Earn Money By Watching Ads – Is It Possible?

by Brandon | Last Updated: October 7, 2021

Overview

Is it true that you can earn money by watching ads online?

And is it even worth your time?

I’ll be signing up to several sites today, and show you the experience as I continue my quest to complete as many different side hustles as possible.

So buckle up and watch along.

How To Watch Ads For Money

Originally, I didn’t think there were a whole lot of companies in this space. But there are quite a few when you search…

We’ll take a look at:

• SwagBucks
• MyPoints
• InboxDollars
• AdWallet

One of the most popular ones that appears when searching for how to earn money by watching ads is AdWallet, however, do they offer the best bang for your buck?

Are the others even worth your time?

Read on to find out.

SwagBucks

When you first land on the SwagBucks you are greeted with a sign up box offering a $10 sign up bonus.

Sweet.

But…oh there’s an asterisk there…right – the fine print.

Great, this is just another pushy cash back site.

Let me see where this goes anyway.

Oh, you have to install their app and login to unlock everything – allegedly you’ll earn a dollar for doing so.

I installed the app and logged in to my account but nothing changed.

So I uninstalled the app and SwagBucks can get bent.

How Many SwagBucks Is a Dollar?

100 SwagBucks equals $1.00 USD.

How Does SwagBucks Pay You?

Well, assuming you can ever use their site they’ll pay you out in gift cards like most others.

The good news, again – if you can ever use the site, they seem to have a very low threshold of 300 SB ($3 worth) to cash out, which would probably not be too hard to achieve IF YOU COULD USE THE SITE.

MyPoints

Oh goodie, another one of those sites that tries to lure you in with a fine print offer.

And once you’re inside, you’ll notice a common theme of these programs trying to shill one offer in particular.

They’re all trying to get you to sign up for something called Stash and if you spend $5 then MyPoints will give you 12,500 points credit, which equals roughly $78.

Which tells me they are making a lot more off of this affiliate offer.

And that really sums up MyPoints in a nutshell.

You won’t earn money by watching ads.

Your only possible hope of making money is basically signing up for one of those offers that requires you to “deposit” something or “buy something” so you can receive what amounts to a kickback.

Is MyPoints Legit?

Yes, a legit waste of your time.

Once I verified my account I was offered surveys that “earn points” of 128 for 20 minutes of time.

Basically, 160 points (it can vary slightly, but the best exchange you can get to is 155) = $1 – so you’d be making less than 3 dollars an hour doing surveys.

And holy cow if you try to actually earn money by watching ads the point ratio is terrible. 2 or 3 points for watching a bunch of videos. It’d take you a good half hour to earn 2 cents.

How Does MyPoints Pay You?

It seems as though the minimum payout is $3 through an Amazon or Dunkin Donuts gift card which will set you back 480 points (160 points per dollar.)

You will basically have to spend some money with a cashback partner if you ever hope to achieve this though.

InboxDollars

OK, so the sign up to InboxDollars was quick and easy, and right now they’re offering a $5 bonus just for signing up and confirming your email.

Off to a good start, let’s see what this first survey is all about.

Oh, gee, yeah, 9 million pages of “about me” questions that pays $.50 when you complete.

I also noticed that these are the exact same questions that SwagBucks uses…so they may be related companies.

Alright, now let’s see what sort of surveys we have available.

OK, two things.

1. The “Scratch & Win” really caught my eye…more on that later.
2. $1.50 for 10 minutes is only $9/hr so eek maybe this won’t be the best use of time.

Let me set a stop watch and see how long it really takes to complete this survey.

Well, one minute in I got “disqualified” which they say is because maybe the survey was closed because the researcher gathered enough information.

It’s possible I waited too long in writing this up and trying to time myself to start the survey, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.

I did finally find the Videos tab up in the top menu bar and wow, look at what these pay out:

Haha, bet you thought they were going to be worth something, right? Yeah, well – joke’s on me!

I clicked the top left one to see what it was all about and try to collect my $.02 – and it was painful.

Step 1 of 11??? Uh what…according to my stop watch it took 3:20 just to finish the first step. I have 10 more to go?

