I don’t blame you for being skeptical. Who wouldn’t want to get paid to watch videos? The problem is, who would pay people to watch YouTube videos? There is no shortage of people wanting to make money watching videos that it’s understandable if you are skeptical as to why people with businesses would pay you to watch a video.
The Facts
Every single day, thousands upon thousands of videos get published on YouTube. Most of those videos don’t get any views. I’m sure you’ll stumble upon some of these videos. Maybe they would have a handful of views, but that’s it. Other videos seem to take off. They just catch on really quickly. What is the secret? It’s not what you think.
Why would companies pay you to watch a video?
The reason why so many videos fail is basic human psychology. Put yourself in the shoes of somebody who stumbled upon these videos. You look at the handful of views, and you look at the title of the video. Maybe you’re looking at the first screen of the video. Come on, you could be honest. If you don’t see enough views for the video, you probably wouldn’t want to play it. It doesn’t matter how awesome the title is. It doesn’t matter what the thumbnail looks like. Even if you’re looking for that type of video, if you see that there are not enough views, you probably would think that it’s not worth your time. This is basic human psychology. This is called Social Proof.
We’re all looking for social proof because we are in a hurry. We can’t afford to waste our time. In the back of our heads, when we see that there is less than a hundred views for a video, you’re probably thinking that the video is not worth viewing. You’re almost certainly thinking that there is a reason why it has so little views. Companies, video producers and individual YouTube publishers will pay people like you to get rid of this problem. It’s called social proof. The more views a video has, the higher the chance that other people would view the video. This is called Organic Viewing.
People could see that this video has enough views, so they think that at least somebody out there thought that this item was worth viewing. At least somebody out there thought that it’s worth the time. So they’re going to take a shot and watch the first few seconds of the video. If they like what they see, then they will continue to watch. That’s how it goes. What’s clear is that there is an initial hurdle every video has to overcome. When a video has less than a thousand views, people are skeptical.
What do you need to do to make money watching videos?
What are the skill sets in watching a video? You may be thinking that you just need to click on a YouTube link, play the video, and you’re done. There’s more to it than that. Different companies have different requirements. This all boils down to the platform that they use.
The Most Common Requirement for Video Viewing
The most common of course, is to view the video. YouTube has changed their rules. Back in the day, almost anybody could just put up a YouTube channel and start making money off their YouTube channel, even if they don’t have enough subscribers or video views. That has changed. Now for YouTube, you have to log 4,000 watch hours and get 1,000 subscribers. If you can’t do that, YouTube won’t monetize your channel.
For most video publishers, that’s a death blow. That is a kiss of death. You’re not going to make any money if you’re the typical publisher. After all, YouTube will show Google ads as your video plays, that when people click on the ads, you make money. It’s that simple. But unless you clear that hurdle of 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 subscribers, your channel is dead as far as making money from Google Adsense income is concerned. This is where you come in. When you sign up for a video viewing freelance job, you watch the whole video. This is crucial, because a certain amount of minutes is needed. This is called retention for your viewing session to count.
Subscribing
Another task that a lot of platforms require is that you subscribe to the channel. A lot of people don’t have problems with this, even though they’re not personally interested in what the channel is talking about. Subscribing is so easy that it’s an after thought.
Liking the Video
Another key factor for YouTube success is the likes a video gets. The more like the video gets, the higher the chance that the video will be automatically recommended to people looking for videos that are related to a video they just watched. You’re probably seeing this in action. You may have been watching a video on a cartoon series, and suddenly you start seeing recommended videos that also involve that cartoon series. These videos are made by other people, but they talk about the same thing.
YouTube is always making predictions about what you would like. It considers many different factors when recommending a video. One of these factors is the amount of likes a video gets. When you sign up for a video viewing freelance job, liking the video is one of the things you need to do to get paid, because this ultimately helps boost the video.
Commenting on Videos
Some video platforms ask participants to comment on videos. Just like “likes,” YouTube considers comments as a form of user engagement. The more engagement a video has, the higher the chance YouTube will recommend or rank the video higher. The higher you rank on searches, the more likely you will be found by your target audience. The more people find you, the more people may end up subscribing or viewing your video.
This has a cumulative effect, and successful channels are easier to find, and that’s why they build a greater subscriber base which then leads to more views and shares, and this leads to even more subscribers. It can easily become an upward spiral for YouTube channel publishers, and that’s why they spend money on social proof.
Do you have to have solid writing skills to make money watching YouTube videos?
The short answer is no. If you’ve ever seen comments on YouTube videos, I think you would agree with me that you don’t necessarily have to be the next William Shakespeare to make money as a YouTube commenter. Now of course, we don’t really know how many of those commenter are paid to comment. You can bet that some of the most famous channels out there started out with zero social proof. Instead of waiting several months for their videos to get organic traction, they did the smart thing, and they hired platforms to recruit people like you to give their videos social proof.
How much money can you make watching videos?
The short answer is it depends on the platform. That’s the bottom line. If the platform you’re using pays primarily through referrals, you probably would have to view a lot of videos for you to make a decent amount of money. We’re talking about spending about a month just to withdraw five dollars. Other platforms pay a little bit more because they ask more from you. Maybe they would ask you to comment, like or share the video.
What platforms should I look for to get paid to view YouTube videos?
There are three most common platforms that you should search for when it comes to social proof freelancing. That’s really the fancy term for this type of social media freelance work: Social Proof. That’s the value you provide to the client. You are a warm body that is engaging with the content, so as to drive organic views.
