cashback when you sign up for the Hulu, Disney, and ESPN streaming bundle. New offers are being added all the time, and it may make sense for you to sign up and earn cashback if you were going to sign up for the service anyway.
Grab a $5 sign-up bonus with InboxDollars as well!
6. QuickRewards
Another site where you can earn money watching videos is QuickRewards. With this web-based platform, you can watch video clips, complete surveys, shop online, and play games for QuickPoints. These can then be traded in for gift cards or PayPal cash. One hundred (100) QuickPoints equates to $0.01. There is no minimum balance required to cash out your QuickPoints, though they limit direct PayPal payments to twice per day.
7. Join Flip
Another way to earn extra income is by watching and creating video content through Flip, a shopping and video-viewing app (think Amazon and TikTok in one platform). With Flip, you’ll earn money for watching online videos. This money that you bank from watching videos is not real money, but instead, discounts you can use to purchase products from their shop. Once you order a product from their shop, you can create a video reviewing it, and you’ll earn money from other people buying, viewing, and engaging with your content. You’ll also get opportunities to earn free products and additional revenue through their referral program.
With Flip, you don’t need to be an influencer or professional content creator. It doesn’t matter how many followers you have; it’s all based on sales, views, and engagement of your video. Your earnings can be used to buy products or cash out via Stripe once you reach the minimum payout of $50. If you’re curious about how much you can earn with the Flip money app, here is one woman who earned $160 from one video, but she spent $40 on the product. Besides product reviews, you can also share regular content that earns money based on engagement.
Flip is for US residents only, and it’s available for download in the Apple and Google Play app stores.
8. Join a Focus Group
Focus groups are another fun way to make money by viewing video clips, reviewing advertisements, listening to music, testing out products and websites, mystery shopping, and more! The nice thing about focus group studies is they tend to pay well, often $50-$150 for a one-hour study!
To start making money with this side gig, sign up with a few reputable market research companies and wait for opportunities that match your demographics. Some studies will be in person, others over the phone or webcam, and some are done completely online. To start your focus group journey, sign up with platforms like Respondent, User Interviews, and UserTesting.
9. Caption Videos
If you have excellent listening skills and fast and accurate typing skills, you can earn money watching videos as a captioner! Closed captioners create the captions for videos, TV shows, and commercials. One company that almost always hires freelance captioners is Rev.
Rev accepts freelancers from the United States (excluding California), Australia, Canada, Ireland, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, and Ireland. In these freelance roles, you’ll earn $0.54-$1.10 per video minute, and Rev pays weekly via PayPal. And if you’re bilingual, you can work on subtitles in a wide variety of languages. Translators with Rev earn $1.50-$3.00 per audio or video minute.
Check out this list for more companies that hire remote captioners!
10. Netflix Tagger
If you’re looking for a full-time job where you can earn money watching videos, head on over to the Netflix website and look for the tagger or content analyst jobs. In this position, you’ll watch and research videos, adding data, categories, titles, ratings, and metadata that help viewers find the content that they are most interested in. For these jobs, you’ll need a passion for entertainment, knowledge of pop culture and media trends, and experience tagging data.
These positions are often done remotely and are highly competitive, so be careful of fake job listings on big job boards.
Earn Money Watching Videos Wrapup
Making money online by binge-watching videos is a fun way to grab extra cash when needed. The flexibility of watching videos allows you to balance naptime or other aspects of your busy day. It’s also an easy way to test the waters in the side hustle world, and all you need is your phone or laptop and an internet connection!
Sign up for one or many of these fun and simple opportunities to earn money by watching videos from home!
Originally published December 30, 2019. Content updated January 2025.
