I can't count how many times I've turned to my roommate, after a day of nothing but couch surfing, and said, in all seriousness, "how can we get paid to watch TV?" With my college graduation looming in the not-so-distant future, this question becomes more pressing. Monster search engine yielded nothing to "get paid while watching TV from the comfort of your home...or a friend's home, I'm flexible." Shocking, I know. I was fully prepared to weed through the results. I was beginning to lose hope when I found a light at the end of the tunnel. Or, less dramatically, my boss introduced me Viggle.
Viggle is the answer to my prayers. No, I'm not getting a check every other week for watching TV, but the app does allow me to cash in my TV points for rewards.
Viggle works like this: sit down to watch your favorite show and, in a "Shazam" like manner, point your phone to the television as it listens in to what you're watching. Viggle will then log one point for every minute of TV that you watch. Bad sound quality to your TV set? No worries, Viggle will make three attempts to check you in, if it still can't catch what you're watching just manually type in the program's name.
In addition to the point per minute you get on any program check-in, Viggle offers a 200-point signing bonus. If you check in to live programming there is often bonus points alongside the check in. For example, The Grammy's helped me reel in 217 points for watching, 100 points for a check in bonus and 50 points for answering two trivia questions. Same goes for all primetime broadcasts. Check in to How I Met Your Mother on Monday nights and get 50 bonus points. Also, you only have to stay checked in to one television program for 11 minutes in order to get the 50-point bonus. Let's say there are four shows that Viggle is offering a 50 point bonus for. Instead of earning 60 points for watching and the 50-point bonus, you can earn 244 points for watching just an hour of television. Just change your check-in every 11 minutes. Sounds like a lot of work, but one hour of checking in can make up for a day in class or at work. Insider tip: once you check in you don't have to stay on that channel. For example, the NBA finals were on and Viggle was offering an absurd amount of points to watch. I checked into the game and then immediately flipped over to How To Lose a Guy in 10 days. Viggle was none the wiser.
Viggle is easy to use and offers rewards that appeal to a variety of interests. You can get gift cards to Best Buy, Papa John's or Travelocity. If you're truly committed, there is a Royal Caribbean Cruise worth 4,000,000 Viggle points. At one point per minute, that seems like an impossible goal, but you know this is a challenge that I'm willing to log the man-hours for. What can I say, I'm dedicated.
Warning: it logs your TV shows. Permanently, as far as I can tell. And while I'm generally an open person, I'm not so keen on the idea that everyone can see just how many episodes of Law and Order: SVU I've seen or that I watched Diary of A Mad Black Woman...twice.
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