How much did you spend on your smartphone?
How much do you pay every month for your cell phone plan?
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get some of the money back?
Well, you can!
By using your smartphone to make money, you can essentially pay for your phone and even your monthly bill
And the best part…
You don’t even have to leave your home!
In fact, you can use earn money on your smartphone from anywhere and anytime.
How?
Here’s how…
Table of Contents
1. Do mystery shopping on your phone
Who doesn’t want to get paid to shop?
I’m talking about doing paid mystery shopping.
There is a company called Call Center QA that is willing to pay you to do over the phone mystery shopping assignments.
Traditionally, as a secret shopper, you have to go to an actual store, but in this case, all you have to do is make phone calls and report back your experience.
You call the shops during regular business hours and go through a series of questions.
Just by doing this, you can earn between $5 and $10 for each call.
- Earning potential: $5-$10 per call
- Official site: To get started, visit http://www.callcenterqa.org/employment to apply.
2. Get paid for watching app trailers
We all like movie trailers, but we never get paid for watching them.
How about trailers for new apps?
Would you believe it if I said there is an app that pays for watching 30-second app trailers?
Well, it’s real!
Aptly named AppTrailers is an app that actually rewards you for watching trailers for new apps.
This is an easy for anyone – especially if you’re into trying new apps every day – to make some pocket change while discovering new and potentially interesting apps.
- Earning potential: $5 to $10 per month
- Official site: To get the app checkout http://apptrailers.com
3. Earn money by interacting with your favorite brands & stores
Jingit advertises itself as a better way to shop.
With this app, you can earn money in 3 ways:
- Engage: watch a featured brand’s ad.
- Check-in: scan barcode of featured brand in-store.
- Shop: purchase and scan receipt of featured brand.
This is a great way to pay for your daily coffee or even lunch.
It’s actually very similar to some of the apps we featured in our recent “Get paid to upload receipts” post.
The main difference here is that no purchase is necessary. So if you don’t want to, you don’t have to actually buy anything. You can just earn money with the first 2 options.
You can transfer your earnings directly to your bank account by linking your account to your profile, or you can exchange your cash for gift cards from a variety of stores including Target and Walmart.
- Earning potential: $5 to $10 per week
- Official site: To get the app checkout https://www.jingit.com/home
4. Do over the phone secret shopping
Update: Ipsos, the largest mystery shopping company in the world, has acquired the mystery shopping business of MaritzCX in 2020. They still offer the same mystery shopping opportunities.
Maritz Research is another company that does similar work to CallCenterQA.
They help companies evaluate the quality of their customer service work.
You’ll pose as a real shopper, calling the company and asking a few predetermined questions. Once the call is over, you’ll answer a few questions about your experience – like how fast was the phone answered, how rude or polite was the employee, was your problem solved, etc.
The company provides you with limitless calling minutes and expects you to work for 20 to 25 hours a week.
This position is only available in the US and pays about $8 per hour.
- Earning potential: $8 per hour
- Official site: Go to https://us-v2.ipsosmysteryshopping.com to fill out your application
5. Get paid to watch videos on your phone
One of our favorite ways of earning extra money is through Swagbucks.
If you’re new to Swagbucks (read our Swagbucks review), it’s a site/app that rewards you for doing practically anything you already do online playing games, shopping, taking surveys, and even shopping.
You might earn 100 or 200 Swag Bucks a day, simply from watching videos on your smartphone or on your computer.
You can then redeem your Swag Bucks (it’s what they call points) for cash and gift cards.
100 Swag Bucks is equal to about $1.
It’s an awesome way to earn free gift certificates.
You won’t make a living doing this, but you can easily pick up an extra $10-$20 a month just playing around with the app on your phone.
- Earning potential: $20 per month or so
- Official site: To register for free go to swagbucks.com
6. Get paid to watch TV
Yes, you can actually make money by watching TV.
A company called Viggle rewards you with points for watching TV or listening to music on your phone.
You can even get extra points by answering questions.
You can redeem your points for gift cards from popular stores.
- Earning potential: $10-$20 per month or so
- Official site: To get the app checkout http://get.viggle.com
7. Get paid for unlocking your phone
Update: Slidejoy is no longer available.
How many times a day do you unlock your phone?
You could get paid for every instance of it!
This is possible through SlideJoy.
It basically displays ads on your locked screen.
You can unlock your phone as usual by sliding to the right, or if you are interested in the advertisement, you slide to the left and get more details. You get paid either way.
The app is intelligent and modifies the advertisements that are shown to you according to your responses.
Of course, you will only earn a small amount using this app. Users report getting an additional $5 to $15 per month.
- Earning potential: $5 to $15 per month
- Official site: To get the app checkout https://www.getslidejoy.com
8. Get paid fort taking pictures of store displays (& more)
Doing online surveys is another great way to earn some extra cash.
Well, now you can take surveys on the go, anytime and from anywhere.
And when it comes to paid survey apps, iPoll is one of the best and most trusted ones.
Not only you earn points for taking surveys, but you can also earn points by doing other simple activities like taking pictures of store displays.
iPoll calls these tasks “missions“, and you’re more likely to find missions if you live near a major city.
The app is available for both Android and iOS devices.
- Earning potential: $0.25 to $5 per survey
- Official site: To get the app checkout iPoll.com
9. Earn money answering surveys on your phone
There is a rather unknown, yet awesome app called Mobrog that many seasoned survey takers don’t even know about.
It rewards you for taking mobile surveys.
All you do is sign up for free, fill out your personal profile (so they can send you surveys that match your demographic) and participate in available surveys.
You can earn anywhere from $0.50 to $3 per survey.
Unlike most survey apps and sites that only accept members from a few western countries, this app is an international survey site/app that accepts members from 45 different countries.
- Earning potential: $0.50 to $3 per survey
- Official site: To get the app checkout http://www.mobrog.com
10. Make phone calls as a secret shopper
There is another company named Intelichek that doe the same thing as CallCenterQA – mystery shopping calls.
The amount you earn will vary, depending on how many calls you can make and the results of those calls, but when starting out you’ll probably get about a dollar for each call.
- Earning potential: $1 per call
- Official site: Go to http://intelichek.com/jobs.html to fill out the application.
Takeaway
Most of these opportunities don’t earn you a great deal of money, but if you take on a couple it may help you pay for your smartphone.
