Make Money Watching TV With The Viewers

Nick Making Money reviews 2 Comments

Today I wanted to give you a heads-up about a market research company that is always looking for new members for its (paid) audience panel.

As the name suggests, The Viewers researches people’s TV viewing habits. They regularly run studies about this and pay participants in cash (via PayPal) or Amazon vouchers.

One type of study they run is focus groups. These are typically held in large cities. They generally last 90 minutes and involve discussing current and planned TV programmes in a small group led by a researcher. You can expect to be paid at least £40 (cash in hand) plus free refreshments for a 90-minute group discussion, and often more if the project involves tasks to complete before or after the discussion.

The Viewers also run online focus groups, which (obviously) you can do from the comfort of your own home. Payment is similar to the physical focus groups, though without the refreshments!

They also run a variety of other studies and surveys. A recent one I took involved tuning my TV to a number of Freeview channels and taking photos of what was on the channels in question, including the station logo at the top of the screen (see sample photo below). I used my mobile phone camera to do this, and uploaded the photos to the website as instructed.

This whole task took me about 20 minutes and I received a £5 Amazon voucher in payment (I could have opted for a slightly smaller amount in cash, but as I’m always buying stuff from Amazon, a voucher was just as good for me).

As well as these paid studies, The Viewers also run some shorter ones where payment takes the form of prize draw entries. Here’s one I was sent recently by email:

You could be suitable to share your thoughts on a TV actor or actress. Those taking part will initially be entered into a prize draw with some participants invited to an optional longer paid survey within the next week. If you would prefer not to hear about prize draw surveys, please update your research and communication preferences towards the bottom of this email.

Reward: Entry into this project’s prize draw with 1 x £50 flexi e-gift card and 10 x £10 flexi e-gift cards up for grabs. These can be spent at Amazon, Argos, Cineworld, M&S, Pizza Express, Tesco & more.

Additional prize draw: All taking part (including those who don’t qualify) will also be entered into our additional May prize draw which runs across all surveys with 1st prize of £100 amazon voucher, 2nd prize of £50 amazon voucher and 5 runner up £10 amazon vouchers!

Time required: 5 minutes (approx)

There is no obligation to do these (or any) studies, as there is no guaranteed reward. But if I’m not busy with other things I tend to, as they are usually quite interesting and take no more than five minutes to complete.

Obviously, if you never watch TV, The Viewers isn’t going to be for you. But you don’t have to be a telly addict either. On the website, they say, ‘ We want to speak to all manner of viewers, from ardent fans of a programme to those who just catch the odd bit of TV. Please just be completely honest when registering and you will be contacted when a project is right for you.’

Clearly nobody is going to make a fortune from The Viewers, but it can be a great addition to your portfolio of sideline-earning opportunities, and the studies are generally interesting and enjoyable as well.

To register with The Viewers, click on this link (or any of the links in this post) and click on the Join Now button. Enter your details and you will then receive emails from them any time they have a study you may be eligible for. In my experience, payments (or online gift vouchers) normally arrive within a week.

As always, if you have any comments or questions about The Viewers, please do post them below.