This Company Will Pay You $50 This Year Just for Downloading Its Free App

Do you have a laptop, tablet or smartphone? If so, follow me on a quick trip to some easy money.

You know Nielsen, the company that tracks TV ratings? It also measures the popularity of websites and online videos.

To do that, Nielsen wants to pay you to join the Nielsen Panel and let it anonymously collect information from your favorite web-surfing device. You can earn $50 a year to browse the web like you normally do.

And best of all, this won’t slow down your phone or computer.

Of course you have a laptop, tablet or smartphone. You’re a human being in the 21st century, after all. Shoot, you’re probably reading this on one of those devices right now.

Here’s the deal:

Sign up to join the Nielsen Panel here. It’ll pay you $50 a year to keep the app on your device.

If you have a desktop or laptop computer, you’ll receive entries into the company’s $10,000 monthly sweepstakes for every month you keep Nielsen’s software installed on your computer. Every month, 400 people win prizes, with the two top prizewinners taking home $1,000 each.

Super Easy to Set up

So, I tried this out. Here’s how it went:

It was super easy.

First I registered on the website for the Nielsen Computer & Mobile Panel. It took all of five minutes to fill out a brief survey with my name, the number of people in my household and what kinds of devices we use.

I was never asked for my Social Security number or bank account information or anything like that.

Then I downloaded Nielsen’s software onto my Asus laptop and my iPhone 6. I’m all set! At this point, I’m just waiting for the rewards to roll in.

For every month I have Nielsen’s app on my iPhone, doing its thing in the background, I earn points I can redeem for gift cards at places like Amazon, iTunes or Walmart. I can earn up to $50 in points by sticking with this for a year. Easy-peasy.

And for every month I keep Nielsen’s software on my laptop, I earn entries into Nielsen’s $10,000 monthly sweepstakes — 400 winners each get up to $1,000.

It Won’t Slow Me Down, Will It?

Nielsen knows the question you want to ask here:

Will this thing slow down my phone and/or laptop until it’s moving with the speed of an elderly turtle on sleeping pills and it’s driving me crazy and I can’t stand it anymore?

You know, that question.

It’s OK. That’s a perfectly valid question. We know you were thinking it. Many of us have had that kind of experience when we download a program like this onto our devices.

Well, never fear. Nielsen pledges its app is “noninvasive and won’t impact device performance.”

I can report that, so far, I haven’t seen any difference at all in the speeds of my phone or my laptop.

“The app is easy to install, won’t slow down your devices and sends us anonymous data about how you use the internet,” Nielsen explains. “Our app never collects the content of visited websites, and we do NOT collect user IDs, passwords or other private information.”

Pro tip: You can get paid for each device you connect.

Mike Brassfield ([email protected]) is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder. He’s a Nielsen household now.