Make Money for (Almost) Nothing With These Apps

You won't get rich with any of the apps or schemes below. But if you're going to be checking your phone every five minutes anyway, you might as well earn a little extra cash while you do, right?

1. Indivly Magic: Unlike on some social media sites, you retain the rights to any photos you post on Instagram. This means that if you want to make money from your photos, you can—and Indivly Magic helps make this possible. The content marketing startup produces blog and social media posts for companies, and these often require images. For this, Indivly turns to Instagrammers, paying photographers $1 for each photo it uses. It also helps distribute photos to third-party sites that might be interested, for which photographers will earn 30 percent of the net proceeds. Find out more and sign up here.

2. Viggle: Couch potatoes, rejoice — you can now get swag just for admitting to your habit. Viggle is a "TV loyalty app" that rewards members for watching what they watch. When you log your TV viewing habits with Viggle, the app pays you with points that can be used for gift cards to places such as Best Buy, Fandango, Hulu Plus and Groupon. Payouts wind up being about $5 per 75 hours of TV watching. Find out more here, or download the app from the iTunes app store or Google Play.

3. Shopkick: Shopkick is a shopping program that rewards you simply for walking into stores. Once you sign up, entering into any affiliated store earns you "kicks", which are points that can be used for things like store gift cards and free Starbucks coffee. Buying things (in-store or online) earns you even more kicks. Hey, if you're going shopping anyway, why not? Visit the site to download the app.

4. Easy Shift: Easy Shift lets you earn points for all sorts of random online activity. "Shifts" include things like photographing specific products in grocery stores (so companies can make sure products are priced and placed right) or counting how many items are displayed. Shifts pay anywhere between $2 and $20. Right now, it's only available to iPhone users.

5. Earn Money: Earn Money is an Android-only app that pays users for things like downloading free apps, watching ads or completing short surveys. Any money earned is deposited to the users PayPal account within 24 hours. Download the app here.

6. Scoopshot: Scoopshot pays you to take photos of events in your area. Individuals, content companies, small news outlets and even media giants such as USA Today have used the site to find photos. Learn more at Scoopshot.com.

7. Mango Health: Building good habits should be its own reward, right? Well, Mango Health helps you do that while earning points toward gift cards and discount coupons. Users enter the medications or supplements their taking and their schedule, and then issues points for sticking to that schedule. Win/win, y'all. See more here.

8. Locket: Locket enables Android users to get paid for displaying advertising on their phone's lock screens. The payouts are small—1 cent per view, with a cap of 3 cents per hour. But, come on, you've gotta unlock your phone anyway. If you don't mind swapping your cat's photo for an ad for the new Keri Russell movie, the rewards could potentially add up.

9. SnapMyAd: Something like Indivly, SnapMyAd is an app that lets users sign in with their Instagram accounts and then select images they'd be happy to share with commercial entities. If a company bites, you'll get perks and discounts from that brand.