Lately, I see a whole bunch of apps which basically all have a theme of "play mobile games, and get free money by doing so". I think the most widely advertised is Mistplay.
At first glance, this doesn't seem legit - most of such games are free to play (with microtransactions/ads), so how would the Mistplay owner, or other companies with such apps, make any money to pay people out rewards, never mind produce profit for the company?
Are those apps legit? If so, how?
The golden rule of evaluating something that might be a scam, is simply: "Why would someone pay me to do [x], how much should they pay, and am I exposing myself to potential fraud?".
So for something like this, you can easily see that someone would make money off of you looking at ads. In theory, they could offer 'kickbacks' to you, the ad viewer, as incentive.
The question is whether the money earned off of your attention span would be able to fund some meaningful payment to you. start from first principles: how much money does an app maker earn from you viewing a single ad? Maybe 1 cent? In that case, If you would need to watch 1,000 ads to earn a $10 rebate, then the profit to the app maker would be $0.
Keep in mind this assumes you are not influenced by the ad [counter to the reason someone is paying for you to see it].
I think in most cases, to the extent the listed rebate-type program actually exists, then yes you could assume that some money is available, but probably the hourly rate for such activity would be closer to $1 an hour or less, rather than $10 an hour. Remember that downloading such an app could expose your information to 3rd parties, and if you are required to insert personal information, there exists a risk that it would be distributed for future scamming.
It's probably also difficult to determine the true earnings rate, as the app maker likely has control over various levers that might make payment seem imminent when it would still require you to jump through more hoops.
Not really a personal finance question, unless you are going into that business, but there are several common possibilities:
Embedded advertising that they get paid to carry.
Games designed so that, while they can be played free, doing so will be easier or more fun if you purchase in-game abilities and accessories with real money.
Like (2), but things are purchased with in game currency that takes a lot of effort to earn, so sometimes people will decide to purchase a bag of coins with real money.
Selling a service that sends ads to their users based on information they have about you.
Actually selling user lists to advertisers.
Using the free games as portfolio material to market their skills as game designers.
Using the game players as research subjects for user-interface design ideas.
All of the above, some of the above, none of the above...