Like, is this for real?

Alright, no way will you earn money by watching ads on InboxDollars.

I did take another survey which took me 1 minute and 45 seconds to complete and paid out $.25.

So, we’d be on pace for a whopping $8.57 an hour (not including time to return to the home page and select another survey.

Scratch & Win

Somehow, I did manage to get to the point of being able to try the Scratch & Win game.

HAHA I won 2 cents.

You know what my two cents are on InboxDollars? Don’t bother.

It’s hard to even multitask and complete anything here.

Really, your best bet would be collect the $5 sign up bonus, find something you want to buy using their offer and collect $10 cashback and then go cashout.

Take the money and run, cause you ain’t gonna make it from watching ads or completing surveys.

Having to spend money to make it worth completing this really doesn’t make it a very good side hustle. 🙁

How Does InboxDollars Pay You

After (if) you reach $15, you can get paid by selecting one of the following cards: (They do have some other options but require higher payout thresholds at $30+)

I’d imagine the Amazon or Paypal options would be your best bet.

AdWallet

One of the first things you’re greeted with on their page is that they’ve allegedly paid out over 1.1 million dollars to date.

I’m a little skeptical because the counter on their page goes up a dollar every second. If you refresh the page it starts over at $1,102,842.

So yeah…ok. Could have done a little better on that.

Signup is pretty straight forward.

They want your name/birthdate/email/phone number (no VOIP allowed apparently.)

You then have to verify your phone number via text to get started.

Let’s see if they try to SPAM my number.

Anyway, registration approval was instant.

When you login, the member’s area is nice and clean.

To view the Bonus Offers you have to watch the Registration Video and then fill out a “Who I Am” section where they ask you several, fairly personal questions.

So, make sure you look those over and decide if you’re comfortable answering all of those before you sign up.

I’m definitely not wild about giving out personal information but at the same time I understand they have to “build an advertiser profile” of me.

Now, I suppose there’s nothing stopping you from giving out slightly exaggerated info. 😉

But I’ll leave the ethical dilemma up to you.

After that is all said and done go ahead and watch the video on the main screen.

Cha ching we just got $.50 for watching that video, we’re rich now!

Just kidding…only $.50 – wow.

Annnnnd that’s it.

So now I wait.

Here’s a live look at me waiting for a text from AdWallet.

And the “bonus offers” are really just cashback programs.

I guess look though it and if you’re going to buy something from there then go ahead and use the link and collect a couple bucks.

But the whole point of this was to see if I could earn money by watching ads.

I’ll have to wait and see when and how often I get texts to watch ads and report back with my stats.

If you want to get paid to watch ads, well, this is probably your best bet, if you get selected to watch any videos. But really, it’s not the awesomeness I was promised on the home page.

UPDATE: I have now been waiting several hours with no offer of a new video to watch.

How Does AdWallet Pay Out

You have to reach a $10 threshold to collect your money.

• Mastercard Prepaid Card
• eGift Cards (Amazon or Target for example)
• Donation

If you ever get enough videos to watch to be able to hit that $10 mark…

Final Thoughts

So, is it possible to earn money by watching ads?

Yes and no.

Technically, you can earn small amounts. Very small amounts. Slave wage amounts.

Would you be better off working at McDonalds for minimum wage than wasting your time with any of this?

OH HELL YES

Honestly, I feel bad you even had to read this.

When I was doing my research into side hustles this seemed like it could be a legit way to earn a few bucks.

And I think I know why…you see these programs all have some sort of “refer a friend” program where if you sign up they get like $1.

But, I didn’t even link to these sites AT ALL because I just can’t recommend this BS to you.

If you just want a good cash back program for stuff you’re going to buy anyway, then just use Rakuten.

It’s awesome, I use it every day and they send me checks for doing nothing more than I would anyway.

And hey, if you sign up with my link and spend $30 using Rakuten for cashback within 90 days, they’ll give you and me both $30. Which is way better than anything I went through above.

Just please do not waste your time on any of the other sites I had the displeasure of reviewing above.