Apps
The most common way to get a YouTube viewing freelance gig is to use a mobile app that farms out different YouTube videos to people who have downloaded the app. The great thing about app based video viewing is you can just be doing your thing, going about your day, and you get a notification from the app. You view the video for a few seconds or up to a minute, and you go back to what you’re doing. Quick and easy. That does everything. It tracks your view time, and it also gives you credits.
Websites
Another to do social proof freelance work is to go through specialized websites. You have to login, and you get some links. Sometimes, you get redirected so they hide your IP address. A lot of websites play all sorts of tricks to make sure that your views count. This is much more inconvenient than viewing YouTube videos through an app. The great thing about app based video viewing is you can be anywhere, watching videos at anytime. It’s very portable. It’s very easy. You don’t have to be at home or at work sitting in front of your laptop or desktop computer.
Finally, there are some operators who would basically just sign you up for an email list, and when they have a YouTube viewing project, they would just blast out an email. The downside to this type of program is tracking. A lot of them use email based tracking, so you get a URL, and when you clink on the URL, it actually redirects to YouTube and uses your IP address. The problem with this way of farming out YouTube viewing work is that links can sometimes be cut or lost. What I mean by that is the receiving server who is supposed to track your activity has a chance of not seeing the link, or would only record half the link.
Cutting the long story short, this means you don’t get paid. That’s the bottom line. If I were you, I’d focus on app based YouTube viewing, and if desperate, maybe do desktop or laptop viewing. Email viewing is just too much of a risk. You would’t want to put yourself in a position where you’ve watched videos religiously through email, and then when payday comes, you would have to settle for a fraction of what money you could have earned. Not good.
How to find YouTube video watching freelance jobs
Where do you get YouTube video viewing freelance gigs? You can check out QuickRewards. This is a company that gives out tasks for quick cash. What makes QuickRewards different from typical micro worker or micro task types of websites, is the fact that they focus primarily on video. The downside to QuickRewards is you have to go through a lot of videos to get a decent payday. The same goes with Swagbucks.
Swagbucks is great because it has a lot more offers. There’s just so much more videos you could work with. There’s just so many things you could do. The downside to Swagbucks is that they often just give you credits for stuff that you can redeem later. If you are like most freelancers, you probably would want to be paid in cold hard cash, and that’s where the problem with Swagbucks is. Most people don’t want to stick around and do all that work for swag. They’d rather have cash in their hands.
Finally, there is InboxDollars. This company has been around for quite a while. They are tried and proven. They do pay. The downside is the amount of extras they want you to do for watching videos. Of course, this varies from task to task, but you would have to make a judgment call whether a particular video viewing job is really worth your time, because if the extras simply take too much time and effort, the amount of cash that you’re getting might not be worth it.
Tips for success when watching videos for money
Once you have found a platform that would pay you to watch videos, please understand that you have to be efficient for you to make good money at this. There are a lot of programs out there that theoretically can pay you money to watch videos, but the problem is most of them are not worth joining because they take too much time, and a lot of people are just simply too inefficient to make good money with these programs. Here are the best practices that I’ve learned throughout the years on how to watch YouTube or consume any kind of content with maximum efficiency, so you can lock in on a big payday:
#1: Join as many programs as possible
If you’re going to watch YouTube videos or any other kind of videos for money, join as many of these similar programs as possible. The key to hustling online is to be as efficient as possible. The problem is, a lot of people tried to do so many different things at the same time. They have many different browser tabs open. On one window, they are writing advertising copy for a client. On another window, they’re doing image alteration work for a freelance gig. On another window, they are filling out a form for data encoder, Fiverr client. On another window, they are watching a video to get paid per view. What’s wrong with this picture?
Well, if you haven’t spotted it yet, let me spell it out. When you do one thing, you get drawn into it, then you’re not as efficient with the other things that you’re doing. Focus on one thing at a time. If you’re going to watch YouTube videos all the time, then your browser must be from different platforms that pay you to watch YouTube videos. This way, you can just jump from tab to tab to watch the different videos. Efficiency is crucial.
#2: Open many instances on your app for peak efficiency
The name of the game for any kind of low pay per task kind of work is efficiency. Ideally, you should look for a job that pays you $500 a day doing only one thing. Unfortunately, most people are not in that position, so they’re stuck with doing things that pay $1 or less. The key here is to do more at the same time. So by focusing on one type of money-making system at a time, and using multiple tabs, you can push yourself to be as efficient as possible.
#3: Run a race with yourself
Please understand that a lot of these programs pay very little, and it often takes a long time to get the money out of the system. This is why you need to be as efficient as possible. You need to quickly view as many different videos running together at the same time, so you can lock in on a minimum amount every day. The way to do this is to run a race with yourself. How fast can you open all those tabs on your browser? How fast can you open all those app instances on your mobile phone? How fast can you load all those videos? How fast can you engage or comment?
You have to run a race with yourself so you can keep pushing yourself to a higher and higher level of productivity. Productivity is the name of the game here. The good news? If you stick with it long enough, it becomes a habit. You become mentally comfortable with the whole thing, and you become faster and faster.
The final word on getting paid to watch YouTube or TV videos
You can get paid a decent amount, but you have to hustle. By default, these programs tend to pay on the low side. There is very little skill involved. The good news is, with a little bit of elbow grease and hustle, you can turn watching YouTube videos into a decent side hustle. You just have to sign up for as many different platforms as possible. Be as efficient as possible and crank out as many different views as possible. None of this of course happens overnight, but with enough practice, you will definitely get better at it. Other people have made a decent living doing micro tasks like YouTube videos. There is no good reason why you cannot join them.
If you would like to learn about 24 other ways to turn your spare time into cash using the Internet, check out my blog post. You’d be surprised at what you can get paid to do.